Oppressionism: the modern left in a nutshell

Liberalism and conservatism are not ideologies. There is no way to give a brief description that explains the expanses of each. There is no single theoretical underpinning. Until recently, I've been satisfied to think that they are political platforms. But that is not accurate either, because both platforms are self-contradictory. The right is the home of Christianity, but also to pre-emptive war. (Although Obama has made sure that they don't have the monopoly on that). The left is pro-Muslim, but also prioritizes women and gay rights. These are just a couple examples I could think of off the top of my head. Perhaps they aren't the best ones but you can think of your own all day long.

If we wanted to describe liberalism then as a platform or set of principles, we must provide a set that is self-contradictory. So it's no wonder that no one can agree on what it means! I have been greatly influenced lately by the Anonymous Conservative, who puts forth a very compelling argument that liberalism and conservatism are the results of opposing psychologies. Whatever your take, the issue is complex, and at this time no one could definitely say what liberalism is.

However, at this time liberalism is being dominated by a single force. In computer science when analyzing algorithms we only ever worry about costs with the greatest magnitudes, smaller costs are ignored. So for instance if we are trying to speed up the time it takes to send an email, and it takes one second to process the email and ten minutes to send over the network, we aren't going to be focused on the one second of processing. And so with liberalism. There may be a lot going on, but right now one force is so dominant that we can effectively ignore the rest for now.

That single force is Oppressionism. There are three tenets.

1. The primary unit of social interaction is that oppressors take advantage of victims for some personal gain.
2. Oppression is everywhere. In all social structures, cultural institutions, even art. If you can't find the oppression, you are ignorant, and an unwitting oppressor yourself.
3. Finding and chastising the oppressor, and giving support to the victim, is the most holy virtue of Oppressionism.

Oppressionism is only tiny morsel of the liberalism's vast philosophical background, yet it is such a powerful force that all other liberal tenets must bow before it. Let's use the lens of Oppressionism to clarify some actions of the left that seem either contradictory, or perhaps that would seem to work against the left's self interest.

Protected Classes

Generally they determine who is oppressed by race, gender, religion, and sexuality. Rule of thumb goes, if you're two or more of the following: non-white, non-male, non-Christian, non-heterosexual, then you are a inherently oppressed, a victim. While this type of identity groups is of course racist, sexist, etc, they aren't concrete, and depend on your political affiliation. For instance Peter Thiel, a closeted homosexual until he was outed by the now bankrupt liberal rag Gawker, has been a huge surrogate of Donald Trump, and the liberals have reacted by basically saying that you can't call yourself gay if you support Trump. Sure you sexual prefer men but for all practical purposes you are straight.

In these protected classes we see some contradictions. For instance, the left want to bring Muslims by the millions, and ridicule the rest of us for rejecting the notion. It doesn't seem to strike the left as insane that they would pretend to protect women and gays and then bring in Muslims by the boatload. Because they can't possibly see Muslims as oppressors. Only straight white men and prominent conservatives are oppressors. The real threat of this viewpoint may not be that so many are falsely accused of oppression, but that real oppression is not acknowledged when it does not conform to the preconceived notions of what an oppressor looks like.

Open Borders

In past decades, from 1965 when Democrats shifted US immigration quotas from Europe to the 3rd World, many liberals still took a strong stand for highly controlled and regulated immigration policies. The Democrats represented labor and the poor, the two groups most harmed by competition from outside labor. The Republicans, who represented business, stood to benefit the most from cheap labor, but there were kept in check to some extent by the more nationalist sentiments of the party's core constituency.

Oppressionism has opened the flood gates. The poor of the world are not poor because of their own corrupt governments, or because they lack high-trust societies, or because they are culturally uninterested in education, or whatever reasons there might be. The reason they are poor is because they are oppressed. And they are oppressed by the rich Western countries. Therefor it is the responsibility of the rich nations to open their borders and coffers up to the world's poor, not as charity, but as reparation.

The reasons the left have basically abandoned our own workers for the sake of foreigners is that the poor and unemployed are just not oppressed enough. Not yet, anyway.

Environmentalism

Environmentalism has long been one of the key issues for liberals. And even it has taken a backseat to social justice (their term for oppressionism). Environmentalism is still a key issue, but they take great pains to make it a social justice issue. The official Democrat platform's stance on climate change is revealing, in that it makes the bold claim that climate change disproportionately harms racial minorities (even on a global scale minority means "not white") and that it amounts to "environmental racism". What could be worse that the threat of climate change to the very existence of numerous plant and animals species and even humans ourselves? You guessed it: oppression. Oppression trumps all concerns, even existential threats.

We've also seen that there is much more energy surrounding environmental issues where some sort of oppression can be determined. For instance, the left hasn't been quiet at all about oil pipelines. But only when they seemed to threaten a protected group did we see them converge by the thousands to an Indian Reservation in South Dakota. While the environmental risk may be real and justified, it should be noted that the pipeline was re-routed to avoid the city of Bismark, 62,000 strong with over 2500 Indians, as compared to the primary village that would be affected by the new route, Fort Yates, at under 200. The reservation as a whole is over 8,000, but it isn't clear how many would be affected by an oil spill.

My point is not to invalidate the Indian's complaints against the project. The point is that the left only massively rally for environmental causes if they can be primarily framed as a mater of oppression.

Safe Spaces

It was inevitable that liberals would find their favorite victim group: themselves! Always looking for signs of the omnipresent oppression, they decided that any speech which they disagreed with, or caused them any sort of negative emotional reaction, was oppression. Thus they created safe spaces, corners of the American academic institutions where free speech and objective truth could be shut out. I could talk all day about the insanity of this, but there are two major things to take away.

1. Free speech is the bedrock of classical liberalism. Here we have the modern left rejecting classical liberalism as oppressive. Can the left cut itself off from it philosophical roots and survive? Or will they end up eating their own?
2. Only liberals are allowed safe spaces, because they are not oppressors. Whites and men are oppressors. So we see even things like white student unions, when there are student unions for every other ethnicity on campus, are ridiculed as blatant racism. So whites are not allowed free association or freedom of speech, because they are labeled as oppressors by the social justice warriors.

Anti-Trump Hate Rhetoric

Those who follow my blog know I regularly defend Donald Trump. Those who know me personally were probably surprised I would be so supportive of someone who speaks ineloquently or lacks a strong intellectual bent (I'm not equating intellectual with intelligent here). And the reason I defend him so much isn't that I think he's the greatest candidate ever (well I didn't at the time I started defending him but now I do) but that what was being said about him, versus the objective reality, were just miles apart. 

It wasn't enough to say they objected to his immigration policy; it was that he's a racist. It wasn't enough to say he speaks indelicately; it was that he was sexist. It wasn't enough to say that he was caught making lewd comments with a television crew; it was that he was a child rapist. In short, it wasn't enough that he had flaws; it was the he was an oppressor.

The problems with this type of character assassination is that enough people saw through it. I didn't start defending Trump because I was a supporter. I did so because the media narrative was so far off. I became a supporter in the process. This happened to a lot of people! And the result was the worst election results for the Democrats in 28 years. Clearly taking everything you don't like about society and making it a matter of oppression by evil straight white males is not a winning platform. And what's worse, in their zeal to make Trump a monster, well they made a monster. They aren't out there rioting because of any of Trump's policies. They're rioting because American the Nazi character they created. And it is only turning more people away from their cause! If this keeps up 2020 will be a breeze for the Republicans.

Support for Clinton

As I mentioned earlier, the scariest part of Oppressionism is that actual oppression is ignored. The left was able to mostly ignore that their favored candidate, Bernie, was cheated in the primary, and still rallied to support Clinton, a woman who engages in Neocolonialism, who takes money from oppressive regimes, who treats he assigned staff as subhuman, and whose husband used his position in the Haiti relief effort for self-aggrandizement. The fact that she is so clearly what any rational person would call oppressive and won the popular vote, with liberals rioting after her defeat, shows just how dangerous Oppressionism is. This is not mere disagreement. Oppressionism is cancer, and must be eradicated before it destroys the host.