Why conservative, classical, tradition culture and ideas that shaped the growth of civilization frighten people who want to cast it all aside in pursuit of a Utopian future. Will they be satisfied if we agree to banning the word ‘breastfeeding’ to avoid offending transgender, biologically male, persons?
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41 replies on “SCARED STUPID: How Classical Ideas Frighten Us Into Banning the Word ‘Breastfeeding’”
Bill, it seems to me that if you are willing to call Uncle Bob – Aunt Marian that it is, in fact, “skin off your nose.” Since you know Uncle Bob, is that not also denying reality? Since Uncle Bob is, in reality, Uncle Bob, are you not denying a “physical reality” by agreeing to call him Aunt Marian? My point, I believe, is where is the best place to get “off the train”? If you presume the fact that at some point you will not want to be on the train, is it not right at the start, and not get on the train to begin with?
I agree. This is a major problem for teachers who are now required to use each student’s “preferred pronoun” and courtesy title. When one says no, I will not address a male with a feminine prefix, he gets disciplined or even loses his job.
I’ll Tell You Later…
I keep telling the Navy that I identify as a Vice Admiral, but they have yet to pay me in accordance with that rank. Do I have a case?
Speaking of not being afraid of alternative ideas, I was raised Roman Catholic but consider myself a non-denominational Christian…Some people knocked on my door who were from a specific denomination… I invited them in and listened…over many sessions…gave them a chance to state their case…I ended up not buying into their interpretation of Christianity, but I wasn’t afraid to put my own faith and ideas to the test. I’m not saying everyone should do the same…after all, who has the time to hear out every alternative idea? But we should never be afraid to have our ideas challenged. In an honest debate or discussion, BOTH sides can come away with more knowledge than they had going in. Of course, if the other side isn’t arguing but denigrating, or lying, or manipulating, I stop wasting my time, but it’s not out of fear of being exposed to new or different ideas.
“…The person who says, ‘this is not how reality works,’ well, that person has to be burnt at the stake.” The huge leap between cause A and effect B in Mr. Whittle’s statement is the crux of the trans issue. It’s one thing when social media or a tenured professor bullies someone into parroting their non-reality – the paramount danger is when the full police powers of government compel us into conforming to their non-reality. Any government with the power to define truth and compel its captives to concede to it has irremediably descended into despotism.
I think we should euthanize the whole bunch and start over. They are not worth saving, much less controlling everything. We’ve been too nice. Now it’s time to get nasty.
These efforts are erasing women and female. Women/females are the target of a society that rejects gender.
In the beginning…
When Actors began to create….
Once, it was the purview of theater and public figures – the politicians of the day – to weave together a fantasy picture of life which they dearly wanted the viewing public to believe.
Then came the print media – which could shape reality into the ideas of their choosing.
With the advent of radio; movies; television; and the internet, the class of people who had access to creating “reality” multiplied ten fold; a thousand fold; a million fold…
“The distorted reporting on the 1968 Tet offensive––an utter failure for the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese, who lost 40,000 men in their doomed attempt to bring down the government in the South––was depicted in the American media as a successful exposure of the corrupt South’s weakness and the futility of American intervention. Even the Wall Street Journal editorialized that “the whole Vietnam effort may be doomed.” “
“Yet despite the political bias of much of its reporting of the Vietnam conflict, the media congratulated themselves for ending the war, and confirmed their status as the righteous “watchdogs” monitoring the government, “speaking truth to power,” and protecting our liberties. The Watergate affair, a political scandal of the sort that can be found throughout American history, not only confirmed the media’s self-congratulatory pose as the only thing standing between the American people and fascism, but bestowed as well the rewards of celebrity status and lucre on the reporters who in effect had simply channeled information given to them by a disgruntled FBI employee. The end result is the mainstream media today: for-profit businesses that think of themselves as morally and intellectually superior not just to other businesses, but to the organs of government and the mass of gullible voters who put politicians in office.”
“Once reporters started coming out of colleges and universities, however, they were shaped by the leftist perspective of those institutions. These perspectives, once marginal in American public discourse, became increasingly prominent in the press and television news shows. Now the old progressive view that the press should not just report facts, but mold public opinion to achieve certain political ends, served an ideology fundamentally adverse to the free-market, liberal-democratic foundations of the American Republic.”
– A Brief History of Media Bias | Hoover Institution
When the Media jumped on the bandwagon of creating their own reality, the world soon followed.
From the 1970’s to the 21st Century, an entire culture was born that proclaimed if “I” say it on TV or public media, it must be true.
If “I”, the “Expert” or tenured Professor says it, it must be true.
If “I”, the professional politician, find a relatively innocuous flaw in my political opponent and blow it up all out of proportion with slander and publicity, it must be true…
America, and the world, got sucked into the Cult of Celebrity where if the Rich and Famous or simply Powerful, said it, then it must be “true.”
This new “Reality” was created out of whole cloth via the fevered minds of those seeking More fame; More fortune; More power.
And then the tsunami of Social Media hit where, not only did the “common man” seek the fantasy “reality” of the celebrities; pundits; and politicians but, the billionaire Tech giants endorsed this fantasy reality to the point that –
THOSE WHO DENY THE NEW “REALITY” WILL BE CANCELED. CENSORED. And, even fired and ostracized….
Bill Whittle’s podcast on this, concludes with the idea that these fantasists will, in the end, destroy themselves in their competing “realities” until they fantasize themselves into oblivion.
There is another alternative however….
Civilization, as we know it – fails.
The Fantasy Elites in their echo chamber of opinions and “reality”; those who control the flow of wealth and information, can live long in their protected Never Never Lands as the world falls into chaos and hoi polloi begin rioting in the streets and burning down their own cities.
They can even, for a time, put up barbed wire fences around the seats of Government or wall off their homes; and then call in the armed forces or get their own private security to protect them, as the rest of the real world slides into despair and death.
Their insane “realities” could spell doom for the entire world….
I suspect you over state the situation when you say “… can live long in their protected Never Never Lands as the world falls into chaos and hoi polloi begin rioting in the streets and burning down their own cities.”
The pandemic has shown in a real way just how interdependent and integrated our society and technological culture is; just how many people are “essential” for our systems to work as intended. Disturb or distort that not even all that much and things start failing in both predictable and unpredictable ways.
If things really do go to hell, they will be hellish for all of us (perhaps a few preppers aside, for a time?). But you are correct in that the illusionists among us are given too much power and celebrity, given the risks they pose to our liberty and prosperity.
Back when Stephen Colbert first got his show, he coined the term “truthiness” ostensibly to poke fun at Bush W. Defined as “not the facts that you know with your brain but the facts you feel with your heart”, I am continuously amused how prophetic this term would turn out to be as an embodiment of the Left’s philosophy of pretty much anything. I think we need to bring it back into usage.
Would this be what that AOC person stated in a 60 Minutes interview?
“I think that there’s a lot of people more concerned about being precisely, factually, and semantically correct than about being morally right.”
Bill said something above, and Brother Bob said something earlier below, that got me thinking about something myself …
To what degree do you suppose that wish fulfilment in popular entertainment over several generations has contributed to this modern manifestation of clearly delusional behavior? Being delusional is bad enough on its own but acting on delusions is just plain nuts. It is a psychotic break with reality.
We’ve seen this portrayed in media entertainment now for several generations. From Judy Garland clicking the heels of her ruby slippers together to Elizabeth Montgomery playing the witch Samantha Stevens to Harry Potter, pretty much all of the Marvel Universe, and pretty much every movie or TV show that displays impossible actions on the part of the characters. It’s not possible for a human being to be picked up and thrown for 30 – 40 feet into a concrete wall and survive nearly unscathed to get up and continue fighting. It’s not possible for a person to twitch their nose and alter the laws of physics. It’s not possible for a person to walk into a solid concrete pillar on a train platform and use that as a doorway to an altered reality. Etc.
The vast majority of us know these things are not possible on a visceral level. We don’t need detailed explanations of the strong and weak magnetic forces, the covalent bonds between atoms or anything that obscure to realize that you cannot walk into and through solid concrete no matter who you are. We’re OK with that, it’s a voluntary suspension of disbelief that we apply all the time for fun. But we know it’s not real and that it cannot ever be real under any sort of circumstance.
Now bearing in mind that we’re only talking about a very small percentage of people in the first place when we’re on the subject of things like transgenderism, “chestfeeding” and the rest of this nonsense … In fact a very, very tiny percentage of the population being afflicted with that sort of abnormality … Then where does all this disproportionately broad support for magical thinking, wish fulfilment and the demand that the rest of us sane people believe what we know not to be real come from?
Might it be in part that while there is a very small segment of the human race afflicted with things like gender dysphoria there is a much larger group that can no longer distinguish reality from fantasy? A group that wants so badly to believe in magic that they rationalize the impossible simply because they want to believe the human mind is capable of altering the physical universe at a whim?
Do they not realize that is the definition of a god? Is the temptation to believe themselves to be gods too much for some people?
Yes, and there is historical precedent for the delusional adoption of godhood.
The very cynical part of me thinks it is really about the control of language and therefore the ability to define anything and anything they want.
However, the likelihood is you are correct in that people want to support this small group’s magic wish, so that their own magic wish will be supported later.
Clearly there is not enough actual strife to overcome that make believe strife needs to be created out of whole cloth.
I think your cynicism is justified also. I was only trying to expand on one facet — This magical thinking problem is very likely the result of multiple drivers and that explains why the appeal is so broad and growing.
II Timothy 4:3-4
For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears;
And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.
It is my understanding that transgender people make up 0.6% or so of the population, or about 2 million people. Not a large number for all of the attention being given to this “condition”, but not a “very, very tiny percentage” either.
I think purposefully ignoring reality for a given political or ideological position that upholds your self image of yourself is different from temporarily disengaging your “reality engine” for the purposes of entertainment. We can do the same thing when we read a book and develop our own mental image of what is being described. We are creating our own reality, but still somewhat in alignment with the author’s intent. For some reason I have gotten so satiated about computer graphics depictions in movies (and views of video games) that I am currently no longer interested in watching any of them.
Maybe my unwillingness to continue suspending belief is a reaction against the situation you describe for wish fulfillment in violation of reality. Reality is now too important for me to disengage from it any more deeply than I have to. Or I have just become an old sourpuss!
Um, yes, well, our interpretation of what constitutes a “very, very tiny percentage” differs considerably because I would absolutely and unequivocally consider 0.6% of the population to be a very, extremely tiny percentage. The current population of the United States of America is approximately 328,000,000., Three hundred and twenty eight MILLION people. 0.6 percent of that is around 20,000 people rounded to whole numbers. That is proportionately a very, very tiny population, the equivalent in our vast country of a single small town. Which is the focus of this issue. Very tiny proportionality.
As for the rest of what you said, you appear to have missed my point. Indeed, you and I are able to suspend our disbelief according to our understanding of what constitutes reality. I was speaking of the apparent phenomena wherein there are other people incapable of doing that. It is indeed a different thing, and that different thing is what I was addressing. You merely make my point for me in that regard.
You’re right about one thing. If you can no longer enjoy any sort of entertainment that has CGI and other such special effects, you are indeed an old sourpuss. I recall watching really crappy stop-action special effects as a child with rapt attention even though those effects were horrible. What we have today is much, much better. If you choose to abandon that kind of thing, you’re an outlier and not the norm. That’s fine, you can be an outlier all you like and I have no problem with that. But you cannot also claim to be critical of that which you do not know either. That’s just hypocritical.
I like the really great special effects of modern entertainment. I think they are fun. A lot of fun. I’m not young anymore either but I’m not alone in this. I do not demand that you have the same kind of fun, or even think the same things are fun. That was not the point. I wasn’t talking about you. I was talking about other people and if you don’t want folks reading your comments to think your ideas egocentric and narcissistic then you might consider not making things about you that are not about you.
0.6% of 328,000,000 is 1,968,000.
Um, nope, actually it’s 19,680,000 and I ran the figures several times to be certain. 328,000,000 x .06 = 19,680,000.
We’re both wrong, still a tiny percentage of the total though not as tiny as I initially miscalculated. Tiny percentage and tiny number are not synonyms.
Yes, you’re right, a zero got lost in my translation, haha…thank you for correcting me.
There are no transgendered women. There are mentally ill men with a delusion who believe themselves to be women. They are not women, can never be women.
I feel the truthiness of that statement!
(just messin’ with ya. You are spot on the TRUTH there.)
This covers everything. They wish conservatives to be evil, so, in their fantasy world, we are. They wish Biden to be a great President, so, in their fantasy world, he is. They wish transgender to be normal, so, in their fantasy world, it is…
They’re just mentally ill.
When I read the article concerning breastfeeding and how that is “ethically problematic” because it endorses “gender roles,” my mind immediately went to the Star Trek: Next Generation episode “The Outcast” in which Riker falls for a gender neutral person. It made me realize that the goal of these leftist is for us to be an androgynous race where gender (and race) doesn’t apply. I think they believe if they can wipe out all gender (and racial) specific qualities, they can eliminate gender (and racial) bias. Unfortunately, they don’t realize that this would only be temporary, because, as humans, there will always be something that we will have that is bias and can be used for discrimination. You’re too tall/smart/athletic/outgoing/etc…. Embrace your individualism!
I tend to go towards the hermaphrodite of Asimov’s Solara. They had no need for anyone else and no problem disposing of “excess” children. And lot’s of robots to tend to their whims and complete control over everything they saw. Today’s totalitarian leftists.
The world is divided. The divisions follow a few lines. Among those are the builders and the destroyers. The right has among their numbers the builders. They are the ones who carry society forward to bigger and better things. They improve the standard of living not just for themselves but for those around them as well.
Then we have the destroyers. The left has those. They are incapable of building anything at all. They only know how to tear things down. They are happiest tearing things down. In fact, they are exuberant tearing things down.
They are also the first to complain that things are torn down and will then demand the builders build it back for them again. Sometimes at the point of government but mostly at the point of a gun.
I survived 30 years as an electrical engineer in the aerospace industry. But now I’m retired and want to be a brain surgeon. No, no. Now I am a brain surgeon. In the basement I have a bunch of power tools like a Skill Saw and a Black and Decker electric drill, and a scalpel I bought at Harbor Freight. All I need to do is go down to my local democrat-dominated government office and get my permit to open John’s Brain Surgery Hospital. In order to attract new customers, I mean patients, I will undercut the prices charged at Mission Hospital.
Later, John.
This seem appropriate.
❤️Love your sarc…..
Easier for you to become a brain surgeon that it is for a man to become a woman.
I think that the progressive left is neither scared nor stupid. The lunacy and insanity that they constantly promote and thrust upon normal people is nothing short of calculated domination. Supreme gaslighting if you will. They inculcate their heresy into the already mushed brains of immature, over-coddled, swathed in comfort and largesse provided by others, leftist indoctrinated public and university educated people who have nothing at their core except materialism and nihilism. This is their zombie horde. They do it to demoralize and dominate normal, sensible, reasonable people. Simple and evil as that.
I like the cut of your jib. Thank you.
I think the “zombie horde” is scared and stupid. Afraid of being cast out from their peer groups and stupid from their “education”.
Their “leaders” are not scared nor stupid. They’ve been planning this and implementing that plan in increments for decades. Finally coming out of the closet to lead their useful idiots on a mission of destruction that leads them to ultimate power and riches.
Then, when they sit upon their throne, rulers over rubble and ash, their horde will be dispatched with the utmost haste.
Perfectly elucidated and exactly what I meant to say!
It’s the same reason that The Radical Left can’t accept that we Normals refuse to join them in bleating that there were absolutely no Election “Irregularities” in 2020
Excellent point. The Left believes it can believe something into existence and that there clearly are no limits to the power of their belief because they can wish themselves chromosomal transmogrify with a mere thought.
Ergo it’s no problem to wish election irregularities into the cornfield.
Of course there’s another explanation for this phenomena. It’s called being delusional.
I just finished this book. Wow. It’s an academic treatment of this whole idea of Theory, what I call Theory theory. And what it uncovers is everything we surmised, and worse. I highly recommend it, with the caveat that the first two chapters will hurt your head as you grapple with the language they use and the pretzel logic it pretends to justify. After that when they start to apply that framework to their various areas of activism it gets easier, though still a little exhausting, to wade through.
You’re right, “Fundamentally crazy people who are determined to make everybody crazy, too.” They wouldn’t put it that way, but that’s exactly their strategy.
It helps to know your enemy — what you’re fighting against.
https://www.amazon.com/Cynical-Theories-Scholarship-Everything-Identity_and/dp/1634312023
“Theory theory” – great term!
When dealing with the left, “You can’t fix stupid”.
I think you’ll find this worth your time:
Psychopathy and the Origins of Totalitarianism, by James Lindsay, December 25, 2020 https://newdiscourses.com/2020/12/psychopathy-origins-totalitarianism/
An excerpt:
“Many of the greatest horrors of the history of humanity owe their occurrence solely to the establishment and social enforcement of a false reality. With gratitude to the Catholic philosopher Josef Pieper and his important 1970 essay “Abuse of Language, Abuse of Power” for the term and idea, we can refer to these alternative realities as ideological pseudo-realities.
Pseudo-realities, being false and unreal, will always generate tragedy and evil on a scale that is at least proportional to the reach of their grip on power—which is their chief interest—whether social, cultural, economic, political, or (particularly) a combination of several or all of these. So important to the development and tragedies of societies are these pseudo-realities when they arise and take root that it is worth outlining their basic properties and structure so that they can be identified and properly resisted before they result in sociopolitical calamities—up to and including war, genocide, and even civilizational collapse, all of which can take many millions of lives and can ruin many millions more in the vain pursuit of a fiction whose believers are, or are made, sufficiently intolerant.”