I was thinking recently about a post Rod Dreher wrote once, about how he disliked Ta-Nehisi Coates's writing because Coates made "everything about race." Why is he so obsessed with being black, Rod demanded. Can't he ever write about anything else?
This was hilarious to me, since at the time Rod was obsessed with Christianity, in a particularly tedious way; and formerly he had been obsessed with black people being inferior due to their inferior culture; and later, of course, he would become obsessed with trans people, to the point that he utterly could not write about anything else.
Many "conservative" writers now have a similar obsession -- they make everything, even the war between Palestine and Israel, about trans people. (Which is extremely bizarre, frankly.) But that's not my point.
Rod was angry about Coates, he claimed, because he said that Coates, and many other progressive writers, wanted to indoctrinate children, students, and the country, into believing that systemic racism was a problem in the US. On the other hand, he was perfectly fine with arguing that children, students, and the country should be indoctrinated into accepting the truth of his obsession -- Christianity.
It's not that Conservatives, in other words, are opposed to indoctrinating people, including children. It's that they want to choose the indoctrination subject.
Not that LGBTQ people are people.
Yes that any small child who isn't Christian is going to burn in hell for all eternity.
Not that women should be equal citizens, that therapy is a good plan for some people, that immigrants should have rights, that systemic racism is a thing.
Yes that patriarchy is God's plan and God wants you to beat children and birth control is abortion.
Not that workers should unionize and have rights.
Yes that Capitalism is God's plan and America is God's Chosen Country.
And so on.
2 comments:
It's always been rules for thee but not for me.
Yep.
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