Privilege Nonsense

I was reading an article from the other side concerning complaints by Caucasians about policies being racists towards them, naturally the article dismissed the complains, when I read the comments below.  Three things about the comments struck me. 

First is that they were linked to face book accounts, and why anyone would ever leave a comment concerning a very charged issue that would link back to the a website that leaves their entire personal life open to the world is beyond me. But that is a discussion for another day.

The other item that I noticed is that there are far more individuals willing to voice opinions that are similar to mine. Criticizing the left for their ideological hypocrisy when it comes to advocating against minority bigotry and racism but being apologists for the reverse. I am not necessarily surprised that individuals feel this way, after all the popular sentiment espoused by academia and media always lags the actual popular sentiment, I am more surprised that individuals are willing to voice such concerns on face book.

The last item is this comment:

white privilege can be found in a good education, job, health care and home ownership and through institutions that assist whites in obtaining these things.
 

I am will refrain from any snark in my response because while it is pleasurable to do so in the short term,  it most likely would work against the possibility of my words every swaying some one's opinion; however unlikely that may be. The other reason is that this commenter is an average individual and not a professional victim agitator.  Nevertheless it irritates me, the left have a paradigm where there is only one answer, regardless of any edifying information that comes to light that might mean that their presuppositions are wrong - But then I would be arguing against one of the very things that makes us human wouldn't I? -

It rankles me to know end to see individuals who deign themselves as smarter than everybody else, outside of new age enviromentalism this is the second most predominant specie of leftists where I live, who completely fail to see that they are engaging in the same absurdities as the yokels they scorn. No they simply talk about how intellectual, well informed and worldly their opinions are, never realizing that their CNN, New York Times or any number of other information sources are no better than Fox News. As someone who would like to think themselves as an intellectual, and I imagine most everyone else who blogs does as well, it is pseudo-intellectualism that bothers me the most because the complete and utter lack of critical thought is evidently displayed.  This none sense about white/hetero-normative/male/non-trans gender  privilege is an example of individuals who have failed to exercise critical thought.

There are many individuals examples of critical thinking failure I could point out in this <blank> privilege line of thought, but I will focus on one, and only one.  If you are reading this, right now, you have a computer and an Internet connection.  Given the data collected of individuals who use the Internet and where they are from, chances are that you come from a developed nation with it's clean water, regular power, (relatively) functioning society, plenty of food and most importantly, a future with possibilities.  You, gay, straight, minority, white or otherwise, are one of the luckiest, and most privileged, individuals not only alive today, but ever.  Anyone with any sense of history whatsoever knows that the human condition throughout most of human history was pretty appalling.

It is absolutely insulting to the people of the third world, or the people who died horrible deaths in the past from diseases that we view as minor inconveniences today, for to prattle on about privileges and try to argue that we are oppressed in the way that so many of us do.