The same might be said of Social Justice Warriors (I need to think of a better term, but that for another day), who are both themselves without humor and that levity which makes life among people bearable, but also extremely concerned that everyone everywhere be on guard continuously, lest they fall short of the glory of Marx, who offers no redemption at all.
The feeling is one of continuous strain, of effort simply at existing. There is no relaxation: only eternal vigilance.
And what is interesting about all this, one thing any way, is that by and large both the crimes and the victims are abstract. If I call a gay man a “fag”–if I’m not friends with him and we both think it is funny–then something has happened between us which might be considered rude, which might warrant an apology, and/or a permanent sense on his part that I am an asshole, of the sort you don’t fuck.
But if I speak of “fags” in a group of heterosexuals, no one there can be considered the recipient of the insult. No one there has a legitimate claim to grievance. But this is precisely what most PC consists in: not an effort to improve manners, but to subject speech to rigid codes. The crime is not that I have offended someone, nor even that I COULD have offended someone. The crime is WrongSpeak. If Orwell didn’t coin that term–and I don’t think he did–then I just did. Anti-Free Speech Nazis–I do like that better than SJW, although development will continue–feel free to appropriate it with your bullhorns, bullwhips, jackbooks, and torches.
Thus the crimes involved have all the concreteness, all the reality, of the sins of the Bible, of unbelief in a God I have never seen or spoken to. The people punishing the crimes are quite real, but the crimes themselves rarely are.
And in point of fact, true reconciliation, which is what genuine Liberals want, is achieved person to person, not across a moat of reflective hate, reactive anger and defensiveness, and shouting. Above all shouting.
Look at yourself. Feel your body. Is there a place in you which can say “Fuck it, just let people do whatever they want to do.”? If not, you are likely what you hate, whatever that may be.