I am, in many ways, a traditionalist. I do not believe that social justice exists.
Individual justice, traditional justice, means that if a person performs an action that harms another they can be made to suffer a penalty equivalent to the harm they have caused.
Cosmic justice means that if a person performs an action that harms another, they will be judged and held to account for such actions whether in the afterlife or their future lives.
Social justice means that if a person performs an action that harms another, someone who shares traits with that person can be made to suffer. The books are balanced by punishing someone other than the guilty party.
When looked at in that way, the demand for “fairness” which accompanies nearly all calls for social justice is exposed as a farce, an exercise in the most blatant of hypocrisies. Social justice is the inverse of fairness. It takes a wrong – real or perceived – done to someone and perpetuates it. There is no closure, no forgiveness, no reconciliation; merely the escalation of anger and feelings of victimization.
This is why I deeply dislike social justice and feel there should be no calls for it. Instead the calls have increased in magnitude and frequency – this time, from the Republicans.
They do not call for social justice under its name. The term “social justice warrior” is a signal that the person so identified is to be vilified and derided. They are among the worst of the worst. They are the constant generators of the “liberal tears” that fuel much of what passes for Republican thought in the Trump era.
But, listening to the Republicans, I hear the familiar strains of the SJW through nearly all they do. Primary among them is the “Whataboutism” that is used to excuse nearly every offense. Trump sucks up to Putin… “What about Obama and “Tell Vlad I’ll have more flexibility…”?” Trump is exposed for cheating on his wife… “What about Hillary and the Bimbo Eruptions?” The Republicans vastly increase spending… “What about how the Democrats increased spending?”
In the age of Trump, where there is so much to excuse and explain, whataboutism comes into play nearly every day. No longer able to sustain the lie of “he’s not a politician” as he closes on two years in office, every questionable action is instead brushed aside with a condemnation of the Democrats, even though they are not the ones who performed the act.
Let me make this clear: Every time I felt that I, or the American public, was being wronged by the action of a Democrat I wanted that Democrat punished for their action. That fulfills the expectation of individual justice. The notion of encouraging a Republican to perform a similar action never occurred to me. That’s the juvenile demand of social justice.
