How many times have you heard that “we” are the problem? Well, here a just a few examples of this collective that are worth noting — and rebutting — all of which are brought to you courtesy of our friends on the left.
Let us begin with the recent news that enormous amounts of plastic garbage are polluting the oceans and creating suffering and problems for sea animals. Environmentalists rush to explain that “we” are destroying the planet and that “we” – usually interpreted to mean the West – should do something about it.
And so people across the Western world feel guilty and make sure that they recycle their plastic. But what the media willfully ignore is that 95% of the plastic garbage in the ocean comes from only ten rivers in the world. Those ten rivers are:
- The Yangtze, East China Sea, Asia
- Indus, Arabian Sea, Asia
- Yellow River, Yellow Sea, Asia
- Hai He, Yellow Sea, Asia
- Nile, Mediterranean, Africa
- The Ganges, Bay of Bengal, Asia
- Pearl River, South China Sea, Asia
- Amur, Sea of Okhotsk, Asia
- Niger, Gulf of Guinea, Africa
- The Mekong, South China Sea, Asia
Spotting The Pattern
Do you notice a striking pattern in those rivers? They are all in non-Western, third world countries. Most of the pollution, environmental and ecological destruction in the world today takes place in non-Western countries, but it is not politically correct to say so. That would imply that we have a better culture and civilization than others, and we can’t have any of that.
So leftists then turn to a peculiar technique. They can’t name the actual culprit when it is a group protected by political correctness. Instead, they generalize from this group to a more inclusive “we” and then they silently, through dishonesty and suggestion, shift the blame over to some other innocent group within that larger “we.”
In the case of plastic pollution in the ocean, they create the impression that the West is to blame, when in fact it is the cleanest and best kid in the class.
Protected Groups
After the 9/11 terrorist attack, the left curiously started blaming “religion” for terrorism and this somehow transmogrified into a leftist attack on Christianity. Again, the pattern is the same: Islam is a protected religion and cannot be criticized, so it had to be generalized into “religion,” and the left defaulted to the only religion which is safe to criticize, Christianity.
Earlier this year there was a rape epidemic in Swedish pop festivals. It turned out that newly arrived migrant men from Africa and the Middle East have a completely different standard of respect than Swedes. But they belonged to a group protected by political correctness, and so they were generalized into a category that is safe to criticize: men. In response to the rape epidemic, some Swedish artists decided to make a girls-only festival, to prevent “men” from raping. How politically correct.
In America, slavery and Jim Crow laws were almost exclusively a phenomenon of the Democratic Party. The left doesn’t like this, so it generalizes it from the Democrats to “America.” “We” had slaves. “We” mistreated the blacks. And by “we,” we mean those racist Republicans. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge.
Political Posturing
Once you have seen this pattern, you cannot unsee it. The left uses it everywhere, including taking credit for other people’s accomplishments. Obama used the technique to appropriate the hard work of entrepreneurs as his own:
“If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business – you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.”
And we all know who “somebody else” is, right? It’s those Democrats who are champions of big government.
The British comedians Mitchell and Webb have brilliantly captured this technique in one of their infamous sketches. Enjoy.
