Whenever I see so-called leftists argue that basic decency is some kind of class privilege, I can only think of my mother.
She didn't graduate high school. She grew up in a poor family in a tenement in the South Bronx. And it was she who taught me right from wrong.
She didn't graduate high school. She grew up in a poor family in a tenement in the South Bronx. And it was she who taught me right from wrong.
I often have occasion to tell people that there is, indeed, a privilege in using the "perfect" activist language du jour. But today's Twitter BS is about *behaviour.* My mum didn't always say the right things--but she always did them. And that set an example I still follow.
And no, she'd never have left a wheelchair user by the side of the road if it was her job to drive her somewhere. She'd have *offered* to drive them if it wasn't.
A lot of the dirtbag left gets so caught up in the caricature of "liberals" they so love to performatively hate--the caricature of the wonky android who speaks in PR and HR and does nothing that isn't focus-group tested--that they lose sight of what real people are like.
And they start to assume anyone who uses the occasionally infelicitous language of social justice activism is somehow Pete Buttigieg in a skinsuit. As if the only people who could possibly, say, care about disability politics are upper class Columbia grads.
I'd say "it needs to stop" but that'd be pointless. What I can plead for is that folks recognise these tendencies and see what's going on. Unchecked, this sort of content free leftism that operates only on caricatures leads to this sort of bullshit: 
I really can't begin to explain how infuriating those ableist tweets are. But they're the sort of thing that makes sense to you when your vision of class struggle is comprised entirely of a Socialist Realist worker action figure fighting a George Stephanopoulos action figure.
