There are any number of looming threats facing what appears to be our increasingly fragile republic.
Many of them come from the outside (originally, at least), like Islamic terrorism, European men’s fashion, and socialized medicine.
Unfortunately, some of the more pressing threats are coming from within these days. Among these are ignorance of history, voter apathy, and the awful slop that the East Coast tries to pass off as Mexican food.
I was once dining with friends after a conference in D.C. and they ordered nachos for the table. We were served something that looked like fossilized dinosaur excrement. I didn’t think it was possible to screw up the melting of cheese on chips but, bless their eastern American hearts, they found a way. Enough about my personal gastronomical tragedies though.
A plague that has been weighing up me for some time is the largely leftist-driven fetish for demanding public apologies.
Here are two of the most recent examples, each of which was covered by a couple of my PJ Media colleagues.
The first is the now almost two week old brouhaha over an ill-advised remark by White House aide Kelly Sadler:
Good for the WH. This notion that "offensive" remarks, reported anonymously, must then be "apologized for" and that to decline is to "refuse" is worthy of the Pol Pot Memorial Kindergarten. Tell the Hurt Feelings crowd to stuff it and move on. https://t.co/cxIAhPihtS
— Michael Walsh (@dkahanerules) May 18, 2018
The second example found the United States Air Force publicly apologizing for, of all things, being mean to the enemy.
We certainly wouldn’t want the fine folks in the Taliban mad at us now, would we.
As for Sadler’s remark, this might be a good time to inform everyone who participated in the Avalanche of Wuss that followed it that we are all dying. Every day. Totally unavoidable.
Public apology demands have been weaponized by the free speech-hating left, and they’re using the weapon all too frequently now. They will use it against anyone too. Every liberal male who has publicly stated the truth about the #MeToo movement — that it goes too far sometimes — has been publicly shamed into shutting the hell up.
The irony here is that shaming has become the go-to for people who spend a lot of time whining about shamed. When they are being shamed, it’s called “bullying.”
Shaming does have its place. My mother fat shamed me the last time she visited and I’ve lost almost twenty pounds since. I’m a fan. Got a joke for my act out of it too.
What I am focusing on here is people (or organizations) who shouldn’t feel shame pretending that they do simply to get the mob to quiet down.
The thing about public apologies is that they are almost never sincere. They are, by and large, a publicity stunt that, in theory, should help the one apologizing but usually just ends up being a reason for those demanding it to do a victory lap and rub the apologizer’s nose in everything a little longer.
In cases where there is actual offense and the accused should be sorry — let’s use Anthony Weiner as an example — a personal apology is most definitely in order but the public spectacle can often be worse for the aggrieved party. Think about every press conference you’ve seen where a faithful wife stood next to her cheating politician husband while he promised his constituents he’d right the wrong. It’s painful to see the looks on the wives’ faces.
Still, almost all of them are insincere garbage. There is an above average chance that most of the people in the United States Air Force are more sorry about the public apology than the tweet that caused the manufactured outrage.
The people who offer the insincere apologies are the mob’s greatest enablers. Each time one is offered, it reinforces the idea that the mob was right and they are the arbiters of speech and thought. I’ve begun to loathe the people who cave more than I do those who make them do it. They give power to the unhinged.
The participation trophy era weaklings have been raised with almost no real grasp of consequences and have now found a most bizarre lust for them, but only in cases where their fragile feelings are hurt. They are people whose lives are ruled by emotion, which makes them go from zero to vicious mob very quickly. The ones who go to college are then taught by the progressive architects of political correctness. The toxic combination of emotional fragility and misplaced righteousness leads to an entire demographic of American society that is permanently aggrieved and wants to destroy the mean thing that’s hurting them.
That’s the thing–they don’t really care if you’re sorry. You can offer the most heartfelt apology ever and it will never be enough. When you are dealing with people who constantly go out of the way to prove how much they abhor diversity of opinions you can bet that an apology from someone on the other side isn’t going to suffice.
The Kelly Sadler situation is a perfect example. The mob wasn’t just demanding an apology, they wanted Sadler fired too.
The apology craze is pushing us ever closer to living in a full-blown dystopian nightmare. They want to ruin people’s lives for saying the wrong thing. Word policing is thought policing, and that is the goal of these First Amendment-hating loons.
Kudos to the people who don’t yield to the frothing horde. Remember, they aren’t just after people in politics. They’re after comedians, business people, and even teenage girls on prom night.
The people who cavalierly engage in mob behavior experience a lot of anguish when they don’t get what they want, so let’s get people to stop apologizing and let the mob repeatedly feel that frustration.
Make them sorry they asked anyone to be sorry.
I would have been completely justified demanding an apology for those dinosaur nachos though.
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