CONTEMPORARY STUPIDITY: A RESPONSE TO “CONTEMPORARY ARROGANCE”
BINGHAMTONREVIEW.COM
Contemporary Stupidity: A Response to By Madeline Perez “Contemporary Arrogance”
O
n April 14th, 2021, Binghamton Review published an article entitled “Contemporary Arrogance.” Now, as Copy Desk Chief, I should have already been familiar with the article, but it’s not uncommon for another E-board member to put pieces through the editing process, so I never saw it. The publication of this article was, in my opinion, the worst oversight I have ever seen from the Review. As someone who’s partially responsible, I regret not watching with a closer eye. The frustration I felt reading the article was surely unparalleled by mortal man. Honestly, part of me did feel grossed out being a representative of a publication that would publish something so uninformed and blatantly transphobic, and it’s because of this that I’m going to write my first ever rebuttal. Now, for someone talking about arrogance, I find it really fucking ironic to write under the pseudonym “Johnathan Swift.” To implicitly tie your own illiterate ramblings to the likeliness of a famous author seems pretty arrogant, indeed. This hypocrisy seems to be a core theme of the article as he pretentiously describes the snobbery and perceived moral superiority of others without considering the fact he is actively trying to put himself above these people in terms of “intelligence” and “values.” The blatant pseudo-intellectualism runs rampant through the piece as smart-sounding words are thrown in to distract from the fact that the sentences themselves make no fucking sense. Redundant words and phrases are used consistently throughout, as is the case with the way he talks about Bourgeois Values, the phrase “verbally insulted,” and many others like it. So much of this piece is effectively saying nothing, which I’m not particularly mad about considering the stupid claims made when he is saying something. Anyone who has ever passed a middle school English class would
6
BINGHAMTON REVIEW
have no trouble finding the blatant, grammatical errors that plague the article worse than 14th-century Europe. The pathetic, reductionist attempt to use Freud and Nietzche to wrongly support his batshit claims makes it clear he was more interested in sounding smart than making a lick of sense. Let’s begin looking at the actual content of this article, as much as it will inevitably pain me. He starts off by criticizing Binghamton’s rally against anti-Asian discrimination, implying its futility when considering that the spike of anti-Asian hate crime and discrimination are things outside of the university’s control. While he is correct in that the university cannot go back in time and prevent hate crimes, he purposefully refuses to consider any benefits rallies like these may serve to raise awareness of injustice and to help others feel like intense societal problems like those that bred the Atlanta Spa Shootings are not just being swept under the rug. Instead, he claims that activists should consider the true perpetrator of racism in this country: affirmative action. Though the out-of-context average admission rate statistics he gives (with an “Asian students tend to score higher” (on what exactly??) thrown in for good measure) make it extremely hard to decipher what exactly he’s trying to prove, I am quite familiar with the conservative spiel on the evils of affirmative action. Many right-wing talking heads deliberately push the false narrative that affirmative action is an anti-white, anti-Asian phenomenon designed to favor underqualified marginalized groups. They also may peddle the idea that affirmative action is damaging to these groups because it both undermines the capabilities of women and minorities and sets them up for failure because of these aforementioned under-qualifications. Let’s break this down. Affirmative action as we know it does not lower the standards for minority groups but can in-
fluence their selection among equally qualified candidates, and the choosing of unqualified candidates over qualified ones is explicitly prohibited by federal regulations. It is also found that, in many cases, affirmative action may raise the self-esteem of women and minorities by offering them equal opportunities for employment, but let’s not fool ourselves that conservative figureheads actually care about this point. The reason I’m focusing on the rebuttal of common conservative talk show points here is because it’s transparent that this article is heavily influenced and tries to regurgitate the same hateful, fear-mongering shit masquerading under concerns about the degradation of modern culture and “the children”. Our society saw this while fighting for the legalization of gay marriage and I continue to see the same blind hatred toward the transgender community and LGBT pride. “Johnathan Swift” states that the “LGBT movement” has become “an aggressive crusade against reasonable criticism.” Ignoring the fact that made no fucking sense, the underlying message of “gay people bad” was astonishingly clear. He then rages against the fact that “transgenderism is proudly displayed,” as they (transgendereds) denounce science and force children to have sex changes. Nice try, but as much as you suck up to him, Big Daddy Steven Crowder is not going to fuck you. In reality, the argument for “scientific evidence” in order to validate the existence of trans people is a thin veil for transphobia. While it has been proven several times that the neural processes of trans people align more with the gender they identify as over the gender they were born as, this point is actually irrelevant other than it proves that he’s actually the one denouncing science. Trans people don’t need to prove that they’re trans just because you don’t like it in the same way
Vol. XXXIII, Issue XI
