THE TYRANNY OF ‘LIVED EXPERIENCE:’

Piers Morgan got the heave-ho from Good Morning Britain for saying he didn’t believe a word of what [Meghan Markle] said. That’s pure blasphemy. Disputing lived experience is to 2021 what disputing the Word of God was to 1521. Ian Murray of the Society of Editors was pushed out for challenging Harry and Meghan’s claim that the British press is racist. ‘Show me proof’, he essentially said. Big mistake. You do not ask for evidence to substantiate claims of lived experience. Data and analysis count for nothing in the face of what people feel. The truths of social experience — the measurable reality of racist attitudes in the press or among the population, for example — are subordinate to an individual’s perception of what his or her lived experience has been. To muddy a victim’s impression of life with cold talk of analysis is to compound the oppression they feel. Just genuflect to their lived experience. Ask no questions, venture no facts.

And yet appearances can be deceptive. For even amid this almost religious elevation of ‘lived experience’, things are not as they seem. Not all lived experiences are taken seriously. Some lived experiences are more equal than others. Consider the stark contrast between Meghan Markle’s professed experiences and Priti Patel’s. Meghan’s — her impression that there is racism in the royal family, in the British press and in the hearts of many ordinary British people — was made sacrosanct with extraordinary swiftness. It acquired the status of moral incontrovertibility almost overnight. Patel’s lived experience, on the other hand — her experience of racism as a child and sexism as an adult — was disparaged, mocked, and consciously denied any social importance whatsoever.

As Glenn wrote in one of this recent New York Post columns, “The woke think of themselves — and want everyone else to think of them — as deeply moral. If they have a flaw, it’s that they just care too much. They’re too idealistic, too empathetic, too eager to make the world a better place. That’s bulls–t (pardon my French, Pepé!). If you look at what they do, rather than what they say about themselves, it quickly becomes obvious that the woke are horrible, awful people, and they should be treated as such and reminded of this whenever they raise their head.”