Truism #31415: No one likes being called an asshole. Especially when they deserve it.

I find it disheartening that someone would feel aggrieved enough to lash out when it is pointed out that they are wasting electricity by keeping their computers on 24/7. But such is human nature. No one wants to be told that what they are doing is having negative consequences.

Which leads me to the realization that we will never solve the problem of racism.

White people don’t like being called out for doing/saying racially offensive things. Especially when they meant it to be funny. (Because, yeah, some of them think it’s funny. I mean, what can you do? I say /təˈmeɪtoʊ/, you say /təˈmɑːtəʊ/. One person’s joke is apparently sometimes another person’s hate crime, I guess. I find fart jokes funny sometimes. Is that a capital offense?)

Because no one likes being called an asshole. And calling someone an asshole usually puts most people into a defensive position. So you end up with white people reflexively defending their ham-fisted, dumb-ass, disgustingly offensive behavior. “You’re playing the race card. I didn’t mean it like that. It is a level playing field.”

Right.

The thing is, real assholes don’t care what you say. Meanwhile, people who behavely assholishly but are otherwise sensitive, culturally-enlightened people don’t like being told they’re behaving assholishly and then they get all self-righteous and turn the end of the gun around on you, calling you an asshole for being a judgemental prick by calling them an asshole. And therefore, the Democratic Party will never really unite people-of-color and white liberal intellectuals. White progressives will continue to insist that there are bigger fish to fry (which is probably true at this point in time, what with the complete transformation of the United States from a nominal representative democracy to an out-and-out police state, the nationwide adherence to a philosophy cum religion that proclaims that facts don’t matter, thereby completely abdicating America’s technological and scientific leadership, and the fact that we are hemorrhaging several hundred million dollars a day which will eventually be called out by China someday that will be particularly inconvenient.) People-of-color will continue to insist (rightfully so) that we’ve got to deal with matters of race before we can really get anywhere.

And so it goes.

I’m not saying we should stop trying to find a solution, but one of these days, one side is just going to have to end the argument by saying, “You know what? You’re right. Let’s move on.”