Peterson's 12 Rules For Life, have you heard of this?

[bennyboy]

-and if your view of the pc left is as fundamentally wrong as your view of peterson was...?  If you, for example..are the person engaged in identity politics, despite thinking that you hate it...?

Are those things you just mentioned actually leftist ideology, or do they represent something in your head, something whipped up by people like peterson?  Something confirmed by shitty life experiences..which are..in all likelihood, also informed to some extent by the very contentions they now support in your mind?

Nope.  I'm going to stop you right there.  Maybe there's no True Scotsman.  But I've seen what affiliations people have, and what ideas tend to come clustered together.  I've seen plenty on my own.  I've seen plenty of PC dicks, and I find their particular flavor of dickishness to be as thoughtless and damaging as those of the crazy right.

And I didn't say I hate identity politics per se.  I said, for example, that I felt that native minorities should be offered all possible assistance just by their membership in that demographic.  What I hate is people using demographic identity as a scapegoat, or as a card to play to dodge personal responsibility.  I've given numerous examples, both hypothetical and from my own experience, where this expression of PC politics has been deleterious-- a waste of time at best, and a serious hostile act at worst.

Anyway, who are you to stand up for the credentials of the True PC Left™? Who, exactly, are these True Scotsman who are so full of virtue when the society around them is so horribly selfish and corrupt. I'd like to meet these fucking legendary examples of human perfection.

You've made pretty fair sport of psychoanalyzing me, and I've been very honest about my feelings and the reasons for them, so let me turn the tables. I think it's likely that you see yourself in some of my comments. When I complain about scapegoating, maybe you have made excuses that prevented you from living a life you might have preferred. When I talk about the moral weakness of victimizing one's own demographic to forgive oneself for falling short, maybe you have yourself in one of those boxes, and you don't like that it's being referred to as an expression of poor character. Maybe all your talk about your physical prowess was a mask for social insecurity, or physical infirmity, or poverty. Maybe you just like standing up in a public place and shouting at someone about their politics, because it's the only scenario in which you feel you can claim some personal power. Am I getting close? Are we having fun yet?

To me, life is this: making goals, and following them. Then making more goals, then following them. There are no excuses for me, because no matter what happens, I believe that trying will bring better results than complaining. I was abandoned by my mother from ages 4-7. Sucks, but it doesn't stop me from pressing the "Enter" key on the final line of code of a great program. I was bullied from 7-9 because I was quite literally retarded due to brain medication. But that doesn't stop me from running that next step on the treadmill. I was on the streets at 14, with dirty old gay guys trying to lure me into their houses with promises of a warm bed and a cup of hot chocolate. But that doesn't stop me from teaching my ass off and trying to be someone who matters in my students' lives.

See the trend here? I don't seek an identity for myself in order to enable failure-- and I cannot tolerate those moments when people who ARE like that interfere, even a little bit, with my pursuit of a decent narrative for my existence. And when that interference, that speedbump that I can't control, looks me in the eyes and says that I have to suffer the derailment because I'm privileged-- well, to put it succinctly, I'm likely to disagree.

If black people want a more equitable position in the power dynamics of America, I hope they will make that their goal, and step up and fucking take it. I don't want to hear "Wah wahhh the white man. . . " If gay people want a better position, let them be a collective terror for anyone who will resist them. I'd respect that more than a bunch of fucking talking heads blah blah blahing about heteronormative cisgender boo hoo hoo. I was hoping that Occupy Wall Street was going to result in straight-up lynchings of executives, with notes scrawled in blood that said "billion dollar bonus" stapled to their milky-white chests. I'd respect that. I'd understand it-- and the Wall Street execs understood it too, because until they realized Occupy Wall Street was just an excuse for a picnic, they were (possibly literally) shitting their collective pants.