Objecting To Power Except When One Holds It

Total gender and racial egalitarianism is an inherent aspect of true rationalistic philosophy and Christian theology.  Nothing I am about to say contradicts this, as the point is to call attention to a hypocrisy surrounding the way Western culture views power depending on irrelevant factors about the person holding it.  Perhaps the most popular idea about power in the present day West is that it is something that inherently calls for suspicion and fear of abuse, with many public figures and everyday people echoing this stance at least in part.  The bipartisan political landscape is consumed by hypocrisy thanks to how people support and ignore this fallacious idea as benefits them.

Power is evil, or at least corrupting and inherently dangerous, say these fools, who might object to power when held by whites or by men, only to welcome power when it is held by a woman or someone of a different skin color.  Objecting to power except when one holds it--or when one whom one subjectively identifies with holds it or someone of a certain economic class, skin color, or gender--is a sign of irrationality that reveals thoughtless, insincerity, or both.  Either power is evil or power is neutral, but which category a use of power or even power itself falls into has nothing to do with unrelated things like someone's skin color, yet it is factors like this that so many political talks focus on.

This transcends mere inconsistencies in how conservatives and liberals regard power based on the racial identity or gender of the person holding it; it exemplifies how the false idea that holding power is inherently tyrannical or borderline oppressive is mostly just something people verbally support when someone they do not want in power for fallacious or subjective reasons holds it.  The typical non-rationalist just wants to make sure that if someone has great political, financial, or military power, it is not someone other than them.  They are too stupid to look past petty fears that ignore the nature of power itself in favor of some fallacy-riddled ideology that they think will help them get what they want.

Both liberals and conservatives are guilty of such things.  Sometimes the details of how they live this out differ, such as how a modern liberal would probably be more comfortable with woman of color having power and a modern conservative would probably be more comfortable with a white man in power.  For all of their talk, racism and sexism are often lurking just beneath the surface of their philosophies, rhetoric, and behaviors.  It is just that their stances on power are usually little more than slippery slope fallacies held and dismissed as is most pragmatic for them to avoid opposition.

Power is an excellent topic to use in order probe someone's true consistency and concern for truth.  More than is the case with some other moral and political issues, irrationalists are likely to betray their assumptions and hypocrisies especially quickly.  The futile, desperate belief that power is abusive by default is only shelved, unless they are consistent in their stupidity, when they or someone they identify with is the one who can exert their will over others or stand in authority over them.  Without ever thinking that power is a mark of intellectual or moral legitimacy, a rational person will reject this selective objection to power by recognizing the objectively neutral nature of power.