Double Standards

It occurs to me that the term “double standard” is really a misnomer: it describes, in fact, a non-existent standard.  If it applies in one place, and not another, then it is not a “standard”–which must be the same everywhere by definition–at all.

The Left does not oppose rape, or rape culture.  It does not oppose sleazy men, sexual harassment, dishonesty, dishonor, or treachery.  It condones all these things in ISIS and in Hillary and Bill.

The point of a standard, of a principle, is that it mediates difference.  It allows one group to treat all other groups with the same respect and expectations that it treats its own.  Others, seeing that they are not treated differently, adapt and conform to this aspect of the culture, while feeling free to retain their own unique ideas about things.

The rejection of standards is perforce the rejection of mediated difference, and quite obviously that is what we see in our present political world.  The power elite just pick and choose what they care about and don’t care about, and in clinically Orwellian fashion, feel utterly free to decry one week what they were condoning the week before.  This is only made problematic by those who remember the past, and who expect consistent, principle based behavior.  If you can get people to reject the past, and to accept inconsistency, then you have a perfectly brewed propaganda soup, which again, is what most Democrats and pretty much all college students are immersed in.