If, while discussing politics with a liberal, you should show offense, it is fairly common lately for your opponent to get a gleam of irony in his eyes as he declares you a snowflake. But he is most likely mistaken.
The anti-snowflake movement, if we can call it that, is not opposed to people who find offense, nor is it a general plea for people to “toughen up.” Snowflakes are not merely people who are offended. Those are called… people, because it happens to everyone.
Snowflakes are a direct result of an inflated idea of self-worth and uniqueness, born of the same ideology that results in every player on the Junior Soccer League taking home the same trophy, whether he is the MVP of the winningest team, or the worst player on the field all season. In fact, the very origin of the moniker “snowflake” has nothing to do with offense. It comes from a quote from “Fight Club”: “You are not special. You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake.” That they easily protest what would fly under the radar of most reasonable people is a symptom, not the disease.
Snowflakes are extremely easily offended, yes, but they are also very non-resilient after an offense is experienced, and they possess a hyper-vulnerability to views that challenge their own. They are epitomized by people who are ready to take to the streets to riot, protest, maim, etc, but wholly unable to articulate what they are protesting. They gather at Berkeley to keep Ben Shapiro from speaking because they heard (from a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend) that he’s a NAZI racist bigot. He’s actually an Orthodox Jew who was last year’s most verbally assaulted target of the alt-right, but never mind all that racket – we’ll just gather wearing masks and wielding bike locks to “peacefully” protest so that he either cannot speak, or it will cost $600,000 for security so that he CAN speak. THIS is snowflakery becoming an avalanche.
Conservatives aren’t snowflakes because we’re not in danger of hoards of upset right-wingers suddenly becoming incensed and working each other up into a mob, then attacking the studio where Late Night is filmed to keep Seth Meyers from opening his mouth with his constant tirade of anti-conservative drivel. EVEN THOUGH there is a reason to expect him to modulate the expression of his personal political opinion as the host of a variety show, we will not rise up and violently challenge his right to speak freely. You’ll never hear this conservative mob, which will never form, justifying their violence with the dangerous slogan, “Hate speech isn’t free speech,” either.
While Meyers employs overtly antagonistic speech with INTENT to alienate and offend conservatives, the left has a tool in their arsenal that makes intent a moot point: Microaggression
While the term microaggression is not a construct of the snowflake brigade, (it was coined in 1971,) it has certainly been joyfully adopted by them. The backbone of this goofy nonsense is the idea that words are violence, and naturally, violence warrants a retaliation involving more violence. This escalates until it seems reasonable to “punch a Nazi” for his ideology. No, the words don’t even have to be spoken to be hate speech: They can just be imagined by the leftist with the balled fist. And while they’re punching Nazis, why shouldn’t they also blame all of the problems of society on scapegoats who don’t even know that they are aggressors? After all, it’s the daily, relentless onslaught of “microaggressions” that add up to the sum of systemic racism, or the vast patriarchy of doom, or whatever.
For fun, I looked up a list of racial microaggressions. At the top of the list was “What are you?” or as I would say it, “What is your heritage?”
I got teased for having fair skin throughout my youth. “Why don’t you get a tan?” “Why do you have so many freckles?” “Ew, your legs are blinding me like twin lighthouses,” etc. No one ever was so nice as to merely ask me, “What are you?” And I still get it: A few months ago, the daughter of a good friend of mine referred to me as a “fat, pale man standing shirtless in his front yard,” and indicated that she would have been better off not seeing that.
It doesn’t anger me because I’m reasonable. Everything isn’t an attack on my skin tone, girth, or facial features, and I know it. And even when it IS an attack, I let it go. Yes, even when it happens day in and day out.
But not the leftist snowflake. No, sir, he can’t simply let go. He collects these microaggressions, even the ones that exist only in his mind, and he savors them.
So, you see, there is quite a distinction between reasonable people taking offense at something and the phenomenon of “Generation Snowflake.”