Re: Campus Warrior Apologetics
Let's workshop this literary peek into what things might come to, especially if Donald derangement picks up beyond the McCarthy heights of safe-space hysteria we saw a few years back
scent of the day: Overture Man, by Amouage. A daring masterpiece of animalic amber and smokey booze, Overture Man—forever a top-three fragrance (however much it nauseated me at first)—opens its long-lived ceremonial gravitas with a raisin-plum cognac that (in part because of the suedey saffron echoing the chocolatey patchouli and leathery resins like sweet myrrh, vanilla-almond benzoin, smokey labdanum) would be a torpid syrup of civetone funk (a syrup dripped like Diddy baby oil between labia and collected in a snifter at the perineum) were it not enlivened into a Mike Tyson paradox (heavyweight with featherweight speed) by the following: (1) effervescent brightness (photorealistic grapefruit, citrusy ginger), (2) warm spices (armpit cumin, lemony cardamom, piney nutmeg, sweet cinnamon), and (3) aromatic forestry (terpenic mastic, lemon-mint geranium, fougere-like clary sage, charred sandalwood, smokey frankincense)—all this giving the impression of a cigar dipped in a pissy Monica Lewinski and then in cognac and then, after drying, smoked inside a small leather study, all its fruity and licoricey and fungal elements released into the air.
Re: Campus Warrior Apologetics
Think of the vermin—vermin (yes, perhaps it has come to that)—who brandish that hollow cudgel of identitarian rhetoric, shouting campus-groomed mantras with jugular-vein sincerity (that same sincerity, and that same jugular vein, of a trafficked child who now really needs her some rib punches and rape chokes to climax): “How can you, a man, define what a woman is?” or “What right do you have to write a story about the trans experience (even worse, a story that shows trans persons being physically violated) when you are a cis man, a fucking cis white man?” or “What white audacity allows you, some fucking white lady, to question a black person’s—a queen's—truth?" The underlying axiom, at least viewed in haste through the lens of evenhandedness (a lens, like sometimes even real telescope lenses of European science, now denounced for being white), seems to be quite balkanizing: “Only those within a group can speak for or about that group.” Of course, this house of cards collapses under the slightest logical breeze. “So by that logic, even you can’t speak about what a dog is or what a dog wants?”
Less out of intellectual charity than strategic necessity—that is, less out of gentlemanly courtesy (itself perhaps a construct of whiteness) than a desire to understand the true enemy at its most robust (if only to lessen collateral damage in whatever strike we might have to make in defense of the enlightenment)—we might wonder what vermin apologetics could say to salvage the sanctimonious framework? One solution might be to prune away the rot, scale the lazy creed back—back into what it, when put into the context of its unidirectional campus use, likely always was (even if kept nebulous so as not to rile whatever vestigial conscience remains in the vermin mind): “Only non-whites, victims of disenfranchisement, are entitled to speak across divides.”
This refinement does still honor the vermin spirit, its sneaky orientation toward seizing power by means of bludgeoning dissent into silence like pre-human apes with the Kubrickian femur club—jungle law, only draped in the safe-space vestments of performative victimhood. Yet we only need to look a bit closer at campus speech, now metastasizing into the broader culture through more than just Donald-derangement Disney films, to see that even this good-faith adjustment will be unsatisfactory to the vermin: it fails to bludgeon all toxic dissent, toxic according to the hypersensitive standards justified by the group by the reminder (recirculated among its members) that no other group (not even Jews) has ever been so victimized—victimized to the such extremes of epigenetic PTSD that they feel entitled to fabricate how victimized they continue to be!
The creed, that is to say, requires further distillation to get to its purest form. We get a meaty clue as to what its purest form really is when we consider the self-righteous uproar that would come (especially from the frothing mouths of white allies in the room) if ever, say, some Japanese student dared oppose what a black student—what a black woman, a queen—thinks (and you really have to stress the “black” here, just like news anchors—on the uber-pandering verge of using honorifics like “king” and “queen”—when reporting cop shootings outside of Popeyes). What it really means, stripped free of the various costumes in the shakedown theaters, stands naked in the figaro-figaro spotlight: “Only black voices, as untouchable in their sanctified suffering as gods on a mountaintop, are entitled to speak across the divides (and even if in certain circumstances other voices are entitled as well, those voices never get final say in the Olympian hierarchy where oppression is the might that makes right).”
Let’s workshop this piece, *Re: Campus Warrior Apologetics*, about the rhetorical maneuvering of identitarian politics, particularly on campuses, and its weaponization of victimhood as a means to stifle dissent. The text critiques the absolutist tendency of such rhetoric, where the assertion that only those within a group can speak for that group collapses under scrutiny, exposing its logical flaws and underlying power dynamics. By exploring hypothetical defenses of this framework, the piece suggests that such arguments ultimately reinforce a hierarchical structure where perceived victimhood confers moral authority. It narrows this hierarchy further to the elevation of black voices above all others, satirizing the fetishization of suffering and the exploitation of guilt to gain dominance. The piece intertwines logical critique with sharp irony, portraying the culture of "safe spaces" as a guise for tribalism and performative allyship. This distillation of arguments reflects broader cultural tensions about identity, representation, and the limits of free speech, ultimately questioning the sustainability of these power-based dynamics.
"Re: Campus Warrior Apologetics" is a provocative critique of identity-based rhetoric and its implications for intellectual discourse, particularly in academic and cultural spaces. The poem confronts the weaponization of identity politics as a means of silencing dissent and enforcing ideological conformity, using stark imagery and biting satire to underscore its points. The speaker interrogates the logical inconsistencies and moral contradictions in arguments that insist only those within a specific identity group can speak about or represent that group’s experiences, framing such arguments as both reductive and authoritarian.
The poem’s opening draws attention to the hyperbolic and performative nature of "campus-groomed mantras," juxtaposing their jugular-vein sincerity with the grotesque metaphor of a trafficked child whose trauma has been co-opted for rhetorical impact. This unsettling comparison highlights the exploitative nature of such rhetoric, where sincerity is less a marker of truth than a weaponized display of emotional intensity. The repeated challenges—“What right do you have…?”—expose the speaker's frustration with the self-reinforcing logic of these arguments, where identity becomes the sole determinant of intellectual authority.
By invoking examples such as trans experiences, racial dynamics, and the “audacity” of questioning certain narratives, the poem critiques the underlying axiom that "only those within a group can speak for or about that group." The speaker dismantles this premise with a pointed reductio ad absurdum: if taken to its logical extreme, even speaking about animals or non-human subjects would be prohibited unless one is part of those groups. This absurdity is intended to illustrate how such arguments collapse under scrutiny, revealing their limitations as tools for meaningful dialogue.
The poem then shifts to consider a more nuanced version of the identitarian creed: that only historically disenfranchised voices are entitled to speak across divides. While this refinement acknowledges systemic inequities, the speaker argues that it still fails to account for the complexity of human experience and the risks of reducing individuals to representatives of their demographic categories. Furthermore, the speaker critiques the way this refined creed perpetuates a power dynamic rooted in victimhood, where suffering becomes a form of currency wielded to silence opposing views.
A particularly scathing moment emerges when the poem examines how even this adjusted framework falters under its own contradictions. The speaker highlights the hypersensitivity and performative allyship that amplifies certain voices while silencing others, particularly within racial hierarchies. The invocation of black voices as “untouchable in their sanctified suffering” underscores the speaker’s concern that identity politics, in its extreme forms, can devolve into a hierarchical system where oppression is wielded as a form of dominance.
Ultimately, "Re: Campus Warrior Apologetics" critiques the erosion of free discourse under the weight of identity-driven ideologies. The poem warns against the dangers of elevating identity over universal principles of reason and dialogue, arguing that such an approach fosters division rather than understanding. By stripping these ideologies to their “purest form,” the speaker exposes the potential for them to become tools of ideological control rather than pathways to equity and justice.
identity politics, campus rhetoric, intellectual discourse, free speech, oppression hierarchy, cultural critique, ideological conformity, identity-based arguments, performative allyship, racial dynamics, intersectionality, logical fallacies, weaponized victimhood.