Nothing but merit, glorious individual, earned merit here. No accidents of birth. M-E-R-I-T.
In more than 3,000 rambling words,
Weekly Standard contributing editor Joseph Epstein whines about diversity on college campuses, the fact that in some settings an old white man might face repercussions for referring to his female employees as "my girls," and what Epstein calls "the taste for victimhood" in people ranging from LGBT activists, feminists, and people of color fighting discrimination to the neurologist Oliver Sacks for having the nerve to write about his own impending death. But if you want to know what he's really upset about, you only need to read his
first two paragraphs:
If Hillary Clinton wins the presidency in 2016 she will not only be the nation’s first woman president but our second affirmative-action president. By affirmative-action president I mean that she, like Barack Obama, will have got into office partly for reasons extraneous to her political philosophy or to her merits, which, though fully tested while holding some of the highest offices in the land, have not been notably distinguished. In his election, Obama was aided by the far from enticing Republican candidates who opposed him, but a substantial portion of the electorate voted for him because having a biracial president seemed a way of redressing old injustices. They hoped his election would put the country’s racial problems on a different footing, which sadly, as we now know, it has failed to do. Many people voted for Obama, as many women can be expected to vote for Hillary Clinton, because it made them feel virtuous to do so. The element of self-virtue—of having an elevated feeling about oneself—is perhaps insufficiently appreciated in American politics.
How have we come to the point where we elect presidents of the United States not on their intrinsic qualities but because of the accidents of their birth: because they are black, or women, or, one day doubtless, gay, or disabled—not, in other words, for themselves but for the causes they seem to embody or represent, for their status as members of a victim group? It’s a long but not, I think, a boring story.
Yes, he's arguing that white men are elected because of their merit, their intrinsic qualities, and in no way because of the accidents of their birth. Somehow, everyone in American history who has been elected on merit has coincidentally been a white man. Everyone who has been elected or been a strong candidate for the presidency while failing to be a white man has also coincidentally lacked true merit. Funny how that works.
George W. Bush, grandson of a senator, son of a president, one-and-a-half-term governor of Texas ... "notably distinguished" candidate composed of pure, shining merit. But Barack Obama, who got to Columbia and Harvard without family connections, had to build his own fundraising base and political operation rather than inheriting one, and was elected president without even needing the Supreme Court to put its thumb on the scale ... all "accidents of his birth" and affirmative action and victim mentality right there.
TL;DR: White man believes anyone different from him can only succeed for the wrong reasons, whines for more than 3,000 words about how people who are not white men are demanding power, expresses a strong sense of victimization while saying any successes of non-white-men are a result of a victim mentality.
