And this does two kinds of damage. Some kids will end up actually becoming vulnerable to things they otherwise wouldn't - this is just needlessly increasing the sum total of suffering in the world. But some other kids will figure out the same thing people pushing for and enforcing such lists have: that this gives them power over others.

And it'll just get worse when these kids grow up and become academics and make these lists even more overbearing. This is a stretch but I really don't have a hard time imagining a world where professors have to have a minimum amount of political pins/patches/posters/etc ("flair" a la "Office Space") to keep their jobs. Because as we all know, silence is violence.

The more of this we normalize for children, the worse it'll get as they grow up and do the same.

Exactly right.

And what irks me, is that I feel that we've seen this before (or at least read about it): even if it's not the same, it rhymes with what's been happening around the world for most of the 20th century. The methods of psychologically forcing people to eschew logic and rational thought, and submit to a half-baked ideology instead, are pretty much the same - even if it's not state-sponsored and nobody is pulling guns just yet.

I don't think people pushing this insanity (err, wild thing) realize how close they are in methods to the historical groups and present-day boogeypeople they claim to oppose.

Oh, we're already there. When applying for jobs at many universities, you have to include a "diversity statement"

https://careerservices.upenn.edu/application-materials-for-t...

I grew up in a very oppressive, very controlling cult. They made heavy use of control over language to exert psychological pressure on people and it was exactly like this, 100%. You could identify who was a member and who wasn't by these weird little phrases people would use. Each phrase had a story behind it, usually about what a horrible person you supposedly were in some way (for which the fix was the submitting to the church's doctrine of course).

> But some other kids will figure out the same thing people pushing for and enforcing such lists have: that this gives them power over others.

Tbf this seems baked in to human development, some children just love enforcing authorities' rules and tattling on other children

I agree. Which is why lists like this should be outright rejected - they will inevitably be abused.