During my brief trip to Paris, I plopped down to do some writing at a cafe with lovely outdoor seating. However, I didn’t get much writing done because I was engrossed in the conversation occurring at the next table over. A black woman, at least 50 and with an American accent, was chatting with a gay male who had a British accent and appeared to be in his late 20s. For the roughly 30 minutes that I listened, they simply complained to one another about “microaggressions.” The alleged “workplace discrimination” that either had supposedly endured on the basis of race or sexuality were actually just instances where colleagues were entirely decent but less than generously flattering; there wasn’t a single mention of anything that could be construed as illegal by an artful lawyer. “Black women aren’t allowed to dream,” said the woman after explaining that the boss rejected her proposal. I could have used their dialogue to develop a detailed “Progressive Lingo Bingo” card, since they used all the buzzwords: “creating space,” “identity,” “racist,” “homophobic,” “privilege,” “pride,” “black and brown bodies,” and “LGBTQ+ rights.”

I was in disbelief: Is this some elaborate parody developed by someone on the South Park writer’s team? I wondered if I was secretly being filmed for one of those man-on-the-street reaction compilations, and so I suppressed my laughter. But I also concealed my disgust. Do progressives really start their morning by meeting in a quaint cafe just to complain about fake grievances? Are friendships really based on comparing perceived experiences of hostility? Surely, there are more interesting things to talk about. In fact, virtually any other topic — the rate at which paint dries, the color of stop signs, the growth of mold — strikes me as more interesting. I shudder at the thought of participating in a social order where every interaction can be characterized as shallow and every sentence has to be imagined through the language of oppression.