What the Left gets Right: society has structural problems, part 1.

The last five-ish years, it's been impossible to avoid hearing/seeing advocacy to "undo" "structural" or "institutional" problems. The most common problem named is "structural/institutional racism," of course, but, as the Left has reorganized more and more of society, the language has broadened: similar to how "toxic masculinity" has become "masculinity IS toxic," "structural racism" has become "structure at all is oppressive."

While everything that can be done in terms of the law to make human beings of all colors, creeds, and abilities and of either gender) in America equal in terms of opportunity, the Left has valid concerns about the structures and institutions that have been handed down to us from generations long before us. The United States' history is not free from the stains of racism, racialization, and the legacy of inequality that echoes through to modern day. Of course, the Left doesn't do itself any favors by emphasizing the structural nature of racism, sometimes to the exclusion of individual racists, in large part because structures are made up of people. Pointing the finger at "institutions" and "structures," while maybe conceptually helpful, does not really allow for the accountability the Left demands. This makes fulfilling their demands for reforming society stat (without, I might add, a concrete plan for what comes afterward, though as the COVID era rolls on, it's becoming increasingly clear what the agenda for humanity is, which will be subject of our next post) impossible.

Structures cannot be held accountable. Institutions cannot be held accountable. Only people can be. The only way to hold an institution or structure accountable, by the Left's own argument, is to replace the people in it. Otherwise, you have to burn it to the ground...which seems to be what the Left is increasingly advocating for due to the claim that all structures and institutions are racist to the core and no part of them can be saved.

There's something wrong with our institutions all right. And it's not that structure itself is evil: the claim that structure is oppressive is to deny reality, and to insist on moral relativism. How far does this go? Are buildings going to be considered oppressive soon? Skeletons? Anything with a definite and not-easily-changed form at all? Life requires structure whether that suits our "preferences" or caters to our feelings or not. The thing that's wrong with society's structures is not that living in a society where other people who are different than us also exist requires structures and agreements. It is that those structures have been poisoned and those agreements have been broken...

by none other than the Left, which claims to 1) champion the underdog while unapologetically creating new classes of marginalized people, 2) fight for justice using violent means that often hurts the very people they claim to "center" and 3) "liberate" people from relentless oppression while mocking people who believe in "free-dumb" either not realizing or perhaps outright denying that the only way to "liberate" oneself from a free society (a cursory study of history will demonstrate there has never been a freer culture than the present-day West) is to demand tyranny. That is what the Left, in the name of a false guarantee of safety (false because it's not possible to be truly safe on this planet and thus is merely an emotional appeal - and as such, can never be fully satisfied, hence the never-ending demand for more and more control), is demanding today: not torching our structures like they might genuinely believe would be best for the oppressed, not dismantling the very concept of structure as they might genuinely believe would catalyze liberation for all people, but the very strictest and immovable structure humanity has ever seen. It is to this we will turn in our next post.