re: #59 The Ghost of a Flea

The continuing trend of “they say these things because they’re stupid, haha” would merely be annoying if it weren’t constantly be substituted in for “they’re saying these things because they are labeling what and who can be dismissed and thus harmed freely.”

This is language used by people with administrative power and enforcement authority as a proposed way to identify targets that should be placed outside of norms of civil liberty. This is language used by public “intellectuals” to label ideas that can be dismissed as axiomatically wrong and immoral at minimum, but often also as representative of capture by sinister and malefic ideology so dangerous it must be met with state intervention. This is also language used by people to label who can be freely harmed without even considering norms of propriety and threat.

And it’s been that way all along, since the term was exported from it’s use around BLM, precisely to characterize all supporters of BLM as alien, pathological, and dangerous. It’s not stupid, it’s aggresion…but in this case more pertinently is a pretty effective way to create a moral panic that grants power to reactionaries acting in “self defense.”

It’s that they don’t understand, it’s that they fully understand and wish to respond with both personal and state violence.

It’s not as much stupidity as it is ignorance on their part, and willful such. They’re basically ignorant on what makes enlightenment and empathy character virtues, the words mean nothing to them, so they tend not to pay attention to correct spelling and use, e.g. the “Groomer” slur.

Also, being intelligent is no insurance against behaving stupidly.