Rant time

I'm tired of being an existential threat.

I'm tired of my life being used as a political football by people with privilege coming out of their ears.

I'm tired of having to read every work of political philosophy with a view to justifying my existence.

I'm tired of every halfway decent of political philosophy shouting from the mountaintops that my life is a subject unworthy of their attention.

I'm tired of constantly being on the defensive.

I'm tired of not being able to cross post this on facebook for fear of losing my anonymity.

Normally, it's water off a duck's back. Haters gonna hate. Aquinas had ideological blinders, Aristotle was a douche. None of them were cool enough to understand me. None could destroy my insistence that my life is my own, or shake my faith in the liberationist consensus of personal autonomy uber alles. My life was my own, firmly ensconced within the realm of self-regarding behavior. The haters could fuck off.

This year the curriculum presented a unique challenge, and a steadily growing discontent waiting to burst a dam with self doubt. Hobbes was a fascist prick, no bones about it, but Spinoza, Rousseau, hell, even Locke afforded a far too broad scope for social coercion. More than social coercion: a social unity that [i]must[/i] be preserved at all costs, whose malcontents pissed on the gift they were given in being delivered from the chaos of a state of nature, whose malefactors, selfishly asserting their right to defy the collective, committed the cardinal sin of undermining our incredibly fragile peace.

I, of course, instinctively knew that there was no place in such a world for me, doomed by my nature to forever exist on the fringe until some benefactor to the public weal ended my threat for good. Which is why my normally aloof inquiry began to be quite introspective, and my political became my personal.

So of course, when my vague apprehensions about the role of those who approach the world on a slant crystallized into something definite, when it ceased being an academic question and these defenders of the status quo made their prescriptions specific and personal, when, in short, Tocqueville decided to unmask his bigotry toward nonbelievers, I snapped.

My sophistry didn't skip a beat, of course, and I avoided the cardinal sins of bringing personal baggage into the discussion and excoriating ancient authors for retrograde mores. Yet I am sure my building rage and increasing skepticism was apparent every time I endeavored to defend de Tocqueville, that really, since for him it is necessary for religious consensus to exist in order to protect a commonwealth, it's not actually the tyranny of the majority he spent 5 chapters railing against, really, it's no more intrusive and tyrannical than prohibitions against theft, also necessary for stability, as I prostituted my identity and dignity within it in the interests of fairness and honest inquiry.

So I sprinted for 30 minutes to blow off some steam, unsuccessfully attempted to procure alcohol, spent two hours in bed seething and composing this post, and now that I've gotten this off my chest I'm gonna see if sleep is at all possible tonight.