A Tsunami of Digital Resentment
Bitterness and bigotry don't just hurt their targets
I’m concerned about bigotry. I’m not concerned because I look at groups at mathematically coherent entities where balance can be achieved by discriminating against group A in favor of group B. I don’t think society or policy-making works that way. I’m not worried about the focuses of the bigotry as much as I am about the bigots. This is a curious thing to say but it’s something we all seemed to intuitively register until about a decade ago.
I’m also not concerned about the “power dynamics” involved. If white people have privilege then great… it’s still bad for black people to regard them with hostility or mistreat them or resent them. This not not because of group advantages (remember, I don’t think of “black people” as a great uniform lump whose situation can be improved by discriminating against the category of “white people” in their favor) or power dynamics. Rather, resentment and bigotry and hostility is innately bad for the people harboring it. It makes you less effective in society and it’s bad for your mental health and it’s bad for your soul. It’s bad for black people to regard white people with bitterness and resentment because it’s bad for the black people, totally aside from any costs borne by the white people that they deal with.
I’ve NEVER heard a modern progressive make this point: resentment and prejudice are bad for the people experiencing them, not just for their targets. I suspect this is because many activists want to encourage bitterness, or at least not actively try to reduce it (it can be a useful emotion in promoting change… it’s just that the changes are almost always for the worse). I’ve heard hundreds of modern progressives express the frankly ridiculous idea that marginalized people can’t be sexist or racist (or otherwise bigoted)! The “social power dynamics” are all wrong. There are so many excellent objections to this framing that it’s truly discouraging that so many people absorb and parrot it with real zeal. Here are a few:
What if the marginalized person does have social or financial or legal power? What if they’re a police officer or your boss or a governor? They still can’t be racist because some abstraction involving 330 million people have racial disparities which go in a particular direction?
Who fits into a ‘marginalized group’ anyway? This might seem easy but think about it: a black person raised rich who’s attending Harvard is still less privileged than a white drug addict with schizophrenia born into the foster care system and repeatedly abused? Is that your claim?
Why is race (or sex, or gender identity, etc.) the only operative category? There are plenty of other factors which are much bigger handicaps in society and they have been historically as well: mental health, disabilities, family dysfunction? Are those people also innately incapable of doing/thinking/saying anything racist?
What if a black man kills a white family because they’re white and he hates white people?
I could go on like this for pages. To the last one (because I’ve asked all of these questions at one time or another) I often hear; “well he was racially prejudiced but he’s not racist.” This is ridiculous semantic quibbling. I consider racial prejudice racist. Also, prejudice describes an attitude or assumptions… not actions. You need a word for an action or thought or statement which expresses hostility or disdain towards another based primarily on their race. Fortunately we have such a word: it’s ‘racism’. White people can be racist (but are not necessarily!). Black people can be racist. (Note: this framing completely excludes the millions of mixed/brown/Asian/etc. people altogether. It’s such a simplistic perspective that it literally only accounts for TWO categories, but that is the fundamental flaw of so much of the modern Left: oppressor versus oppressed is the only relevant dynamic. What a ridiculously flattened worldview… but I suppose that’s where collectivist thinking gets you).
Bigotry is simply an inflamed symptom of out-group hostility, nurtured and grown by emotional rumination or negative experiences. Out-group hostility is a feature of human psychology and has nothing to do with one’s social group or sex or race or station. All humans experience it and all of us bear its psychological costs. Out-group hostility on the basis of race = racism. There. Isn’t that simpler than trying to redefine words to mean completely different things based on whether a person is white or not or whether they were thinking or doing or which group has power? I think so.
Obviously these attempted redefinitions of racism or the myopic focus on the targets of resentment, excluding the resenters, are not strong ideas, and they can really only flourish in closed ecosystems where agreement (or silence) is actively enforced. More to the point, they can only flourish where strong negative emotions rule. Try to calm people down and get them to think logically and fairly and the spell begins to fade. Dividing the world into several categories along a a few different axes and pretending that these categories are the most meaningful aspects of people and should affect how we regard them and judge them and even what level of humanity or credibility they have is not progressive. We already tried doing that… reversing the races’ up/down positions won’t magically transform the outcome. Treating everyone fairly and equally and giving everyone the same courtesy and consideration is not racist. It’s literally the central change that Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his life to accomplish. I still can’t believe that this idea is not just controversial but is almost impossible to verbalize in many, many contexts in our country today.
But these conversations often stall out on some very simplistic and spiritually infantile assumptions: namely, that bigotry or resentment or mistreatment is only harmful to the targets of those activities. Martin Luther King, Jr. is claimed by the modern Left (and he was absolutely a radical Christian and a socialist in his time) but his motivations were based upon Christianity and a deeper patriotism and his goals never involved ‘equity’ or ‘dismantling’ or ‘decolonization’ (the way it’s meant now). He believed in the values of Western civilization and simply wanted them to be fully and fairly applied. The modern Left is implacably against the values of Western civilization and they are institutionally strong enough that they are usually now explicit about this fact. Their entire movement is suffused with bitterness and resentment. You will rarely hear them reference King these days. His ideas are not just old-fashioned… they are in direct contradiction to the Left’s medium- and long-term agenda.
The idea that individuals should struggle to improve themselves and benefit society regardless of their privileges and their station is literally incoherent to the modern Left. The only factor which should be discussed in evaluating the happiness or success or outlook of a person is their privilege, or their lack thereof. However, we simply know this isn’t true (at least not completely). If it were every person would simply be a reflection of their background and their social influences. That world would have no place for initiative or personal growth or agency. And it would have no place for wisdom or mercy.
“Always be sure that you struggle with Christian methods and Christian weapons. Never succumb to the temptation of becoming bitter. As you press on for justice, be sure to move with dignity and discipline, using only the weapon of love.” -Martin Luther King, Jr.
It is ominous to me that the moral intuitions which have been established for two thousand years have been so completely forgotten. In my more cheerful moments I imagine that people still know these things, but that they just don’t play well in the polarized and bitter world of recrimination and mockery which is twitter or Reddit. But I don’t really believe that.
Here is the point: resentment, envy, bitterness, and venom don’t hurt the target of those feelings. They hurt you (the bearer of those emotions). They reduce you and obsess you with other people and they nurture the illusion that by hurting or lessening or demeaning others you will find fulfillment but that is almost always a lie. You can fight for social change but if you’re angry or bitter than you are less effective as a reformer… and you are unhappy. You are less appealing and inspirational to those around you, and this effect will worsen as time goes on. This goes for the feminists on Reddit and the Trump supporters on Truth Social and the young ignoramus ‘decolonizers” on TikTok and the anti-Zionists on Instagram. You are diminishing yourself and you are hurting your cause. The sense of perverse pleasure you get when you insult or rage against others is at the expense of your long-term learning and happiness.
If you dare, visit any political or cultural space and you will see almost nothing but unrestrained bigotry. This from generation supposedly devoted to radical equality and utopianism! Naturally the bigotry is all focused in the proper directions (men, incels, Democrats, Trump voters, feminists, vegans, carnivores, socialists) but that is completely irrelevant. This is a dangerous and toxic habit of thought (and feeling), regardless of who is being addressed! I get the sense that most young people have never actually had a respectful conversation with people that disagree with them on the most crucial topics. Rather than dialogue we get insults and rage… and bigotry.
Ultimately I think that the Left is happy to have a million angry children forwarding its ideological goals but I think their suppression of this moral wisdom goes deeper. We literally have millions of ideologues in this country who believe that the very notions of wisdom, and moral improvement, and mercy, are simply tricks of ‘white supremacy’ or the ‘patriarchy’. They deny any ability for individuals to improve themselves, materially or spiritually and they do this to indict the system. Unfortunately they are necessarily teaching a generation that there’s nothing you can do to make your life better and your happiness and peace is dependent on structural variables, and the people you encounter, and all those bad things you think and feel are someone else’s fault.
I couldn’t create a more vile and stunting worldview if I tried. This is not just the dominant, but the only, ideology visible in vast swatches of online space. Adults should be leading young people toward wisdom and growth but the adults in this country have largely failed at that mission for decades now, choosing trendy relativism and a kind of laissez-faire attitude towards virtue and improvement. For young people just learning how to think and feel (and already tending, as adolescents, toward resentment and self-absorption) this is profoundly poisonous.
“In your struggle for justice, let your oppressor know that you are not attempting to defeat or humiliate him, or even to pay him back for injustices that he has heaped upon you. Let him know that you are merely seeking justice for him as well as yourself.” -Martin Luther King, Jr.
I’ve read enough of these books to know that there are blatantly racist generalizations about white people in (at least) Kendi’s and DiAngelo’s works (although nothing so venomous as what I read in the pages of Ta-Nehisi Coates). I’m not worried about the effects these ideas have on white people or on the people they’re focused upon… I’m worried about the people thinking and feeling these things. Bitterness and resentment are subjective experiences and they are ultimately the responsibility of each individual. Likewise, serenity and wisdom are purely personal states. No amount of DEI training can win those prizes for you and no amount of privilege can grant them to you. That is, perhaps, why the Left never wants to frankly discuss them.
“Keep a list before your mind of those who burned with anger and resentment about something, of even the most renowned for success, misfortune, evil deeds, or any special distinction. Then ask yourself, how did that work out? Smoke and dust, the stuff of simple myth trying to be legend.” — Marcus Aurelius
“When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly. They are like this because they can’t tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own—not of the same blood or birth, but the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine.” — Marcus Aurelius
It’s a good thing nobody reads books anymore!
A much needed point and very well said. 👍