Check your progress!

You've perhaps seen a libertard at work. It often goes something like this :

The schema of this comedy bit muchly beloved by a subgroup of amateur comedians (who then apply it every chance they get) works something like this : foil says something banal. Comedian launches into complex tirade about the malignancy of the banal, constructed out of strawmen of a particular brandⁱ and then extracts himself over the protestations of the foil with the fixed phrase "Check your privilege!".

The properties that make a good such bit are a wide hookⁱⁱ while the properties that make a good amateur sit-down comedianⁱⁱⁱ are an ability to fake indignation. No communication is required at any point during the entire procedure, at all. In point of fact, the amateur comedian could deliver his speech to someone that didn't even speak the language with exactly the same effect, which is to say his smug look of satisfaction and the baseless implication that he has "done his part" to make the world a better place.

The "no communication required" cheap fakeness^iv closely relates the "check your privilege" comedy routine to the various other sophistic currents in contemporary society, such as the pick up artists. In fact we probably wouldn't be too far off from the truth to imagine that they're basically the same thing for slightly different audiences, and where one "picks up" a certain type of confused adolescent female, one equally hits on a different type of equally confused, equally adolescent female by engaging in this particular routine within her earshot.

After all the process has the various properties that'd recommend it to the very shy, desocialised, marginal adolescent mind that libertards by the very definition are : a pretense to manhood, a pretense to culture and knowledge, a pretense to superiority. It's also short and unlikely to result in a beating. What more could you ask for, as a tween with no money, no clue and no social or political power whatsoever ?^v

As these things usually work, it's trivial for the actually knowlegeable, actually powerful, actually rich, actually central (which is to say privileged, yes, of course! as it should be, after all!) to construct the equivalent. Lo and behold :

Henry


FGM is concentrated in Somalia (98 percent of women affected), Guinea (96 percent), Djibouti (93 percent), Egypt (91 percent), Eritrea (89 percent), Mali (89 percent), Sierra Leone (88 percent), Sudan (88 percent), Gambia (76 percent), Burkina Faso (76 percent), Ethiopia (74 percent), Mauritania (69 percent), Liberia (66 percent), Guinea-Bissau (50 percent).

We shall let you guess what FGM means.
Anais Frontal gyroscopic malignatophryxia.

Henry Mnop.
Anais Well I'm never going to guess correctly... malnutrition?

Henry Genital mutilation.
Anais 98...what.

Henry Yes.
Anais WHAT.

Henry Egypt. Like, of the women I knew there ? All ?
Anais I dont think I'm joking about Djibouti anymore ;/

Henry You thought it's a weird marginal thing didn't you. There are in fact more women with a badly cut, sore cunt than there are women in the US.
Anais Well I thought it was a marginal thing generally but more prevalent in Africa/Middle East. I didn't think anywhere near 98 percent. Or over 50, rly.

Henry Myeah. For 50 years they've been trying to end it.
Anais Such bullshit.

Henry It's illegal pretty much in all those countries.
Anais Yeah well...

Henry Which is fucking horrid cultural imperialism, of the worst kind. What did these supposedly "moral" but really retarded laws do ? They fucked up the law environment in the poor countries. Now they'll NEVER be law abiding places.
Anais Well I don't know about never. They can have some war or some revolution and eventually pull out abiding, can't they? Or the idea is then it's a different place?

Henry The idea is that the lawlessness has been given excellent precedent, as every family has clear^vi and serious practice in illegallity. If i wanted to hide a criminal there ? "Well pops, hide him." "What do you mean it's illegal ? You got your baby girl cut, didn't you ?"^vii
Anais Ah. Yeah.

Fifty years you've been at it, dear "progressives". Fifty years you've been at it. The result ? Zero. Tell me more about how you're fighting the layer in the ozone hole, the globing of concept of warmness, space aliens and gojira. In a world where a couple hundred million women make their family clitoris sandwich when they come of age, your bizarro ebullitions of nonsense are nothing but a rounding error. All of it, the aggregate agreement between powerless, meaningless, pointless cocklets and cuntlets on English language social media (all of it!) is but a rounding error in this world. So check your progress!

Check your progress, and if any fuckwit bothers you with the privilege crap, send them here :

<a href=http://trilema.com/2013/check-your-progress/>Check your progress</a>!

1. Race is popular, so is sexism. Anything works, really, you could be an anti-dentite just as well. [↩]
2. Ie, a bit that can only be activated once the foil says "The rain in Spain stays mostly on the plain" is not nearly as useful as a bit that can be activated once the foil says "How ya' doin'?". The problem is often addressed by bit modularisation, where the same payload can be connected to a wide variety of different hooks. There is no serious consideration given to adequacy between hook and payload - in fact the absence of such connection is a quality in this approach, as the foil is much more likely to behave as a good foil for your purposes if what you're saying makes absolutely no sense. [↩]
3. The difference between a stand-up and a sit-down comedian is chiefly this : that while the stand-up comedian risks his tail up on a stage, with lights in his eyes blinding him to the reality of a large group of unknown people watching his every move, the sit-down comedian risks nothing at all, hiding "among friends" and the usual protection society offers. He plies his trade much in the manner a highwayman would, and while he's certainly no soldier, he'd certainly love to be mistaken for one. [↩]
4. Muchly reminiscent of everything else the US makes, also remarkable for the cheap fakeness and nothing else. [↩]
5. Don't even fucking start talking about how you could start making some money, looking for a clue or amassing social and political power. That shit's hard, yo! It takes time, yo! What the fuck! [↩]
6. I nearly said clear cut, which'd have been a misnomer. It's anything but clear, the cut. [↩]
7. If you think the implosion of the Somali state and the attendant troubles of unchecked piracy, terrorism harboring and so on and so forth are completely unrelated to the sort of Methodist pressure discussed here you can safely conclude you don't have a clue. In fact there's quite a line that links the 40 by 40 foot hole in the USS Cole to the efforts of making Africa "moral" in the Unitarian sense through hijacking of its legal system and political processes. [↩]