The Snowflake Tee
I know the Left wants me to be shocked and outraged by this tee shirt, but I'm too busy nodding at the words. (The presentation is truly awful.)
The message conveys an opinion prevalent in Gen X and older cohorts. It's that "nobody cares" assessment so rampant with my peers. The words are a bit difficult to make out, other than the opening HEY SNOWFLAKE and the closing YOU ARE NOT SPECIAL.
Let us break this down line-by-line.
In the real world...
Hold on to your butts.
You don't get a participation trophy.
The participation trophy attitude is harmful. If I lost a competition, I didn't walk away with any trophy. It doubled my resolve to work harder.
Not everybody is a winner.
Winning is good. Winning is achieved through hard work and perseverance (plus a wee bit of luck sometimes). Not everybody can win. Our hard work on a project or activity is still hard work. Use this moment to regroup. Doing so will prepare us for all the damn battles we'll encounter in the real world.
There are no "safe spaces".
What is a safe space? The term refers to places "intended to be free of bias, conflict, criticism, or potentially threatening actions, ideas, or conversations".
President Barack Obama critiqued safe spaces as promoting intellectual disinterest:
Anybody who comes to speak to you and you disagree with, you should have an argument with 'em. But you shouldn't silence them by saying, 'You can't come because I'm too sensitive to hear what you have to say.' That's not the way we learn either.
Screaming doesn't make you right.
Someone should pass Big Red a memo. Don't remember Chanty Binx? I envy you. Screaming doesn't solve anything. Having a tantrum because we feel ignored will only garner us negative attention.
No one owes you anything.
This one is resurfacing again. No one owes us anything; we got to make it on our own. We also are not entitled to anything beyond what the Constitution already gives us.
Crying doesn't solve problems.
Do I really need to expand on this one? This is stuff we learned as toddlers.
Nothing is free in this world.
Inalienable rights are free. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. Everything else is subjective.
People are going to say things you don't like.
Happens to me all the time. People say crap that ticks me off, and I say crap that ticks everyone else off. That's the world we live in. We can choose to debate them in a civil manner, offering our opinions or corrections as we see fit. We can choose to leave it be, and accept that the other person will never understand anything that occurs outside of their bubble.
This common sense stuff is slapped on a tee shirt geared towards the MAGA folk and-
Oh my God, are you kidding me? This website actually sells this??!!!
If I rocked up to this doormat one fine afternoon, I'd return in the middle of the night with a paper bag filled with poop and thumbtacks. Alas, once I light it, I'm took old and broken to run from the scene in time.
Back on topic. I completely understand if you don't like what I've said. I do realize that some people are in situations that negatively impact or even hinder them. I've stated the thoughts behind each line in an attempt to convey the sentiment felt members of my cohort. I don't consider my words or actions to be a solution to problems.
Except for the burning bag. If anything, it will melt this MAGA mat.