PRIVILEGED OPPRESSION

Like bread and butter pudding, America has always had a talent for disguising its oppression in something more palatable. Take Pride Month, which is observed in June. In response, some Americans have argued that it should be replaced with a Veterans Month, framing this as a more honourable alternative. The difficulty in countering this argument is that veterans are widely and deeply respected, which makes the proposal sound reasonable at first glance. However, the U.S. already has a month dedicated to honouring veterans and military families – November, a fact that many of these critics appear not to realise. Their call to replace Pride Month with something that already exists inadvertently reveals where their motives actually lie. But, the most prominent example in America is ‘socialism’. When a crowd roars socialism, what they often mean is – how dare the people I consider beneath me, stand shoulder to shoulder with me. Economics is a secondary concern, the primary outrage is equality itself, – which, to them, is like being asked to share a bath with the dog. This performance of virtuous outrage, predates the very flag they now drape over their pitchforks. In 1855, the Richmond Enquirer shrieked that abolitionists were – “socialists, infidels and agrarians, and openly propose to abolish any time-honoured and respectable institution in society” – not only were they threatening the plantation ledger books, but also daring to suggest women and the wrong sort of Christians might have voices too. A century later the placards at civil rights marches declared “Race Mixing is Communism.” No one in Alabama was really worried that interracial couples were plotting a five-year plan to collectivise the cotton gins. What they feared was the collapse of the pecking order. To the hierarchy-minded, equality looks like theft, someone undeserving is climbing onto the furniture, and they haven’t even removed their shoes. When you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression. It’s the psychology of loss where there is no loss. A man who has dined at the head table all his life sees the rest of the hall offered chairs, and suddenly his chair feels shorter, the wine tastes watered, the bread seems stale, the roast beef looks suspiciously democratic. He is convinced something sacred has been stolen. Modern politics feeds on it like a parasite. Donald Trump, a man whose entire persona could be described as a toupee balanced on top of grievance, thrives by promising to return the right people to their rightful perch. His rallies hum with the same spirit as the Richmond editorial, – the terror that those below might no longer stay there. He is, essentially, flogging nostalgia for an unfair system, and doing it with all the subtlety of syphilis in a monastery. And fear votes, I mean, really votes, I’ve seen other votes, but these are the best votes you’ve ever seen. No one else in the world votes like these votes. People say to me, “Mr President, how did your votes get so big?” And so the word socialism is spat as an incantation against equality. Healthcare? – Socialism. Education? – Socialism. The vote? At one point, that too was branded socialism. What it really means is, they are getting what should be ours. The tragedy is that the country was built on that reflex. From Puritan pulpits to cable news studios, every generation has found a way to howl that fairness is tyranny. Equality is forever portrayed as a guillotine waiting to lop off the heads of the deserving, when in truth it is merely setting down another chair at the table. But to the man who has been alone on his throne too long, that chair looks like an usurper. He snarls, he hisses, he calls it socialism. Because if you can convince the public that equality is the enemy, and they’ll beg you to protect them from it. And so history lurches on, endlessly replaying the same joke, privilege mistakes balance for robbery, fairness looks like oppression, until a nation, that prides itself on freedom, trembles at the thought of sharing it. I love irony, it has always fascinated me, partly because it’s one of the most misunderstood comic forms, lumped into the same oversimplified bucket as sarcasm. Sarcasm gets reduced to “saying the opposite of what you mean,” which is obviously far too thin a definition – if that were all it took, most relationships could power a city on sarcasm alone. Irony suffers an even worse fate – it’s often translated into a weary “typical!”, as though it were just shorthand for English exasperation. But irony is far more complicated than that. It contains multiple, often contradictory subcategories – verbal, situational, dramatic – ironically, for a word, it can barely contain itself in definition. But I think my favourite thing about irony, is that most irony is irony unintentionally being incorrectly used, ironically. There is however, such great irony in America, because the fear of socialism was linked to the fear of communism, sold under a fear of being like the enemy, Russia – which isn’t even communist anymore, but America feared being like what Russia was supposed to be, so much, that it is allowing itself to become what Russia is instead, authoritarian. The cherry of irony, that sits on this cake of irony, is that whilst America drifts toward authoritarianism. Even if a future democratic election were held, and even if the results were accepted by the courts and institutions, the faction most loyal to the authoritarian leader is also the faction most willing to use force to overthrow and reinstate the authoritarian leader. And I was always told that the main justification for the civilian right to gun ownership, was to resist a tyrannical government, yet could end up, instead, being the very thing that protects it. Equality is not oppression, but privilege will never forgive it for feeling that way. :: REFERENCES :: Richmond Enquirer – June 19, 1855 Race Mixing is Communism – Little Rock, 1959. Rally