Of all the dreadful anti-SJ perversions of moral and rational thought…
the most silly has to be the idea that far leftists/SJWs/what-have-you are weak.
Some of them definitely are, and I would say that nobody really conforms to the “Social Justice Warrior” stereotype label without being somewhat decadent in a way that would seem to put the lie to their aggressive posture.
Certainly they lost against Trump.
But they are not mere weaklings, and if Trump truly tries to oppress them, the wax will melt away from the dreaded Bolshevik iron.
There’s a LOT of wax there.
There might be the barest structure that could be transformed, but there’s a lot of wax and decadence and fragility and cowardice, even among the most militant and competent of the groups.
They’re not anymore weak than someone who likes posing with guns but freaks out because a woman called him “deplorable” is.
The ideological fervor (on both sides) makes them very *brittle* in a way that can be strong and can be weak. They will be proud in how unyielding they are to threats (or perceived threats), but they will also react to name-calling and evil words from people with no power over them, like 6 year olds afraid of ghosts.
There is the opposite strength in having a stoic, yielding nature, that gives way to many threats and compromises, but never really breaks just because things are not going their way.
I’m honestly not sure what “weak” is being used to mean here. If we’re evaluating some kind of hazy intellectual/ideological strength – the ability to think about things clearly, the ability to respond to circumstances in a measured and practical way, etc. – then I think this analysis mostly holds up.
But it seems very plausible that the OP and @isaacsapphire are trying to talk about concrete operational strength. Y’know, the ability to stop your enemy from doing what he wants. In large part, the ability to perform and/or resist physical violence.
In which case…it seems clear to me that there’s an awful lot of weakness permeating both sides of the American culture war, and indeed pretty much all cultures and subcultures in the First World. See, e.g., this thought. But the weakness on the left is likely to be more dispositive, if it ever comes down to it, just because the culture-warriors on the left mostly don’t have idealized personal narratives involving engagement with physical violence, and therefore they’re going to be even more inclined to shy away from it.