On Ungrateful Children

Thesis

This is not actually a post about ungrateful children. All the children I really know and interact with, be it in Australia or Mexico are some of the easiest to please people I have ever met as far as gift giving and what not.

The thesis goes a little something like this: to produce an ungrateful child, you have to attempt to give them something they don't want. 

Best case scenario, an ungrateful child is someone you give something they will want. That is a gamble though, and people should be forgiven if they do not react with enthusiasm, appreciation, gratitude. Furthermore, if they ask for the receipt so they can exchange it, they may never discover you gave them a great gift. Tragic though this is, I feel strongly that the blame can never be laid at the feet of the recipient and we shouldn't be surprised if "children" are ungrateful for the "gift" of blame. That their lack of appreciation is somehow on them.

This post is about the fatal conceit of mindreading, it is about the driving behaviour that leads to ingratitude. The assumption we know what people want or need. 

Xmas is Often A Difficult Time of Year For Me

I literally do not know how other people feel about Xmas, I'm going to say, the nebulous largely secular holiday of Xmas or even how they came to feel how they feel about Xmas.

I credit my education, going back to primary school that pointed out to young children unlikely to be in the demographic of people who struggle through Christmas that many people do struggle. My life has then availed me of opportunity to observe that Christmas or Xmas means a lot of different things to different people.

For example, in Japan Xmas is a minor holiday that for me feels more like a secondary valentines day. A day to buy your best girl some jewellery, take her to KFC and cross your fingers and hope they blow your small penis. But it most definitely is a thing in Japan. There's a lot of Xmas illumination (Christmas lights) and George Michael's "Last Christmas" is playing in all the department stores all December and probably part of November.

Mexico, I haven't seen enough to be sure, but Christmas eve appears to be a bigger deal than Christmas day. The food is similar but different (more tamales, less fruitcakes). Gifts are opened Xmas eve, not day almost like the Germans won the war. Santa is called "Papa noel" but for many Mexicans apparently baby Jesus is the gift deliverer. 

I wouldn't be surprised however, if in both those countries - one with scant Christian heritage and one that is very Christian - but, if you are in one of the demographics for whom Christmas is a struggle, you'd be better off in Japan because Xmas isn't that big a deal or Mexico where Xmas is but one of many Catholic Nativity rituals making no one day emphatically different from the others. Plus the relatively high visibility of impoverished homeless surviving on minimal social support.

Given this post is supposed to be a screed against mind-reading, while tempted to speculate on the different things Xmas means to other people in the Australian context, I'll simply try to give a succinct explanation as to why I often struggle at Xmas.

Probably the main one is that my daily life has never been so unpleasant that the shutting down of society for the Xmas weekend is not something I look forward to. I don't need a break or pause from my life. 

Similarly, now that I'm an adult, I've never had so little disposable income relative to my needs and wants that I look forward to receiving gifts. Conversely I've never had so much disposable income that I don't notice how restrictive the obligation to buy gifts for people who really don't need gifts because they are similar to me (ie. my adult immediate family members) blocks me from buying gifts for whom the gesture would be more impactful (ie. my adult "orphaned" friends or those whom I cannot be near, like those living in Japan or Mexico.)

Getting gifts is merely nice, kind of like casual sex for me, I appreciate the gesture, I know it is the thought that counts. I'm flattered but ultimately I could take it or leave it. The ritual of gift exchanges though is definitely more stress to fulfil what feels like an obligation than joy in receiving gifts I likely didn't want and more probably do not need.

A big one is that many Xmas' feel like I am sequestered or cloistered at the time of year my availability could have the most impact on others. Just by sheer logistics I suspect it is virtually impossible to spend Xmas with everyone you would like to spend it with. The task suggested by my struggle is to love the ones I'm with.

Which is where the subject of this post does come in. And understanderblishly I do not wish to air my family of origins dirty laundry in public, it seems unfair, particularly since I'm not confident I have given the substantive feedback to them. This is not the forum to do so.

So let me just say, that one focal point is that for me Xmas often is the epitome of eating-through-boredom. For me, the reason that I don't eat roasted meats for lunch most days is not through economic hardship or time poverty. I don't eat chicken thighs because I can't afford chicken breasts and find breasts far trickier to prepare. 

I'm a weirdo like George Costanza, who doesn't bring wine and cake to a party, I'm all about pepsi and ring dings, and I'd be the person at the party that would sidle up to George and say "just between you and me, I'm really excited about the pepsi and the ring dings."

Just another manifestation of my poverty around Xmas being a product of my day-to-day wealth.

Xmas lunch often sets up a situation where there is a high risk that I become an "ungrateful child", not just Xmas lunch, but meals that consist of Xmas lunch leftovers like Xmas dinner and Boxing day lunch.

I guess what I'm challenging is the idea that it is "the thought that counts" which depends on how you frame it. The thought we are referring to is something like "*I* thought you would/should want/need this" and here is my Xmas gift to all wrapped up in a bow - alas, what if, just go with me here, they don't want it and possibly don't need it?

And in a sense, if that is the thought that counts, emphasis "I", I can get behind it, because the thought suggests you didn't think much about anyone other than yourself at all.

I'm not confident those are easy paragraphs to parse.... what I'm still trying to say is, that if you think that I would love a brown cardigan, the tricky part is that you think you were thinking of me, when in fact if you had been truly thinking of me rather than of you you possibly would have deduced that I would not love a brown cardigan and therefore you were actually thinking of you and not of me.

Clearer? Probably not.

Observing Xmas and Perceiving Xmas

Observation and perception are two separate things, the observing eye is stronger, the perceiving eye is weaker. ~ Miyamoto Musashi, "Focus of the eyes in Martial Arts, The Water Scroll" Book of Five Rings.

I'm going to ground this post philosophically in the quoted martial principle. It's not an exclusive insight to Miyamoto Musashi. Yagyu Munenori's writings for a rival school of swordsmanship also dedicate time and energy to "sickness" which is a mind fixed on a given preconception, and "normal mind" often referred to in Zen Buddhist philosophy as "beginner's mind". Rinzai Zen abbot and contemporary to the Yagyu founders Takuan Soho by my recollection of his collected writings "The Unfettered Mind" the fetters refer to perceptions that cloud true observation.

Western analogues can also be found, for example Goethe's:

Untersuchen was ist, und nicht was behagt/Investigate what is, and not what pleases.

I don't know why I include original Deutsche for Goethe and not bother to put in untranslated Nihongo for Musashi.

In the space of a single week leading up to Christmas, I observed two-near-misses of dooring incidents of people riding electric scooters in bike lanes. My coworker a cyclist also was in a collision with a car, a hit and run that left him with a severed lip and broken nose.

Chances are, you probably do not immediately know what "dooring" is, some of you will have heard of it, other smart cookies can probably figure it out. For the rest of us that need(ed) it explained, dooring is when someone in a vehicle carelessly opens a car door into the path of an oncoming vehicle - traditionally a cyclist. An extremely dangerous and mindless act.

Dooring is a perfect example of perceiving rather than observing. The reality we live in is one that wherever there is a street or road, there could be a cyclist (and now electric scooter(ist?) on it. Cyclists tend to ride in the outer lane in the outermost edge, often because there's a dedicated bike line. So wherever there is parallel parking, there is some chance that a cyclist will be passing by your vehicle as you attempt to exit it.

I assume, and cannot prove, that most people form a perception based on probability, in that traditionally if one was to exit their vehicle without looking, you could go your whole life without dooring a cyclist. It's so rare for the coincidence of a cyclist passing your car at the precise moment you fling open the door, that you can perceive that you live in a world where this never happens. Cyclists, who are more or less constantly riding past car doors, probably have a different perception, but a perception nevertheless, because I ride past hundreds of parked cars on any given day and it is rare to witness anyone exiting those vehicles. 

Due to these low probabilities, cyclists may ride by parked cars as if people never exit from them, and people exit their cars as if cyclists never ride by them. These are perceptions, verses observations which would be observing if someone is about to ride past the car you are exiting (it's easy if you try) or observe whether there is an occupant in the car you are riding past (much harder, but not impossible). Now people exiting a vehicle are unambiguously responsible for dooring. Probably even if a cyclist is looking at their phone as they pass your door, which is a stupid thing to do, but they are never ultimately responsible for noticing you and they are not as oncoming traffic supposed to stop to let you out.

Two things have changed the probabilities though. The first less recent change are smart phones. Where a good indicator that some fuckwit might fling their door open and discover that indeed cyclists exist and they indeed are a fuckwit, was seeing the brake lights go off at completion of a parking manoeuvre, now people might sit in their parked car updating their socials with something vacuous like "omg! about to get a latte from Positano's!! Soooo good!!! yum!!! lol! #blessed" before exiting their vehicle, making cars with a driver occupant and empty cars look virtually identical to a perceiving cyclist.

The observing cyclist will try and catch hints of interior movement through the rear window and side mirrors of the car, rather than relying solely on brake lights to warn them.

The other technological change is more recent and that is the advent of electric bicycles and scooters that use the bike lanes. (We might add a tertiary tech change which is gig-delivery apps creating a new underclass of workers that have upped congestion of bike lanes). One situation in which I pay little mind to parallel parked vehicles is when I am riding uphill. With my single speed track bike, it doesn't take much of an incline for me to basically be moving at a speed slightly slower than with which I would climb stairs. Any collision with a car door is going to be at such low speed that I'm not too worried about someone opening their car door onto me, much less colliding with one at a walking pace.

With an e-bike or e-scooter though, someone whom we could describe as unfit, out-of-shape, a real pear shaped loser etc. can accelerate up to serious-injury momentum in a timespan I literally cannot dream of. I suspect this is why I observed two near doorings in a 7 day span, whereas 4 years ago I could go a whole year without witnessing a single dooring.

Motorized vehicles in the bike lanes have lowered the barriers to entry, one had to be much more enthusiastic a person to wind up in the path of car doors, and in a city like Melbourne littered with stroads and trams and parallel parking, bicycle commuters probably used to learn fast, whereas now a drunk person can unlock an e-scooter and zip off without a helmet faster than a steep learning curve.

Anyway, I'm ranting, I didn't just witness near-doorings, I witnessed people recalibrating. The first woman who nearly doored a fat dude on a scooter called out an apology, so I had nothing to add. She knew she was a fuckwit in that moment.

The second girl who nearly doored a fat dude on a scooter, I was much closer behind and could see on her face she was in the middle of processing that she was a vacuous and reckless fuckwit that had almost seriously injured a stranger because she assumed her conversation was important and that people who use a bike lane simply do not exist and both these assumptions were suddenly and profoundly revealed to be wrong, and she clearly spoke either Mandarin or Cantonese, so there was no point in my saying anything.

But this post evidently betrays that I feel it worth saying, in a long winded way, that you could benefit from my pointing out a phenomenon - that "ungrateful children" might be a phenomena produced by you not bothering to determine if the "children" even want what you are offering because you are perceiving rather than observing.

You have told yourself a story you are fucking living in.

Whether you have perceived someone, or observed someone. Observing someone is stronger, perceiving them is weaker. 

Biting the Right Hand

So now I'm up in heaven with St. Peter by the pearly gates
And it's obvious he doesn't like the Nehru jacket that I'm wearing
He tells me that they've got a dress code
Well, he lets me into heaven anyway
But I get the room next to the noisy ice machine for all eternity
~ Weird Al Yankovic, "Everything You Know Is Wrong"

The above image is a near enough approximation of artwork I recall from a LDS pamphlet handed to me in the early 2000s. 

For some reason, I find the sheer unintelligibility of a concept like "heaven" (or "eternal paradise" if you want less denominational) intrinsically hilarious. It's like Donald Trumps initial election promise to scrap Obamacare and replace it with "something terrific". I still find it hilarious that that cleared the scrutiny bar of so many people.

Usually, my experience of people talking about heaven is that they are very light on specific details - descriptions of this heaven I want to get into are of the variety "What's heaven like? My my, it's a wondrous place filled with many wonders each more wonderful than the last. Oh it's so good, your head will spin before your eyes fall out. My stars." "You don't actually know what heaven would entail do you?" "Not as such, no."

So much so, that I was actually surprised when a Youtube atheist informed me that the bible makes specific claims about what eternal paradise constitutes. I tend to concede that if you just define God as that which is objectively best, then you have something that everyone rationally should desire, but is "my stars" unintelligible, to the point that it is pretty intellectually bankrupt to assume it exists and is attainable by any means. But yeah, the unintelligibility of something so exciting and exhilarating that we would just want to revel in its presence forever and always, doesn't leave any real point to being a person at all. Why not just make rocks that can be tickled into ecstasy by an infinite feathery plumage and be done with it?

Someone thinks that that LDS image is great. Not great art, but like, wouldn't it be great if we all moved to Switzerland and lived in harmony with mushrooms and African animals.

Religions are the mother from which many ungrateful children have historically been birthed. Sectarian conflict and heresy are perennial problems in man's quest to find total agreement on what would be great. To marry first cousins or not to marry first cousins? That is the question. 

This is just the acknowledgement, that there is a Utopian right, who are conceited into thinking they possess a one-size-fits-all ideal, and in many ways are the most persistent and obstinate parents making ungrateful children of all of us, by the ease with which they are convinced by received wisdom and informed attributes usually in the form of a special, "magical" book. 

The Koch brothers think everyone needs to be saved from action on climate change. In Australia Anti-lockdown protesters, though I'm sure primarily thinking of themselves, could plausibly be regarded as thinking they were protesting on behalf of everyone. 

So I'm not just talking religious conservatism, but economic and social conservatism. Due to the strong overlap between religiosity and conservatism particularly in cultural epicenters like US politics, they provide for most of the demographics I have access to, a wealth of sanctimonious overconfident gifting of turds that naturally produce ingratitude.

It would have been nice, if left leaning people had learned from this, rather than replicated the rights traditional process of gift giving.

The Left's New Bad Habit

"No one is afraid of saying I love you, they're afraid of the answer..." ~ Kurt Cobain.

In my family, it seems likely that there is a sheer impasse over Xmas lunch. 

The more adamant as to what constitutes the culinary spirit of Xmas wins in terms of setting the menu. The kicker is that someone whose favourite restaurant in Melbourne is a shortlist increasingly converging on 7-Eleven is not just expected to eat a winter feast of dry unpopular meats, but to fucking like it. Hence I run a high risk of being an "ungrateful child."

I have a, let's say, dormant podcast about heuristics intended generally for management purposes, the foundational heuristic I assert as "failure must be an option" this is the acid test as to whether something is ethical or not. 

I do not hold that rhetorical questions are sacrosanct. There is no question that is not a risk.

This has long been a habit of the right, who generally seek to reinforce the status quo and resist change, so the right is never going to ask if you actually enjoy goose and plum pudding, or like the sweater they bought you because these are traditions not to be tampered with. It may even be hard for the right to contemplate that anybody could struggle through something we all agree is wonderful in Xmas.

It appears to be the left's new bad habit however, to eliminate the "R" in "R & D" and simply develop new things and then be genuinely baffled that they occasionally (and by occassionally I mean often) do not prove popular.

Let us look at some examples.

The Hot Dog Analogy

This was something I didn't think of in time for my post on diversity in media. It begins for me in the aftermath of "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" when at some event somewhere director JJ Abrams was fielding questions from the audience and was asked if he would put Asians in future Star Wars movies, since his Star Trek reboots featured diverse casts (like the original series made in the 60s did, should have been a yellow flag that these fans were fucking morons whose opinions can be freely discarded). 

This is in 2015, Avengers endgame would come out in 2019, and Shang Chi would come out in 2021. Just for some context.

Here's what this historical incident prompted me to think what was going on, and got left out of my previous post on diversity in media that was really long.

A hot dog vendor sells hot dogs. People like the hotdogs, they buy the hotdogs they eat the hotdogs.

Then one day a couple approach the vendor and say "hey do you have any vegan tofu dogs?" and the vendor says "sorry yous guys, no I ain't never heard of no such thing." in some kind of Brooklyn accent.

The couple tsk, and walk away. 

Then the next day, the vendor's neighbour asks him if he's a fascist white supremacist now. He doesn't know what they are talking about, and the neighbour shows that he's all over social media, the New York Times and Washington Post have editorial content about him, even hack journalists in Australia with titles like "Contributor" and "Regular Columnist" to commend them have jumped on the bandwagon with articles like "why we need to reexamine the classic New York Hot Dog."

So naturally, the vendor buys some vegan tofu dogs, and starts selling them.

Nobody buys them. And it's not because he didn't segregate the water from the regular offal based hot dogs. Just nobody buys them.

After three months of stocking but not selling vegan tofu dogs, he spots the couple that first suggested he stock vegan tofu dogs, and calls them over.

"Oh no, we don't eat vegan tofu dogs. We only eat vegan ramen. We just thought that vegan tofu dogs would be better for your customers."

Badda boom. That's what I think has happened to Disney's motion picture division including Lucas Film and Marvel. Not that I personally wasn't already fucking sick of comic book movies and reboots long before they tried to put vegetables in the messaging, but this was an attempt to stop nerds from eating hot pockets and chicken nuggets, and eat egg plant parms instead.

Australia's 2023 Referendum Results - an emotional analogue.

I assert the referendum was a left-wing phenomenon because it was an act of reform. Beyond that, it was an act of reform intended to elevate the standing of indigenous Australia toward equality with the rest of Australia. So I cite it as a prominent example of the left producing "ungrateful children" and spoiler alert, I attribute it to perceiving rather than observing said "children".

When it became clear that the referendum would fail within I don't know, approx 40~90 minutes of East coast polling stations closing, it didn't feel good, it did feel exactly like the sads I often feel at Xmas. 

Most of my friends voted Yes, that is my impression. Most of my friends are consistent with the demographics that tended to have voted Yes in Australia. So unlike me, I do not think most of my friends have any obligation to read the unsigned open letter to the Australian Prime Minister after the 7 days of mourning observed by Yes campaign indigenous leaders. They did all that could be reasonably expected of them, some/probably enough even tried to persuade me to vote yes. 

Trying to experience the affective impact of the referendum failing was a responsibility I did feel.

Now where post referendum, where I have found common ground with friends who voted yes: is that Australia's referendum process is somewhere between the not-ideal to terrible range, and whatever the outcome of the referendum we could be reasonably confident it was not for good sound reasons by considered rational people who held a dignified sense of civic duty to get their vote right. Also we tend to agree with the perception that if the only Australians who voted "no" were the ones that voted "no" for the same reasons I did, it likely would have passed 99%-1%.

I had already felt the feels I so often feel on Xmas day on the night of the referendum. The awful feeling that someone felt they had given us something great and felt we had spat in their faces, neither of these two perceptions I assert were actually the case.

Of course, until some independent body conducts an autopsy (likely a future academic whose findings are read by almost 6 people) this is all just opinion, there's many ways to slice what actually happened. For example, the ACT was the only territory to go to the Yes camp, and by my recollection, this was because it mirrored other cities like Melbourne and Sydney in the voting patterns where eastern inner city electorates voted yes about 7-3 where western suburbs voted no about 6-4 much like the rest of Australia. 

One could interpret that data (presuming my recollection is somewhat accurate (it wasn't, the ACT appears to be one city electorate and two large paddocks that all voted yes.)) one could conclude that voting yes is correlated with higher levels of educational attainment, ie - the enlightened Australian voted yes, where the fuckwits voted no. 

One could also rationally conclude that Australian media is largely focused on capturing the attention and revenue generated by affluent metropolitan suburbs, even public broadcasters like the ABC.

Given the detail expounded you can probably infer that I lean toward the latter, especially given my acute culture shock at Australia's politicization of luxury goods - somehow buying a $200 sweater will end both climate change AND racism AND fatphobia etc. I didn't think of this possible explanation myself, Chomsky told me a long time ago that was a thing and it still seems plausible.

Through ignorance though, I won't shut the door on the possibility that I am the slack jawed yokel living amongst my intellectual superiors here in an inner Melbourne suburb that voted 60% "yes". I tried to find a reason to join them, it is documented.

No more beating around the bush, what shored up my sentiment that I had just been served an Xmas day hunk of dry meat and the chef inferred from my face that I hated them and they had ruined Xmas was this excerpt from the unsigned open letter that is surprisingly hard to just find via google and should be read in full given it is probably already shorter than this post:

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are in shock and are grieving the result.
We feel acutely the repudiation of our peoples and the rejection of our efforts to pursue
reconciliation in good faith. That people who came to our country in only the last 235
years would reject the recognition of this continent’s First Peoples – on our sacred land
which we have cared for and nurtured for more than 65,000 years – is so appalling and
mean-spirited as to be utterly unbelievable a week following. It will remain unbelievable
and appalling for decades to come.

I'm asserting that these words are inline with my feeling that someone is heartbroken that I didn't like the brown sweater they bought for me. 

"...would reject the recognition of this continent's First Peoples..." This cannot be concluded from the referendum results, because the proposed change to the constitution, I would characterize as a kind of complex question, what could be safely concluded is that 6 in 10 Australians rejected the recognition via the establishment of a permanent body called the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice.

The statement I feel would more accurately read "the proposed form of recognition" or more succinctly "*a* recognition". It should probably also prefix recognition with "constitutional" both pieces of pedantry on my part are because I suspect there are nearly limitless ways in which to recognize a fact like the indigenous people of the Australian continent were here before European visitation and settlement.

Less pedantically to the point that I wouldn't object at all is the characterization that the rejection was "appalling and mean-spirited" I absolutely believe the authors of this letter were appalled and felt the referendum result was mean-spirited. That seems to me likely a product of perceiving over observing.

Within these words lies for me the sentiment that "we proposed something Australians of every stripe should have thought was great, how hurtful of you to reject this thing we made for you."

I remain agnostic as to whether the proposed Voice, and the much more ambiguous long term obligation to provide a Voice undefined, would be good, benign or bad.

A much more likely suspect I feel, is what to me the referendum failed through the personally baffling sequence of "Voice, Treaty, Truth." It is a matter of fact that this was rejected. 

In so far as my intuitions are not abnormal, I feel we would normally start such a process with a consensus on truth, then a treaty can be agreed to, an outcome of which might/could be the establishment of a body like the proposed Voice. (There's an argument to say that through various royal commissions and inquests, some substantial part of truth telling has been done, but no meaningful change follows without Voice and Treaty, however the statement from the heart, still calls for Truth.) 

As I read an argument from constitutional scholars, the sequencing was carefully considered and the Voice would create the necessary body for a treaty to be negotiated with; and only with a treaty in place would it be safe for truth telling to begin (or something.) 

Pleading ignorance, there could be a compelling rationale I simply have not been exposed to and cannot recreate for myself for the Voice, Treaty, Truth sequencing, the above links are rationales but not compelling ones for me. 

I offer it as an analogy to the Xmas chef deciding that Roast Beef would be a delicious decadence that can be made extra fancy with a new recipe and cooking process never before tried in that family, and the result being a lot of left over dry meat and confusion; rather than appetite, clean plates and appreciation.

I'm concerned you might at this point feel that I had missed the elephant in the room, being that the Voice was not designed for white Australians at all. The Uluru Statement from the heart at no point conveys "we call for an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice because white Australian's are gonna love it!"

The benefit of the doubt I extend, is that the body that produced the Uluru Statement from the Heart understood the implications of calling for something to be enshrined in the Australian constitution. That it would necessitate a referendum, that to pass the referendum required not to persuade the affluent and educated residents of the south-eastern coast's inner cities, but a double majority of nation and states voting yes.

Hopefully better analogy, I suspect the voice referendum came across as "enough gazpacho for everyone!" a gesture doomed to fail once we observe that a double majority of Australians are still in love with snags in bread. 

Like an Xmas lunch served up to a family, or presents wrapped for incomeless children under a tree, the process of referendum demands observing what the required parties actually want. It isn't about the automatic affirmation of chef or gift givers tastes and preferences and ambitions.

I Tire of this post, A post about how gifts I don't appreciate gave me the greatest gift of all: Inner sight.

political; (comparative more political, superlative most political)
1.Concerning or relating to politics, the art and process of governing. 
Political principles are rarely absolute, as political logic holds an imperfect result by compromise is better than a theoretically perfect abstention from the political process in the opposition.

totalitarian; (comparative more totalitarian, superlative most totalitarian)
1. Of or relating to a system of government where the people have virtually no authority and the state wields absolute control of every aspect of the country, socially, financially and politically. 

Long after first drafting this post, I was watching an interview with a guy who had published a paper making the case for Colonialism, which I haven't read and don't care much about beyond of course that somebody should be able to make a case for Colonialism, even if that case is bad. Just as people should be able to make a case for Lebron James being the GOAT even though, almost by definition, those cases have to be laughably bad unless Lebron now wins 3 more championships with only one All-star/Olympian teammate.

Since drafting this post, Netflix published both Ricky Gervais and Dave Chappelle's latest comedy specials. I think Chappelle's was better, both for anyone with time are worth watching, but people on the regressive left are likely feeling the ingratitude of children when these specials go to the top 10 and win Golden Globe awards and what not.

Anyway, Case for Colonialism scholar provided a helpful distinction that I think explains the Left's bad new habit of unpopular reforms and kicking up a stink when reforms prove unpopular or fail to get through.

Something up for discussion is political. Once we embrace the conceit that we are in possession of "the ideal" and subsequently all discussions are simply impediments to the implementation and realization of the ideal, we are in totalitarian territory kids.

Why would a political system need an opposition party, when the ruling party is "the People's" party, why would people ever need another party? Do you want to give cats and dogs a vote? An animal's party?

I imagine if you've rode the wave into the left's regressive recent manifestation, with proposals that in plain English I think a six year old should be able to see through:

plain English example 1: If we ratchet up everyone's sensitivity to the max, we will live in a more pleasant and tolerant society.

plain English example 2: If we get white people who don't think about race much, to think about and notice race constantly, society will become less racist.

It was just dumb, and the ungrateful children were correct to be ingrates. And this observation, is my gift to you, bandwagon riders, regressive thinkers. 

One I expect no gratitude for.