The other day, I was talking to someone about college sports. I made a comment that a particular school was just a knucklehead academy. I love college football, but I’m well aware of what’s going on with these kids. Most of them have no business being on a college campus. They are placed in fake classes to stay eligible and they are given tutors to do their work. Some of the kids are real students and some of the schools have real standards, but that’s not the rule. The school in question is well known for cutting corners in order to field a good team every year.

The person, with whom I had the exchange, was offended by my use of the term “knucklehead academy.” The reason is they know some graduates of that college. I know an Episcopal minister, but I would never take offense if some criticized that church. I could see it if his kids was a player at that school. Then he could interpret my comment as an insult of his son, which is an insult to him. Here we had transitive offense taking via acquaintance.

Maybe sensing my confusion, his explanation was not just that he knew a graduate, but that he felt the school did a great job “creating a community and did wonders for minorities.” Having rolled that around in my head for a while, I’m thinking that “community” has passed from meaningless cant to abracadabra word status. Of course, if the “community” is good for the minorities then we’re getting close to the promised land.

The weird thing about the “community” fetish is that there are lots of very bad examples of communities. The Nazis built a community. Pol Pot built a strong community. I could probably spend all day listing “communities” with outlandishly high body counts. A cult, after all, is a community. I suppose the hive minded don’t think much about that stuff. They just know their hive is good so hives must be good, as long as they are good to the right minorities, I guess.

The transitive offense taking is the kicker. I can see this being the new way to stifle debate. If you hold an opinion contrary to the Cult’s truths then they can just conjure an imaginary friend or relative to take offense. Since that friend or relative is not around to be outraged, they can be outraged in absentia. It’s another version of “some people say”, the favorite way fro liberal journalist to call non-liberals bad names. “Some people say you are divisive. Please talk about this.”

By itself it is just a weird tick, but these people are in charge. The result is a deranged meta-language in public discourse. It’s not quite esoteric, just tortured. This post at NRO is a good example. In order to make sensible comments about Pegida, Stuttaford has to perform a strange ritual proving he is not a heretic. That means apologizing in advance for offending anyone by mentioning the subject matter. Stuttaford is a well grounded guy, but he likes his job and career so he does what’s necessary.

I’m fond of saying we live in a different sort of Iran. Their religious lunatics whip heretics and stone homosexuals. Our lunatics hound heretics out of their jobs and cast insults at “homophobes.” The one thing the mullahs had on our lunatics is they could claim Allah was unhappy with someone and that was license to do as they liked. It seems our lunatics are conjuring their Allah through this transitive micro-aggression stuff. The imaginary victim of your micro-aggression they just conjured is instantly deified, which means they are doing the lord’s work by attacking you.