White fragility (lot of this around here recently!):

[MisterP]

31. to an ideologue their ideology explains everything and encompasses everything

there's no alternative explanations because it's surpassed any other one (i.e., there's like 20 different theories of race, most without an all-explaining notion of privilege); once a really big incident like this, drawing universal condemnation and busting down the walls of the playpen where they've just been able to hear each other talk, it threatens their whole structure way more than it proves them wrong on a single instance

we saw this after Duke and UVa (and SFU and Ms Mattress and ...): when the doors got blown off the "America's as bad for women as the Congo" train Jessica Valenti et al just repeated their arguments louder: they applauded Judith Miller-level fraud and clearly show that the facts don't matter to them

frankly they don't want to talk about white privilege or fragility as real things, but as just a foolproof way to shut up critics: that's why they're so protective of those ideas: in their minds no other theory can come close: any effort to, say, argue against Obama's wars/economics/etc. must be racist, and any effort to deny that it's not rooted in race is just further proof of Obama being assailed by lefties who Just Don't Get It and have to be made to listen

(and don't forget getting physical with Sanders!)