I am totally sick of the Left’s constant misuse of words to commit emotional blackmail.

“Trauma.” “Violence.” “Stochastic terrorism.” “Science denial.” “Insurrection.” “Woman with a penis.”

They think it is clever. They even think it works–and it and does with other Leftists and too many normal, decent folks.

But as with anything like this–constant accusations of racism, sexism, and homophobia, for instance, it loses its power over time.

I was “triggered” by an article in The College Fix explaining how “The University of Pittsburgh’s Student Government Board released a letter which demanded that the university provide resources to cope with the “consequences” of the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. “Resources,” of course, means money, time off, sympathy, and God knows what else.

This sort of idiocy is a consequence of the coddling that the current generation has received since birth. Parents and school system haven’t been teaching kids to cope, but instead that the best response to not getting one’s way is to throw a tantrum and demand some form of compensation or special treatment for having one’s delicate feelings hurt.

The letter continues advocacy from the student government for counseling and other resources that began over the summer when the Supreme Court of the United States reversed the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision and returned the issue of abortion to the states.

It explains that the ruling will harm “anyone with a uterus’s access to reproductive care.”

“This decision will negatively impact the 19,000 students who call our campus home and has already caused far-reaching panic and fear as to the implications this decision may have on anyone with a uterus’s access to reproductive care,” the letter stated. “We know this decision doesn’t reflect recent polls that show most Americans favor the right to choose, which expands to most students who reside on our campus.”

Of course about 40% of students were just fine with the Dobbs decision, and pro-life activists are the ones who get constantly harassed, shouted down, ostracized, and censored on college campuses. Nobody cares a bit about their feelings because, after all, they aren’t crazy Leftists who are allowed to claim trauma and a sense of dread when somebody disagrees with them. Feelings matter a lot–if you are a Leftist. But the Pro-Life activist who is working to prevent the murder of babies? Their feelings are triggering the feelings of the people who really count, so no space for them in the hierarchy of oppression.

The obsession with feelings is nothing new, of course, but over the past decade or so there has been a shift in how the world is expected to react to the neuroses of the people who shout “triggered” at the drop of a hat. As we have abandoned the belief that truth is something other than a construction of an individual’s mind the primacy of feelings has become an article of faith. This video captures the phenomenon perfectly.

This was taken in 2019, I believe, right before the election. This is the ideology that has dominated the discourse in our country and we haven’t been the same since. pic.twitter.com/uyCANPZzKH

— Barrington Martin II (@_BarringtonII) October 22, 2022

This helps explain the Left’s outsized obsession with Trump’s tweets–he pissed them off something fierce, as he intended, and in turn that was the equivalent of violence. Feelings, not facts, are primary precisely because facts themselves are a social construction. Ask a Leftist for concrete examples of the harm Trump did as president and as commonly as not his Twitter presence figures into the equation heavily. He said mean things.

The “feelings” monsters have gone as far as to equate their feelings with a new form of science–most obviously in the transgender ideology where claims that a man with a penis is actually a real, honest to God woman. And if you deny that “fact” you are a hater and must be ostracized from polite society. Scientific American itself argued that the conception of sexual dimorphism was an invention of the patriarchy in the 18th century. Prior to that nobody believed that there were males and females.

Before the late 18th century, Western science recognized only one sex—the male—and considered the female body an inferior version of it. The shift historians call the “two-sex model” served mainly to reinforce gender and racial divisions by tying social status to the body. (6/7) pic.twitter.com/x8KZ5rEaeW

— Scientific American (@sciam) August 24, 2022

This isn’t science; it is Narrative™ intended to assuage the pain who feel “oppressed.”

Emotional blackmail works, to a degree. A substantial proportion of the population rightly prizes empathy, and naturally respond to claims of pain with sympathy and deference. But that cannot continue forever, because the demands have gotten more and more extreme. Our tolerance of this nonsense has real world consequences far beyond providing “safe spaces” and free counseling. It has resulted in the transformation of our schools into grooming grounds for predators, the burning down of our cities, the takeover of the streets by homeless people, and the opening of our border to human and drug trafficking.

Feel bad for this person. Embrace that one over there. They are “refugees” in need. Criminals have had a bad childhood. They feel, so we owe them whatever they want.

No. Absolutely not. Stop it.

Empathy for genuine pain is a healthy human response to our fellow man, but giving a blank check to anybody who claims a right to it is not only stupid, it is destructive.

We are sacrificing our civilization on the alter of emotion. Stop it.

UPDATE: there were riots at Penn State over the harmful appearance of a…comic.

Police on horseback are called in during a riot at Penn State in response to right-wing comedian Alex Stein appearing on campus.

Credit: oldrowswig (Telegram) pic.twitter.com/yxfLtaquEX

— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) October 25, 2022