5 Feet of Fury

David Cole on affirmative action in action

David Cole writes:

For generations, leftists have tried to sell the concept of the “dictatorship of the proletariat” as a necessary “correction” to achieve a more just society. Let the blue-collar slobs be the bosses for a while, and soon society will become fair and equal. Of course, what we’ve seen in practice, time and again, is that the resulting dictatorships unleash a frenzy of bloodlust, as the disenfranchised (or those who self-pityingly see themselves as such) indulge their basest desires for revenge against those they fairly or unfairly hold responsible for every setback or slight they’ve ever faced. And of course, in every communist dictatorship, what we eventually find is that the “revolutionary” leaders who emerge are rarely actual long-suffering peasants. What you end up with is a new elite made up of new exploiters. And now that the left has tweaked the dictatorship plan, replacing “proletariat” with “people of color,” we already see a new elite taking shape. Who leads the fight for the re-folding? Privileged middle-class elitists, people of “air-quote” color like Shaun King, Ivy League students, pampered actors. At least when retributive discrimination was employed during Radical Reconstruction, the black folks who benefited had been genuinely wronged by the old system they were trying to bury. But today’s re-folders? They’ve lived privileged lives. Read their list of grievances: “a white woman looked at me funny when I stepped on her yoga mat,” “a professor told me I was late to class,” “a white person told me ‘everything’s going to be okay.’” These bozos are anything but oppressed. What they want is not justice, but the right to abuse and control.