Zack Ford Is A Grown Man
July 08, 2019
You can tell from his outpourings:
As someone who writes about Trump and his subordinates every day, I need every reprieve I can find from the ongoing toxic demise of our country, including in my personal social media. But my decision today to unfriend this individual was no simple purge; I am significantly emotionally wounded.
It’s all terribly dramatic. Practically a miniature opera. You see, while browsing Facebook, Mr Ford saw a photo of an old high school friend celebrating the Fourth of July with her daughter and while wearing a Make America Great Again hat. The latter detail, the hat, being, for Mr Ford, “unacceptable,” a personal violation and source of deep trauma. Naturally, and not at all oddly, Zack decided to scold his old high school friend, as was his duty as a super-woke being:
I gave my friend an ultimatum.
Always a sound opening gambit.
I told her I wouldn’t unfriend her so long as she apologised for wearing the hat and promised me I wouldn’t have to see it in my feed again.
Terms of surrender. A bold choice.
When she claimed I was trying to police her beliefs, I corrected her, pointing out that my conditions only regarded the hat, not her position on any particular issue.
Ooh. Terms of surrender with bonus sophistry. That’s bound to go down well. Let’s see:
When asked to choose between a hat that embodies that evil and someone she’s known half her life,
Wait for it.
she chose the hat.
No laughing at the back.
It left me feeling like we’re so much worse off than I’d convinced myself we were.
Oh poor, put-upon Zack. Will his woes never end?
My final words to her were: “Every time you wear the hat, you remember you lost a friendship over it. Every time.” I know for sure I’ll now think of her every time I see a MAGA hat, and I’ll fear its corrupting power even more than I used to.
Yes, a hat with corrupting power. An amulet of evil.
So. If you’re celebrating the Fourth of July and wearing a patriotic hat – a hat supporting an incumbent President, as half the country generally does – then, according to Mr Ford, you must be an enthusiast of “hate,” of “oppression and injustice,” and must exult in the prospect of “firing trans people.” There being no other conceivable motives. Which is why our fearless, selfless hero must spend his time browsing Facebook and then baffling friends and acquaintances with ultimatums regarding their choice of clothing, and tearful threats of unfriending.
As grown men do.
This isn’t our first visit to Mr Ford’s strange mental landscape. Zack, you’ll recall, is a “proud SJW” who believes that when lone women are attacked by muggers, they shouldn’t attempt to defend themselves, lest they injure their attacker. Presumably on grounds that every mugger is a precious flower, even those who go mugging while on probation, and certainly more so than law-abiding women at bus stops.
It’s “social justice,” people.
Heavens, a button. I wonder what it does.