SJWs Always Double Down: Anticipating the Thought Police (The Laws of Social Justice Book 2) Read online

  He winces. “Hey, I know that, and you know that. Hell, everyone in the executive suite knows that. But they can’t come right out and say it either, can they?”

  “Why not?”

  “Because if they did, they’d have to fire the woman who brought the accusations against you, and nobody wants that kind of trouble. Look, we all know there is something seriously wrong with that woman. But if they fire her, we’re talking a wrongful dismissal lawsuit at the very least, and probably other employees getting upset and threatening to quit, other whackjobs manufacturing sob stories about how they were harassed or offended or whatever, and HR going nuclear. And if word got out to the media that we fired a black woman, forget about it! By the time it was all over, we’d have to rehire her and promote her to department head, set up a scholarship fund for disadvantaged youth, and sponsor at least three Women in Tech conferences.”

  You stare at him, aghast. You can’t believe that after putting you through six months of Hell for nothing, your accuser isn’t going to get so much as a slap on the wrist.

  “So that’s it? I get eight hours of detention for doing nothing while she gets nothing for lying about me? Isn’t there something in the employee handbook about not bearing false witness?”

  “HR just thinks that’s the Bible. It’s not actually the real thing, you know.” He laughs bitterly. “Blessed are the freaks, for they shall inherit the corner office.”

  So, with no little bitterness in your own heart, you heed his jaded advice and agree to do your time in diversity indoctrination camp. It’s not so bad, really. It’s essentially a day off, except instead of getting work done around the house, you’re spending it being lectured by an angry Asian woman in power lesbian attire, a very fat white woman with blue hair who breaks down in tears every time she talks, and an effeminate, overweight black man in a dress whose posterior rivals that of a force-fed hippopotamus. It rather reminds you of college, actually, only the catered food is better and there isn’t any beer.

  Your fellow classmates are all white, all male, and most of them look bewildered and scared. They are programmers and IT guys for the most part, bearded and overweight and absolutely terrified of losing their jobs. The one exception to the general rule, besides you, is a thirty-something guy who looks like he might be from the Sales Department, a sharp-dressed fellow with an expensive haircut who smirks his way through the lectures, and occasionally bursts out laughing, much to the dismay of the inmates and the instructors alike.

  “It’s a good thing they finally brought the sandwiches,” he says, after sitting down next to you during the lunch break. “The Blue Whale was getting hungry, and I think she was looking at you.”

  He’s given them all nicknames. The Blue Whale. Caitlyn Kardashian. The Lesbotron (Made in China). He’s kind of a riot, but you can’t imagine his employment status surviving much longer.

  “I suppose I don’t need to ask you why you’re here.”

  “Yeah, apparently I have been known to make hurtful and inappropriate comments. What are you in for, kid?”

  “Dilbert cartoon.”

  “Oh, yeah? Which one?”

  “The corporate politeness one.”

  “Ha! Now that’s ironic.”

  Throughout the day, the Blue Whale and her sexually confused companions pontificate on the evils of society, the evils of men, the evils of the white race, and the horrific suffering their particular identity group has historically endured from the white male-dominated society formerly known as Western Civilization. One by one, each victim is encouraged to confess his sins against diversity and receive qualified absolution from one of the three minority figures, who increasingly strike you as an inclusive parody of the Three Fates. The Blue Whale spins a tale of how the guilty man’s actions have harmed all womankind, Caitlyn Kardashian measures the depth of the offense in terms of its racism and Gay-Lesbian-Bi-Trans-Other-phobia, and the Lesbotron (Made in China) pronounces the sentence, which invariably amounts to some variation on her one-note theme of “the need to do better.”

  You dutifully go through the process, largely without incident, although it doesn’t help when your new friend snickers after you stumble awkwardly over the phrase “the intertextual implications of my white male privilege.” No harm is done, though, as the Lesbotron (Made in China) contents herself with shooting eye-daggers at him and accepts your ritual apology after you promise to Do Better and Be More Aware and Check Your Privilege.

  Even the sales guy performs the ceremonial abasement, so smoothly that if you hadn’t been privy to his earlier comments, you would have sworn his remorse was heartfelt and sincere. After a teary hug from the Whale, a fist-bump from the Kardashian, and an acidic benediction from the Lesbotron (Made in China), your collective reeducation is finally deemed complete and you are given permission to go forth and sin no more against the dark-skinned, the downtrodden, and the disprivileged of the world.

  In the parking lot, you exchange cards with a few of your fellow parolees and are not at all surprised to discover that your new friend is driving a late-model Mercedes. You shake his hand and find yourself a little taken aback by his uncharacteristically serious tone when he gives you an unexpected warning.

  “Be careful out there,” he says, which you feel is a little incongruous, considering that it comes from him, of all people. “You’d better watch your back.”

  “Me?” You were rather pleased to discover that your unapproved cartoon was the most innocuous of all the various crimes against diversity that had been committed by that rough gang of white male privileged thugs, so you wonder why you’re the one who needs to be careful. It’s not as if you’re prone to unconsciously cutting things out of the cafeteria newspaper in your sleep, after all. You might be a man of modest and limited talents, but you are fairly confident that not posting any more Dilbert cartoons in your cubicle, or indeed, anywhere in the office, is well within your range of capabilities.

  “They had you in there for nothing. I mean, Dilbert? Come on! That means someone with influence wants you gone. Not for what you did, but for who you are.”

  “Me? Why?”

  “I have no idea. But I guarantee you someone is after you, and she’s not going to quit either.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense!”

  “Who said it had to? Maybe someone wants your job? Nah, you’re just a cubicle jockey. Look, you obviously pissed someone off, and I can tell you this: she is not going to stop coming after you. She’ll be like the Terminator, man. You look at her the wrong way, you sneeze when you should have coughed, and she’ll be running to HR shrieking about how you killed her and raped her, used the N-word and the other N-word, then microaggressed her by asking where she’s from.”

  “The other N-word?”

  He laughs. “If you don’t know, more power to you.”

  “What’s the matter with asking someone where he’s from? They didn’t mention that today.”

  “That’s offensive, my man. Do try to keep up. See, if you notice they’re from somewhere else, then you’re implying that you believe they don’t belong here. Could you be more racist?”

  “So we just shouldn’t notice anything?”

  “Exactly!” he beams at you and then puts a hand on your shoulder. “You see, my friend, your problem is that you’re in a war and you don’t even know it. You’ve got to learn to duck when they’re shooting at you, or sooner or later, you’re going to get shot in the head.”

  You assume he’s speaking metaphorically, although at this point, you’re not entirely sure. “You don’t seriously believe someone could get fired over a stupid cartoon, do you?”

  He only laughs and points to a little bearded man getting into a Prius. You recognize the guy. He was one of the programmer types who seemed particularly shaken by being forced to attend the class and intimidated into near-speechlessness by the Three Diversities.

  “Know who that is?”

  “No, should I?”

  “Well
, your job probably depends on him. He’s the lead programmer for the team writing the core engine for version three.”

  You look at him in astonishment. You’re not in sales, but you know that version three is what will make or break next year for the company. It’s already six months late, and most of the major clients are impatiently waiting for it. What on Earth are the executives doing letting that guy out of his cubicle, at all, let alone making him waste an entire day like this?

  “Does Jack know he was here?” Jack is the CEO.

  “Jack probably knows what that guy had for breakfast and how many times he went to the bathroom yesterday. He’s been breathing down the poor guy’s neck for the last nine months.”

  “Then what’s he doing here?”

  “You just don’t get it, do you? Jack’s scared of HR. Everybody in your company is. If HR says some weird little guy has to sit through a day of cultural reeducation because he stared at a pretty intern from Stanford for one too many seconds, then Jack isn’t going to tell them no. He knows that if he doesn’t give the psychopaths in HR whatever scalp they demand, it won’t be long before they go after his. He’s a straight white guy, just like you. If he doesn’t play ball, the next thing he knows, he’ll be facing three sexual harassment lawsuits, and every other article about the company will say that it isn’t taking inclusion and Women in Tech seriously, and suggesting that its time for a diversity CEO.”

  “Oh, God.”

  He’s right, you realize. He’s absolutely right. Jack isn’t in control. Jack is riding the HR tiger, and he’s terrified of falling off. Then something that he said strikes you as incongruous.

  “You just said ‘your company’. Not our company. Do you even work here?”

  He grins. “Not even a little bit.”

  “Then what on Earth were you doing there?”

  “Research.” He laughs as you gape at him and produces a card. You recognize the name of the firm for which he works. It’s one of the more successful tech-focused hedge funds. “When we’re making ten-million-dollar bets on a company we like to know what we’re betting on.”

  “So you just crash these re-education courses?”

  “You’d be amazed at what you can learn from what a company believes to be a disciplinary infraction.” He waves in the general direction that Prius Guy departed. “I’d say today was a very good use of my time.”

  “What do you do if you get caught?”

  He laughs again. “I tell them I’m with the Anti-Defamation League, verifying that the company’s Diversity and Inclusion program is fully consistent with what the ADL has determined to be corporate best practices.”

  “Does that work?”

  “Every single time. You should see them freak out when I criticize them for being out of date on the LGGBDTTTIQQAAPP front.”

  “The what?” You gape at him, astonished.

  “It’s what used to be LGBT. Now it’s Lesbian, Gay, Genderqueer, Bisexual, Demisexual, Transgender, Transsexual, Twospirit, Intersex, Queer, Questioning, Asexual, Allies, Pansexual, Polyamorous. Leave one out, you’re a hater, don’t you know?”

  “No. You’ve got to be making that up!”

  “I think the Twospirit thing is only in Canada for now, but otherwise, no, it’s really that crazy. Once I even got offered a job as VP of D&I.”

  “Really?”

  “Well, I told them I was gay and Jewish. Given how well I speak Diversity, you could hardly expect them to resist.”

  You laugh. Then you frown. “So, I suppose you’re thinking that it doesn’t look too good for us.”

  “No, not at all. I just wish you guys were public so we could short the begeezus out of you. My guess is that you’ll be a takeover target within six months at a valuation less than half what everyone thinks now. Thirty-five, forty percent tops.”

  “A takeover?” You shrug. “It could be worse.”

  “Sure, except you can bet that your management team will be announcing mass layoffs right around the time they have to push back the release date. And unless I miss my bet, you, my friend, are already on HR’s hit list. Someone doesn’t like you. Just because you escaped the guillotine once doesn’t mean they’re going to give up and leave you alone. Ever play poker?”

  “A little, yeah.”

  “When do you double down on a bet?”

  You frown. And then suddenly the answer becomes clear to you. He smiles at the expression on your face. He sees that you’re finally starting to get it.

  “Right. It’s not when you’re think you’re going to win. It’s when you’re sure that you can’t lose.”

  “So what you’re saying is, I’m screwed.”

  “I’d say it’s time to polish that résumé and get it circulating. And you’d better learn to duck and cover, my friend. Considering your line of work, it’s not going to be any different at your new job. You survive long enough, maybe then you can figure out how to shoot back at the bastards.”

  Whether you realize it or not, if you live in the West, you are currently engulfed in a civilization-wide cultural war that is taking place all around you. Maybe you’re aware of it, or maybe you’re not. It doesn’t matter. The cultural war is real and it is vicious. And unlike a traditional shooting war between different nations, in a cultural war there are no civilians. There are no neutral parties since no fence-sitting is permitted, and there is no common ground to be found. No one is permitted to sit it out or refuse to take sides; sooner or later, you are going to be forced to declare yourself by either publicly submitting to the SJW Narrative or openly rejecting it.

  Don’t think that you’re the first to pride yourself on being open minded, on being friends with those with whom you disagree. Don’t deceive yourself into thinking that because you don’t insist that everyone agree with you, that will render you off-limits to those who insist that everyone has to agree with them. Don’t flatter yourself that you are different or special in any way or that your cross-spectrum friendships are any stronger than anyone else’s. And above all, don’t think that you are bulletproof simply because you are intelligent, famous, rich, popular, accomplished or important to the organization.

  Not even belonging to one of the disadvantaged categories is going to protect you if, for one reason or another, you frighten too many SJWs by successfully defying their holy Narrative.

  It’s not about you.

  That’s what you have to understand. It’s not about you; it’s all about them. You’re just the target du jour, the trophy to be taken.

  I wasn’t too intelligent, or too Native American, to be targeted by the SJWs in science fiction. Daryush Valizadeh wasn’t too Muslim or too immigrant, and Milo Yiannopoulos wasn’t too famous, or too charming, or too gay, to be targeted by media SJWs. Brendan Eich wasn’t too important to Mozilla, and Larry Garfield wasn’t too important to Drupal, to be targeted by tech SJWs. PWR BTTM was not too artsy-fartsy and genderqueer to be targeted by music SJWs. The Nobel Laureates James Watson and Sir Timothy Hunt were not too accomplished to be targeted by science SJWs. James Damore wasn’t too innocent and well-intentioned to be jettisoned by the SJWs at Google.

  No matter what you do, no matter who you are, and no matter who you know, the SJWs will come after you once they believe you pose a threat to their Narrative, or to their objectives for the organization. But that is not the only reason they identify and attack people. They have also been known to do so in order to burnish their SJW credentials; the more sensitive to microaggressions and badthought and crimespeak they are, the higher they rank in the SJW hierarchy. Leading the takedown of a well-known individual for his crimes against social justice is the ultimate trophy for an SJW. They will also target those who are in positions of tactical and strategic importance in the organization they are invading; SJWs always gravitate toward HR, corporate boards, and compliance committees in order to wield influence over who is allowed entry into the organization and who is driven out of it.

  And, as many people have dis
covered in the aftermath of the U.S. presidential election, SJWs will even attack those whose mere existence triggers their negative emotions. An employee at Google was fired from his job only a few weeks after the election on entirely spurious grounds; the real reason was that his co-workers discovered that he had voted for Donald Trump and were infuriated by that knowledge. Being a heavily converged company, Google employees were openly attacking other Googlers for being racist, sexist, and homophobes simply because they voted for the winning Republican candidate. Since racism, sexism, and homophobia are firing offenses at Google, the SJWs there were implicitly declaring that no one who voted for Donald Trump should be permitted to work at Google.

  That’s a remarkably extreme position, considering that 62,979,879 people voted for President Trump, who won the Electoral College 304 to 227, won 30 out of 50 states, and won 2,623 of the 3,112 counties in the United States.

  The point, in case it is not yet sufficiently clear, is that no matter who you are, it is utterly foolish to expect to be able to reason, compromise, negotiate, or coexist with an SJW. Even if you erroneously believe you have somehow managed to reach a functional accommodation with an SJW, it will only last until you happen to cross one of the ever-shifting lines of the Narrative, or some event external to your relationship triggers them, and thereby causes them to turn on you. Any relationship, be it personal, professional, or romantic, with an SJW is intrinsically unstable; you might as reasonably expect to cuddle with a wild wolverine. Sooner or later, for one reason or another, the damned thing is going to attempt to claw your insides out.

  It’s very difficult for a normal individual to grasp the extreme instability and emotional intensity of the average SJW. The reason is that social justice is not actually a political phenomenon, even though most of its actions and language revolve around nominally political issues. Social justice is, at its core, a quasi-religious ideological cult posing as a philosophical imperative, an ideological cult that comes complete with its own morality, even if that moral system is more flexible than an Olympic gymnast and more prone to mutating than e. coli in a scientific researcher’s lab.