His Name is Robert Paulson

I want to make a brief comment about Halloween and trick or treating before diving into the meat of tonight’s post. Tonight was the first time we took our kids out trick are treating and for the boys it was great. They got lots of candy and fell asleep in near record time after we got home. The little girl, not so much. She is still awake and I mean awake. The type of awake that only an over tired sleep regression 11th month old can experience.

Now to the main topic of tonight’s post. The movie Fight Club and how the term snowflake has become a call to arms of a certain political faction in America. Every time someone is offended by something’s racist origins or moves to add a character of color to a movie or anything along those lines they pull out the snowflake term. It comes from a monologue given by Brad Pitt’s character of Tyler Durden in the movie when he tells his recruits they are not beautiful or unique snowflakes they are the same dying matter as everyone else.

It is an ironic twist to a movement that started out about individuality and breaking out of the IKEA catalog conformity of the modern world. The end result is a bunch of people that drop their names and go by numbers shave their heads and commit domestic terrorist acts. When the inevitable happens and one of them is killed Edward Norton’s character known only as the narrator tells them in frustration that the one who was killed is a man and his name is Robert Paulson.

This is exactly where we are with the snowflake term. It is a term used to besmirch anyone that won’t conform to a mainstream view of culture and wants things to change. Like taking down Confederate statues or a publishing company no longer publishing books with racist images. Anyone for taking down the statues or not showing racist images to our children is deemed a snowflake.

The irony of all this is this is the exact point the movie is making. A movement that claims to be about individual freedom is demanding that people conform to a new set of ideals. Eventually this is called out as still being conformist with the narrator’s frustration over the group’s antics leading to the death of Robert Paulson, a man he considered a friend.

The snowflake movement in real life echoes the Project Mayhem crew from the movie Fight Club. They are a bunch of hypocrites and fools running around playing games they can’t hope to win.