They Are Basically Modern Day Puritans
Child abuse is a distinctly un-festive topic.
Nobody wants to think about it, nobody wants to read about it, I certainly don’t want to write about it. And this is precisely why it happens as often as it does. Predators thrive on our naivety, on our desire to look away, and in 2022, they can count on something else too; our “progressiveness”.
In my article, How Many Red Flags Is Enough?, I wrote about how many people overlook obvious problems until it’s too late because they don’t want to risk causing offence. Especially because lately, numerous “academics” and educators are using LGBTQ+ acceptance (or let’s be honest, Q+ acceptance) as a Trojan horse.
Jon saw the same issue.
Jon:
Brave new world we live in.
In our quickly evolving cultural and sexual landscape, its only natural for pedos to want a place at the table. And in a relativistic society, their argument is harder to refute.
Your classic line about refusing to admit that some norms are just fine is spot on. Problem is, in a fractured/relativistic society, there is very little cohesion to hold us all together by similar standards. The whole tearing down, while good in some ways, leaves us with less in common, so we just worry about our own little bubble and go about our day.
I’m totally in agreement with you, but in a world where you can change genders with a sentence, why not your age/consent?
Steve QJ:
This is exactly the line queer theory (by which I mean the academic field) asks us to walk. We're in this awful position right now where criticising ideas that are obviously and evidently harmful is mistaken for attacks on people who are gay or trans.
Which is exactly what the predators are counting on and have always counted on. Organisations like NAMBLA tried to use the gay rights movement as a Trojan horse in the 60s. And today it's MAPs. And some people are just too devoted to being "progressive" to acknowledge the awful things happening right in front of them.
A functioning society needs lines and boundaries. It needs objective facts. It needs everybody to acknowledge basic realities. I have no idea how we got to the point where so many people can't understand this. Or worse, think it's hateful to do so.
Jon:
Thanks for the response, and I agree. Your first paragraph is spot on and a big reason we cant have rational/intelligent conversations about things.
Your third paragraph can be summed up with 1 word... relativism. At some point, we decided you cant "criticize" a victim. Then we decided most people are victims of some type. After that, there is little/no space for rational thought and discussion. And too often hurt, damaged people are allowed to rant unchecked now and develop followings.
I believe most people realize this, but no one is willing to risk their job/career over it, because they have to put food on the table. The extreme part of the left has done a great job of getting people fired/censored/ostracized and it has cowed alot of well meaning people.
They are basically modern day puritans, just with a whole new set of rules.
They have become what they once hated.
My New Year’s resolution is going to be to take a hard lean away from the “left/right” binary in my writing. It’s simplistic and divisive and all too often misses the point.
Whether it’s the belief that Trump won the election, that humans can change their sex just by saying so, or that the COVID vaccine contains location-tracking microchips, there’s are growing contingent of people on the political left and right whose instinctive reaction when faced with facts they don’t like is to fabricate new ones.
Increasingly, this is the only divide that matters.
We don’t need to choose between treating trans people with respect and recognising the importance of biology. We don’t need to choose between our politics and our values. We don’t need to choose between being accepting and protecting children. We need to choose between absurdities and the truth.
Because, as Voltaire put it, “those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.”
p.s. This will be the last paywall-free post of 2022. There’ll be one more Subscriber Thread on Friday, and then we’ll be back in the New Year! I wish you all an argument-free holiday season. And if that’s not on the cards, I hope that they’re at least productive.
I read something recently that said it's not about the left vs right anymore but the authoritarian vs. tolerant. There are authoritarians on both sides of the political divide who are, for a variety of reasons, pushing for the extremes.
I'd like to think that a majority of us are sensible, down to earth people who want a better world and thought we were working for that by backing our usual side.
I for one have come to realize, in the last 6 months, how much I had been played by the people I thought were politically progressive, and that the caricature of the whacky people on the right was, just that, a ridiculous caricature meant to build my mistrust.
I sure hope that many more of us wake up to what's happening. Whether we are concerned about free speech, child safeguarding, women's rights, or another issue, it's going to be important for us to push for open debate and the coming back together of reasonable people who have had enough of the ridiculous.
I think the left/right formulation has completely broken down. The traditional divisions on matters of culture and economics etc. have yielded to a warped system with different axes altogether. Take the "woke" movement, easily as rigid and uncompromising as the worst of MAGA; that they have few values in common does little to mitigate their complete inflexibility. You cannot hold a view on even the most absurd matters of gender identity on what we once called the left any more than you can believe Trump lost the 2020 election.
The right used to be about strong defense, fiscal restraint, now it's the right running up the biggest deficits in history. The left used to be about lending a helping hand to those who need it, a diversity of viewpoints; now it runs in terror from any conviction of any kind.
Red and blue doesn't really cover it either. It seems more geography than outlook.
I call myself a leftist; I am more of an environmentalist and communitarian than anything else; but I would welcome the most brutal authoritarianism if it would halt the eulogies of extinct species, as long as it could be trusted, but it can't be. I revile the "woke" with as much disgust as I do the MAGA crowd.
The right once included ideological leaders, men like Buckley and Goldwater whose ideas were horrible but were at least sincere and coherent; their descendants are just haters and nothing more than that.
Whatever we call them, there is no common ground to be found anymore.