Appreciate you. Thanks for hopping in. I think I follow, in that there’s an underlying toxicity to the entire tribalism/rejection of “other-ness”. In general, I get that.

To clarify/qualify my original answer to FD, I don’t think I was considering those descriptors (straight/white/male) as character/personality traits, per se. (Perhaps it’s a question of semantics, i’m not sure).

The way I was looking at it, when asked what policies did Trump implement that took away my freedoms, was that his particular brand of nationalism includes a significant serving of xenophobia, and (as one example of many) began with blanket-actions that specifically reduced the rights and freedoms of a group of people who are predominantly brown and Muslim (Pretty sure nobody is debating that point). 

By the simple fact of the body and place I was born into, I was able to avoid that discrimination. There’s an analogy - if you were trying to build a video game character for “life on planet earth” who would encounter the least amount of resistance at any given level, there are certain combinations of traits that strongly impact one’s likelihood of experiencing various types of adversity, discrimination, etc.

There are plenty of other factors at play, and myriad forms of adversity that any human, in any body, may at times face. But it just happened to be the case that Trump’s early presidency was replete with instances of policy/agenda that were specifically designed to reduce the freedoms of certain groups of people — groups who already face an outsized share of abuse and marginalization to begin with.

And since my physical instance in this world lacks some of those traits, those freedoms were taken from friends of mine, but not from me.

One huge problem with wokeness is how it has become this lightning rod for tribalism in its own right, and in doing so it has utterly demolished what I view as “originally” humanitarian aims. For example, the fact that one of my best friends — who has lived in the USA her entire life and has never run afoul of the law — is pulled into a private room for search and screening whenever she travels through an airport, compared to my “worst ever” airport experience being little more than a canceled flight. This drastically unjust difference in experiences, based simply on our skin colors, last names, and our extended familys’ places of residence, is an example of (conservative trigger warning 😉) “privilege”. A concept that has been entirely wrecked by culture war BS.

The fact that the media paints the idea of social privilege as a shameful weight (in left MSM), or as a “reverse racist” way to target someone with fewer obstacles (in “right” MSM), is an example of institutions inevitably corrupt well-meaning social movements, due to the nature of the incentives around centralization.

“Privilege” doesn’t mean that I’m someone who thinks I’m entitled to better treatment. It means that I frequently (and often unknowingly) have an easier time “playing through the levels of the video game of life” than another person who might otherwise be my exact clone, except for their skin tone, nation-of-origin, or religion. 

The point, as I see if, of trying to recognize these additional freedom that I have, is not to make me feel guilty, or to sacrifice my own self-interest for that of another individual. It’s simply to expand my awareness and compassion, and to recognize that billions of people experience a set of difficulties in life that I have never known. (And yes - everyone has been hurt, yes I have had difficult times, and yes, I will continue striving to live the best and most enjoyable/fulfilling life that is within my capabilities).

I hope this exposition helps to articulate what I was getting at originally. I don’t think our society needs to be organized around the social constructs that make us different. Celebrate uniqueness, that’s beautiful, but we’re all human here together. The trouble is that many humans are stuck in lizard-brain (or at least cave-man-brain) and are motivated by their fear of the unknown in ways that cause extensive harm to certain groups of people who have less means to defend their own freedoms. 

When those people hold positions of power, we rarely look back in history at them with positive memories.