The Omnicause

Question: What does siding with Hamas have to do with climate change or decarbonization?

Answer: Nothing.

Why, then, has Greta Thunberg donned a keffiyeh?

Today's bit is inspired and prompted by this article at the Free Press and the neologism coined by writer Alysia Ames.

It seems like where ‘intersectionality’ went wrong was assuming that anyone with any claim to oppression must be part of one omnicause + global warming for some reason.

In other words, instead of stacking up the number of "oppressed" identities you can lay claim to in staking out your position on the grievance hierarchy, you stack up the number of issues you've chosen the "correct" side of in order to establish your wokeness. Since choosing sides on issues is not limited by inconveniences like your skin color, you can embrace the whole enchilada - the full amalgam of proper positions.

And, like Greta, you can let your Omnicause freak flag fly.

Since positions are chosen based on the juvenile "oppressor/oppressed" metric alone, climate activism, LGBTQ+ alliance, and Hamas-love freely commingle.

No matter that the first has nothing to do with the others, and no matter that the last is in stark conflict with the second.

The stupidity in all this is mind-numbing, but that doesn't mean it isn't happening. The stupidity in all this also means that trying to argue these earnest nincompoops out of their position, at least in the moment, is mostly an exercise in futility.

Yet argue we must, for there is no other legitimate means of rebutting their radicalism. We can't silence them in a free nation, nor should we want to because that'd make us as bad as them. All we can hope is that our arguments find a tiny corner or crack in which to take root, and in time wake them out of their wokeness.