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Moving Beyond The Right Wing — Left Wing Dichotomy — 3

I find the following pattern playing out in the political field — group 1 says it is historically oppressed by group 2. It treats culture and norms as identities shaped by group 2 to enhance their power and subvert others. Norms are the means of gaining power over others, both mentally and physically. So for group 1, rebellion is freedom. It treats itself as a victim, which allows it to justify actions deliberately aimed at dominating others. Earlier hierarchies were justified by power; now they are justified by victimhood, but the desire for domination is the same. Yet this desire is cloaked as justified, a means to freedom for group 1. Their actions are morally pure; their moral purity is the problem; they are too good, and so are exploited by others. So now they should retaliate. They do to others what they claim others do to them, but it is not the same. There is a moral asymmetry here. Group 2 cannot be victims; that is not their identity. They put the bad apples in group 2, along with the good apples in the same basket, thereby ending the difference between the two. Yet they resist lumping the bad apples in group 1 together with the good apples. They refuse to see or downplay their own transgressions and exaggerate those of others. Rather, the transgressions of others are because of who they are; their own transgressions are deviations or actions forced upon them. They do nothing; they are made to do. There is no hypocrisy in all this because hypocrisy assumes moral symmetry, and this is denied. They receive an offence to deliver an offence. They are convinced of their own moral purity and of the impurity of others. The older caste system treated nature as a fixed attribute of individuals; the new system treats culture as identity and identity as made up to dominate others. Group 1 and group 2 have no common norms. Group 2 also learns to play this game now. Group 1 reacts with disbelief. Victimhood status belongs to them alone. Group 2 has to prove their victimhood to win, but there is no common court of appeal. So the game is the same; group 1 subverts facts and asserts their moral purity over others. Their culture is not our culture. The two cultures are morally and normatively asymmetrical, but my culture is superior to the other. You must see the world the way I see it, shaped by my categories even though there is no categorization that is universally true. The only question left is which discourse wins, because it is power and not truth that will settle the issue. 

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