Once upon a time, a pool hired some lifeguards for the summer not only for insurance and liability reasons but because all lives matter. From time to time, a lifeguard would rush into the water to save a drowning kid because in that moment of emergency, that kid's life mattered.
And the lives of all the other patrons present, those who weren't drowning, continued, and continued to matter.
All was well at the pool...except that just wasn’t so.
Every so often, one of the lifeguards would occasionally drown a kid in plain sight. Those kids he drowned instead of rescued were those who wore surfer shorts. He really hated surfers. He wasn't going to sit back and let surfers take over the pool. “Why don’t they go back to the ocean where they belong?” He would complain, and yea loudly.
One of his colleagues had a real problem with the whole drowning surfers thing. She said something but the other lifeguards told her to hush, because her talk was scaring all the kids the psycho lifeguard hadn’t drown — and probably wouldn’t, because they didn’t wear surfer shorts.
Our whistle-blower (edit: she was a lifeguard so make that whistle-blower whistle-blower) looked for someone, anyone, she could report on this rather remarkable, ongoing uncoolness. That’s when she discovered the biggest shock of all.
For some reason, nobody whose kids weren't being drowned would acknowledge that anyone’s kids were being drowned. Hey, our lifeguards are doing a great job. Our kids are being kept safe. We’ve got nothing to complain about.
The lifeguard persisted. Her audience become quite cross with her. If you keep saying such things, all the lifeguards will get upset and leave. You’re not anti-lifeguard, are you?
No...and you might notice I am one…
Please be one somewhere else. Someone’s going to get hurt because of you.
Not long after, the dangerously-observant lifeguard was removed. Some people just can’t gaslight themselves well enough to get along with others, her now-former peers lamented.
Now, the parents of drowned kids had never overlooked the crime: They had been pointing out the problem for quite some time. Our children are being drowned, one by one. Why is nobody doing anything about it?
Their never-had-their-kids-drowned fellow patrons finally owned up to having noticed the killings. Instead of ashamed they become very angry. Nobody would be drowned if if you people could stop being a bunch of...surfers.
At that point the diving masks came off all around the pool.
The deniers weren’t yet done. Just...change your clothes! And what’s with calling everyone ‘bruh’? And that music! Chairmen of the Board is cool, who doesn’t like ‘Give Me Just A Little More Time’? But the Drifters...and what’s with that guys voice?
So we should just stop being ourselves and our kids will stop dying?
We gaslit ourselves out of ourselves. If we can, surely you can — and you must.
No, the aggrieved families answered. We’re not doing that. We tried that for a long, long time...and our kids kept getting drowned. So, no thanks.
Oh, and we should go back to being ourselves? Some of our kids might come out as surfers if we open up. What happens when Psycho Lifeguard starts treating our kids…? The speaker trails off.
The same as yours? One of the mourning parents finished.
No, the denier decided. And since it’s obvious you’re not going to leave, we are. We’re going to have a new pool further inland, where it’s just people like us. And we’re taking the lifeguards, so there.
But all you have to do is make the one bad lifeguard go...
True to their word, the parents whose kids never got drowned took their never-drowned kids elsewhere. They also took most but not all the lifeguards. There was no way they’d let Psycho Lifeguard near their kids.
The monster wouldn’t leave the pool. He kept preying on the kids. He stopped caring what they were wearing. He decided everyone was either an out or a closeted surfer, and therefore fair game.
Eventually the old pool was closed; it was too dangerous to swim and the lifeguard was why.
The non-surfers loved their new pool. The parents were pleased that they were still free of the risk of being aware of injustices and the temptation to be themselves and, most of all, having to put up with the grating company of people who were themselves.. as if they deserve special treatment.
Of course building a new pool had come at great expense and inconvenience. Real estate was more expensive, so most of the relocated families made do with less..or less of something such as college savings or insurance or had to borrow to keep up with the Joneses.
Being exclusive, it turns out, is expensive.
But the exurb refugees, as they sometimes joked of themselves, had all gas-lit themselves into knowing it was necessary, the only possible option. And look what we’ve got! They declared to one another. Nobody’s getting drowned. If only those surfer people would stop being themselves, they could have this, too.
One of their number nearly committed the offense of individuality, asking: Would we let them join us here, if they did?
Of course! We’re not bigots, was the terse answer, and not another word was said about the matter. __