Fundamental Concepts - Reality [Weirddave]

The left has a real problem with reality, and that's never been more apparent than these past few weeks. Bruce Jenner is a real woman, but a conservative like Michelle Malkin isn't. Trans-abled is a thing. A white woman, Rachel Dolezal, is revealed to have been pretending to be black for years, teaching African studies and running a local chapter of the NAACP, and a furious argument breaks out amongst the various victimology groups on the left as to whether she's authentically black or not. I know I'm not alone in just shaking my head at the insanity of it all, even as I'm laughing my ass off at much of it. Congratulations America, you are now a Monty Python skit:

Stan: I want to have babies.
Reg: You want to have babies?!?!
Stan: It's every man's right to have babies if he wants them.
Reg: But ... you can't HAVE babies!
Stan: Don't you oppress me!
Reg: I'm not oppressing you, Stan. You haven't got a womb! Where's the foetus gonna gestate? You gonna keep it in a box?

Abraham Lincoln once asked a question, " How many legs does a dog have if you call his tail a leg? " The group he was addressing conferred and came back with an unanimous answer, "Five". Lincoln shook his head and told them. "Gentlemen, the answer is four. Calling a thing by a different name doesn't make it so". The exact provenance and details of the quote are in dispute, it has been claimed that Lincoln used a cow or a sheep as the animal in question, but what is not in dispute is the context. Lincoln was discussing the Emancipation Proclamation, and his point was that simply calling a man free didn't make him free. This is an exceedingly wise fundamental concept that we have to reclaim as a nation or we are finished. More on that in a minute, but first lets look at why.

Of all the pathologies that the Left engages in, I know that the inability to simply accept reality as it is is one of the things that can drive conservatives nuts faster than anything else. It's easy to see why, conservative politics are based upon reality and are focused on finding the optimal solution to any given problem, and as such establishing the reality of any given situation is fundamental to the process. Proggy politics are based upon emotion, reality isn't so important as long as the proposed course of action makes them feel good about themselves. The welfare state is a perfect example of this. To a conservative, it's a disaster. Generations of institutionalized poverty and soul crushing dependence on government, the destruction of the nuclear family, cycles of poverty that continuously worsen while costing more and more money every year. They rightly demonstrate that reality proves the welfare state an utter failure and want to change it.

To a prog, however, the welfare state is the greatest thing since sliced bread. Crime, poverty, hopelessness, despair and all of the rest of the myriad disasters that come with a modern welfare state....who cares? The welfare state makes them feel good about themselves, and allows them to pat themselves on the back about how “kind” they are, and the best thing is they don't have to do anything themselves to feel this way! THEY don't have to meet any icky poor people. THEY aren't forced to interact with minorities. Let the government do it and observe how benevolent they are, sailing along smugly, secure in their unearned moral superiority.

So why should a conservative care? If the left wants to spend it's life in coo-coo fantasy land, let them, right? No skin off of our nose, we'll be over here with a tub of popcorn, pointing and laughing. I would agree, except for three things.

Number one, because the left owns academia and the media, their distorted fantasies are constantly promoted as truth. Reality is what it is, and it's impossible to change it, but it can be distorted or obscured until everyone is reacting not to the world as it is but to a world that bears no resemblance to the one we live in. Progs can scream until they are blue in the face about western imperialism and islamophobia and chickens coming home to roost, but the poor unfortunate gay folks that happen to live under the rule of ISIS still accelerate towards the ground at 9.81 m/s squared when the savages throw them off the roof. A world that recognizes this reality instead of pushing a narrative might have a plan to deal with the savages instead of sitting around with their thumb up it looking for ways to blame themselves.

Second, denying reality has great potential to be very harmful to individuals. Bruce Jenner claims that he's a woman named Caitlyn. He's demonstrably not, pull down his pants and he's got a dick, test his genes and he has an XY chromosome, but really, who cares? If that's all it was, I'd be inclined to shrug, address him as Caitlyn, and roll my eyes in private. Bruce is a man who is comfortable being treated as a woman. OK, whatever floats his boat. Many years ago I made the acquaintance of one of the very first m-f post op transsexuals. I had no idea when I met her that she was really a he, and when I found out I thought "that's interesting" and proceeded to continue to treat him as a woman, the way she wanted to be treated. Bruce Jenner might turn out to be just like my long ago acquaintance, but then again, he might not. Left unsaid, no, scratch that, aggressively suppressed, is the fact that post operative transsexuals have a suicide rate more than 20 times that of the general population. Twenty. Times. We're told that transsexuals have a mental state that doesn't “agree” with the sex of their body. OK. I accept that. We are also told that the only possible answer to this is surgical mutilation of their bodies. Once their physical appearance matches their mental image, all will be well. Any suggestion to the contrary is met with vicious attack and aggressive accusations of trans hate for opposing the only “effective treatment”. The post op suicide rate is a pretty compelling argument that this just might not be so, but that reality is a fact which may not be spoken. How many people must suffer and perhaps die because of this refusal to recognize the reality? Goth Fonzie had a piece up at Reason this week where he argued that above all else we must strive to make sure that Jenner isn't labeled “mentally ill”. Why? If he truly has a disorder where his mental state doesn't match his physical body, isn't the first step to finding an effective treatment to recognize this unflinchingly? Cancer is a horrifying illness, but in order to treat it you have to admit that you're dealing with it. This refusal to admit reality has real world negative consequences on real flesh and blood people.

Finally, most importantly is the impact the refusal to recognize reality has on the language. When people are no longer sure that words mean what they mean, they are very easy to manipulate and control. Language is the tool that defines how we perceive reality and if it is in flux then everything is in flux. This has been a bedrock principle of the left for millennia. Orwell recognized this with “newspeak”. Alinsky emphasizes the importance of this tactic in his Rules for Radicals. Here's an example: infanticide. Who here is in favor of infanticide? How many people do you think you could get to support killing babies? Well, Peter Singer and his sick ilk, but how many others? Not many.

However, when you're not “killing a baby”, you're “eliminating a clump of cells” that changes, doesn't it? “Infanticide” becomes “choice”. Murder becomes a medical procedure. Pretty soon you look up and realize that the land of the brave and the home of the free puts 3000 unborn babies to the sword every day. 60 million in 40 years. Baal is green with envy.

The concept goes back to the beginning of human history. According to the bible, God stopped the Tower of Babel by controlling the language of mankind. Once communication was impossible, so was cooperation. That's the endgame of the left, that's where this is all headed. A pluralistic Republic requires cooperation between the people living in it. If the Left can destroy that, then they believe that they will be able to impose their communal Utopia. Destroying the language by making it malleable rather than reflective of reality goes a long way towards Balkanizing the people of the United States. What happens next will amaze you! (Trigger warning: unsettling picture at link)

posted by Open Blogger at 10:55 AM

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