Who needs proof? Guilty until proven innocent

Scott Adams may be America’s foremost humorist who has not yet been relegated to non-personhood as a chronic oppressor of women but he has nothing on the gang of usual suspects at The Nation.  

The weekly reader for social justice warriors poses the ultimate identity politics quiz: “Does Eric Schneiderman prove we should never trust a male feminist?”

The motley crew at the Stately Manor got there long before Schneiderman got his comeuppance but we were Deplorable before it was a fashion statement. Then again, we’ve been swimming upstream for so long we we’re turning salmon pink. 

Identity politics has a ranking system based on the degree of victimhood. The Nation’s Katha Pollitt is an arbiter of this caste system. Ms. Pollitt answers her own Schneiderman question with this polemic: 

The history of #MeToo … makes clear that neither party has a monopoly on men who behave atrociously to women. … the only thing one can say with assurance is that they’re men. Yes, I know women can be abusers, and I know some men are great, but at the moment #NotAllMen is looking more like a wish than a declarative statement. …

Here’s what I’m going to do: Vote for women. Support women. Protect women. Believe women.

Have we passed through the Leftist event horizon? Into the dark hole where all politics is  spaghetti-fied into nothing but pure race and gender? Where the highest form of conscious being is black/female/queer?

Can The Nation condemn an entire gender to the non-personhood of a deposed politburo member? Especially given the magazine’s fragile subscriber base? Yes, it can because it just did!

The tumbrels are rolling!

The white labcoats at the Blaska Policy Werkes took a deep dive into comments from Nation subscribers to “Does Eric Schneiderman prove …?” What they found is identity politics eating itself alive:

1. You know, Katha, I made a couple of missteps when I was in my 20s and 30s in my personal life, but I’ve always been pro-feminist. But now it’s obvious you and your sisters don’t want me on your side, so FU [mic drop].
2. Since Katha Pollitt is a straight, white woman, does this mean that any gay or black people should never trust her? The Republicans do a good enough job dividing us on the left. It’s time we come together and fight the common enemy.
3. Does Katha Pollitt prove that nobody, not even writers for The Nation, can help but cast unrealistic over-generalizations across an entire demographic group? Does she prove that even self-proclaimed and “open-minded” progressives can’t contain their prejudice? Ah well….
4. Katha, As a woman who has been an activist for women’s reproductive rights for many years and as a person who has moved politically to what is considered the “far left”, I just won’t support any woman because she is a female. And I won’t believe every woman automatically just because she is a woman. I’ll tell you why. I have seen over my 65-plus years many women who are nothing less than treacherous, and completely able to lie about a man to get revenge (usually for being rejected). The two very best bosses I ever had in this world were women, but two of the worst lying, back-stabbing, incompetent bosses I ever had were also women.
5. “Believe women”? If women never lie about rape, does that mean the Scottsboro Boys were guilty? They were, after all, accused of rape. What about due process?
6. … Identity politics is destructive and sexist or racist, no matter where you stand.
7. The funniest, the FUNNIEST was Rachel Maddow coming down in support of Brokaw . . . because he never made an unwanted grab at her!

Blaska’s Bottom Line: We are entering very dangerous territory here, folks. Communists loyal to Stalin actually had infiltrated American government, academia, and the arts in the late 1940s/early 1950s. (The Rosenbergs were guilty; Alger Hiss was, indeed, a spy.) But demagogues like Joe McCarthy hitched a free ride on a real threat and discredited the movement.

Always believe if you wish but have we forgotten the the fake rape charges against the Duke University lacrosse team? (The prosecuting district attorney was eventually disbarred.) The University of Virginia fraternity hoax perpetrated by Rolling Stone? (Never happened) The recanted sexual abuse charge against the late Chicago Cardinal Joseph Bernardin? (Accuser sought his forgiveness.)

The tumbrels are rolling, people. Eventually, #MeToo will turn on any man who flirted on company time, offered to buy a drink, or “stole a kiss” in a movie theater.

For extra credit: “Eric Schneiderman, New York’s former attorney general, may have been a longtime champion of women’s rights, but he now stands accused of beating and verbally abusing multiple women. After hearing the accusations against him, Samantha Bee said that she didn’t feel at all conflicted about condemning the onetime liberal darling.” — The New York Times.