Please Stop, You’re Making Me Look Bad

Okay, normally I’m vehemently opposed to identity politics on so many levels. I mean, yes, I’m still (sort of) a libertarian, so that right there is strike one. And I truly believe they are more trouble than value, being used divisively by both sides rather than in any meaningful and constructive way, so that’s strike two. And let’s be honest here, I’m a straight white cis-gender male, so there’s really no universe in which identity politics are going to paint me as the good guy.

But it’s that last point I really want to visit, because of late there’s been a reactionary force on the rise in American politics, a sort of “counter” identity politics that I feel a responsibility to speak out against. As someone told me recently, things have gotten to the point that if you don’t specifically stand against them, you are passively with them. And there are some groups out there who are trying to claim me on the basis of my ethnicity, my gender, or my sexual orientation that I have to say the following to:

PLEASE STOP, YOU’RE MAKING ME LOOK BAD.

Seriously, this shit is getting out of hand. I’ll take just a few of them to the carpet individually, but if you see yourself even remotely empathizing, supporting, or even thinking “yeah, but they kind of have a point” then you need to rethink your priorities.

Neo-Nazis: I’m going to tackle these fuck-knuckles first, mostly because it shames me that I even need to. What fucking century is this? What world do we live in that I even need to explicitly say “Nazis bad”? I would try to say something like “look, I get it, you’re angry, you’re lost, you’re hurting, you just want to belong”, but fuck that. You signed up with the Nazis. Lonely? Get a dog. Angry? Get a therapist. Lost? Get a counselor. Hurting? So are a lot of people. Just want to belong? May I suggest joining a club. Know what I don’t suggest? Joining the fucking Nazis. Here’s a hint: when you’re on the opposite side of FDR, Churchill, and Indiana Jones, you’re on the wrong side.

White Supremacists: All the hate, twice the crazy. (Here’s a pro-tip for you, President Trump: if you want to engage in some moral equivalency, this would be the way to do it.) While the Nazis have a twisted and warped ideology, they at least aren’t completely ignorant of modern history. I mean, I have yet to hear a Nazi say “Germany was just trying to fight off France’s War of Aggression.” There’s no point in trying to convince white supremacists of this, but again, we seem to live in a day and age where this needs to be explicitly said (especially since I was raised in Virginia, where apparently this is not taken as a given): The American Civil War was about slavery. Full stop. “No, wait, it was about states’ rights!” Yeah, the rights of some states to declare certain people the property of other people. And in case I wasn’t clear enough, let me go even further and say slavery is wrong. I don’t care what color your skin is, what your racial or ethnic background, who you worship, who you love… you know what guys, just read the fucking Constitution. I mean seriously, read the god damn thing. And not just the part that starts “A well regulated militia”.

InCels: This is one I just found out about, and while I thought the Men’s Rights Activists (MRAs) made my skin crawl, these guys manage to take it to a whole new low. For those of you like myself who have never heard of this particular group of self-aggrandizing asshats, the term is short for “Involuntarily Celibate”. Apparently the conceit they have is that the fact they can’t get laid is because women are evil and have failed them, because they are men and… okay, this is the part that gets fuzzy, but it basically involves some mental gymnastics and a lot of hand waving… and therefore they deserve sex. The disturbing levels of entitlement, anger and bitterness, not to mention outright misogyny and rage prevalent among this group is frightening.

These guys probably bother me more than the others because they strike a little too close to home. I can actually remember a time in my own life when I could honestly say if all cops were women I couldn’t get arrested, and yeah, it made me a little bitter and occasionally angry. But my anger was channeled toward “what am I doing wrong?” not “why are women not giving me what I so clearly deserve?” (The fact that I was saying this while unemployed, living with my parents, and apparently incapable of dragging my ass to a gym is an irony not completely lost on me.) I would try offering some advice to these guys, but having been all too close to that abyss myself I already know it won’t help. I can only hope that one day they will realize that the path they are walking at best ends in further isolation, and at worst ends in misery and madness. If there was any chance they would listen to my advice, it would be this: stop worrying about sex. Wake up, smell your own bullshit, and do something to make your own life less pathetic. It really doesn’t matter if that makes you more appealing to someone else; you still gotta live with you.

That’s not all the groups out there who are co-opting my identity for their own ends, but that’s all I have the energy to throw the bullshit flag on right now. If there’s anyone I missed, please feel free to mention them and I’ll be sure to give them a tip of the hat in my next installment, “No Seriously, Just Shut The Fuck Up Already.”