Leftists can find a way to be outraged by just about anything, even sources that are outside of their usual frames of reference. This past week, we saw Leftists get their panties in a bunch over…get this…the death of a professional wrestler, or more specifically how some of the wrestler’s colleagues chose to honor his memory.
Jamin Pugh wrestled under the name Jay Briscoe for many years and recently died in a car crash. He was beloved by his peers, with some offering condolences using the phrase Rest In Power.
It was these three little words that made Leftists shit themselves in outrage. Of course, if they were in San Francisco, you wouldn’t notice a difference, but the use of those three words became a personal affront to them because…get this…Jamin Pugh was…a white man! And Rest In Power? That’s a black phrase.
Better sit down for this one. The stupid is going to fly!
Rest In Power
What the Left thinks it means – a phrase to honor deceased blacks that should never be used by white people
What it really means – a phrase to honor a human being that doesn’t belong to anyone
To dig further into this situation, I went to where all self-respecting scholars go, Urban Dictionary. They define the phrase thus:
Phrase meaning that a deceased cannot rest in peace until society changes due to the circumstances of a death.
Well, that explains the boom in zombie movies and TV shows…
Dictionary.com provides this definition:
A variation on rest in peace, rest in power is used, especially in Black and LGBTQ communities, to commemorate a person whose death is considered unjust or wrongful. In this way, rest in power is a call to continue the struggle for social justice and as a show of solidarity.
Rest in power is also used to pay respect to a person, especially a person of color, who made a difference in the lives of minority communities. It is sometimes used to note the death of a person felt to have died too soon or senselessly, or a person who was influential or meaningful to people more generally.
At the core of both of these definitions is Leftist ideology. Victims of an unjust system are saluted with a Rest In Power, but the presumed oppressors can’t even utter the words because…well, they’re still trying to figure that part out. And they’re not the only ones.
Seriously, though, the phrase is believed to have originated as a way to honor a street artist, but was popularized in the black community as a way to memorialize people killed by violence. Oh, and rappers. With the death of Michael Brown and the suicide of a teenaged trans girl, Leelah Alcorn, Rest In Power got put behind rhetorical red velvet ropes complete with a bouncer to make sure only the “right” people got to use it.
Then, it got co-opted by white people and everything went to hell. Ain’t that always the case?
Although I can respect the origins of the phrase, I have to call bullshit on its presumed limits on usage. Once a phrase enters the cultural lexicon, the ownership transfers to society at large. Take the word “cool” for example. It started off with black jazz musicians, but evolved to the point of being universal. Now, there are grandmas walking at the mall who say something is “cool.” I don’t know if they can scat to a jazz riff, but that’s not the point.
Language is one of the most fluid things we have as human beings that isn’t actual fluid. As such, there is a lot of cultural cross-pollenization through diverse sources from music to fashion to cartoons. It doesn’t always work (see the drop-off in the use of “wack” in the past 20 years), but when it works, it works well.
So, why is Rest In Power exempt? Because…reasons?
The real reason is because Leftists need to control the language, even within communities already sympathetic to Leftist causes. By limiting who can use it, the Left acts as gatekeepers in the spirit of elevating the oppressed. Not that doing this actually elevates anyone, mind you…
What good does limiting who can say “Rest In Power” do when it comes to the Left’s stated goal of dismantling the current power structure and making it more equitable? It’s a SBD fart in a hurricane. The needle doesn’t move at all, nor will it ever. But it makes Leftist voting blocs feel good, so…yay, I guess?
Within this strategy is another Leftist concept, equity. Note, equity is not the same as equality, even though they share many of the same letters. Equality means everyone gets the same treatment across the board, no matter what. Equity allows for a bit more leeway in treatment because it allows for different circumstances to affect the outcome. And guess who currently pulls the levers on equitable treatment.
Leftists. Either that or an amusement park ride operator.
Setting standards on who can use “Rest In Power” is the Left’s commitment to equity writ large. But the entire concept falls apart like a balsa wood love seat at Michael Moore’s house when you consider the Left’s adoption of Rachel Dolezal and Shaun King. Two white people who are considered black because they identify as black in spite of being as white as an Edgar Winter concert in the middle of a blizzard after a typing correction fluid explosion.
I take that back. The aforementioned concert would have far too much rhythm to be truly white. My bad.
And guess what? That’s a joke comedians of all colors have been telling for decades, and yet no one has tried to limit who can tell it. Sure, the wording will be different, but the concept remains the same, and it has no one trying to gatekeep.
I never thought I’d be putting “cool” and “whites have no rhythm” on the same level, but here I am killing it!
And let me also point out the limits Leftists put on “Rest In Power” are completely arbitrary and, thus, rooted in logic shakier than the Biden White House’s response to why classified documents were found within 500 feet of Hunter. After all, whites make up the largest section of the LGBTQWTFFUBARLMFAO community. So, that means whites can use “Rest In Power” but only if they’re gay, lesbian, bi, trans, queer, etc.
How’s that dicking feel, straight white Leftists?
It’s these kinds of rules that make Calvinball look like Candyland. Yet, it’s the insanity of these rules that makes the best argument against this rhetorical version of Affirmative Action. If no one knows the rules, they are impossible to enforce, and even when you try to enforce them, they can easily be circumvented. Why, it’s almost better not to have any rules on who can say “Rest In Power” in the first place!
Yes. Yes it is.
And that’s the point. People should feel free to use whatever wording they want in honor of a fallen friend, a late family member, or even a respected figure in the community. Yes, there are still going to be consequences if somebody takes it the wrong way, but that’s the risk you run when you say anything. You could post on Twitter that you like chocolate, and some asshat with a checkmark will take it that you hate vanilla and try to troll you back to the Stone Age. (In computer terms, that’s 1980.) But does that mean you can’t or shouldn’t say you like chocolate? Not at all!
There is a reason we have free speech in America, and it’s because even loudmouth assholes should be able to speak their minds, if only to make it easier for us to figure out who to stay away from in the future. Limiting speech, especially as innocuous as “Rest In Power,” doesn’t help anyone, literally and, well, literally. Oh, I almost forgot. Some of the people posting “Rest In Power” to the late Jay Briscoe happen to be members of the groups Leftists say get to use the phrase in the first place.
Checkmate, motherfuckers.
