God, hes left as on aur oun.
A Critique of Pure Tolerance.
This, then, is their target; this their priority; this is what terrifies them, beyond all reason:
West Ada School District administrators have instructed a teacher that she must remove two signs from her classroom out of concern that they “inadvertently create division or controversy,” the district told the Idaho Statesman.
[…]
Inama told the Statesman that she was particularly confused because administrators had hung signs across the school with a similar message that read, “Welcome others and embrace diversity.”
When discussing the “Everyone is welcome here” sign, the district told the Statesman that it was not the message that was at issue, but rather the hands of different skin tones on the poster.
It’s—impressive?—that, in their eagerness to justify such an unjustifiable position, the district eagerly trips into full-throated racism (they actually said, “While ‘Everyone is welcome here’ is a general statement of being welcoming, concerns arose around the specific visual presentation of the signs in question and whether they aligned with district policies on classroom displays,” but look at that poster up there: the only thing specific as to the visual presentation is, in fact, those differing skin tones; the Oregonian drew the correct inference)—
but look at the other poster they demanded be torn down, over there: what, specifically, is there, visually, to take issue with, about the presentation of that?
It’s not the presentation at all. It’s the message. —There are those in this world who do not believe that everyone is welcome here, or important, or accepted, or respected, or valued, or equal; seeing posters every day that insist otherwise is, if not an open insult, then at least a constant irritation; such individuals will, ironically enough, not feel welcome in a room displaying messages of such a universal welcome; their anodyne naïveté, rendered logically impossible, becomes offensive, and so must be removed.
This ineluctable logic has proven implacably useful to revanchist griefers: we can all agree that everyone should be welcome (thing about what’s anodyne? Everyone likes it); therefore, anything that might make anyone feel unwelcome ought to be minimized, ostracized, erased: anything, then, that might make, say, someone invested in the notion that this nation was once great, someone who might, perhaps, be distressed, by the notion that such greatness depended on horrible crimes and terrible wrongs, such a one must never be confronted with any evidence to the contrary, lest they feel themselves unwelcome, and so. And it works the other way, as well: any inkling that the world might be however slightly improved, made even an inch more great than it is at this moment, now, here, is a notion that this world is not already great, is not already good, thus risking the discomfort of those who think it was, it is, it always must have been, and since that would make them feel unwelcome—well. Minimize. Ostracize. Erase. —This dynamic explains so much of what’s happening, of late, from the destruction of science to the demolition of libraries to the denial of vaccinations: to suggest this world might somehow be improved is to deny it’s not already, has not always been, in how it’s arranged and disposed, is not yet great, has never been the best of all possible, which would make those so invested feel—unwelcome. And so.
—I mean, it’s also the racism, and the misogyny, the viciously violent, hideous hate. But note the nasty illogic demanded, the repellant claims that must be made, the futures that are foreclosed, whole worlds of possibility destroyed, unmade, to satisfy these terrible, stupid demands.
