Saturday, May 14, 2016

Magical Thinking and the Decline of the West

In his must-read essay, David Solway itemnizes a few of the fashionable "up-is-down/black-is-white" tropes that bien pensants must affirm in order to fit in with their "progressive," Utopia-worshipping mob:
  • Biological sexual differentiation must yield to voluntary gender identity.
  • A cooling climate is obviously warming.
  • The demonstrable failure of socialism wherever it has been tried is proof that it has not been properly implemented.
  • Democratic Israel is an apartheid state.
  • Islam with its record of unstinting bloodshed is a religion of peace.
  • Illegal immigrants are undocumented workers.
  • Terrorism is workplace violence.
  • A child in the womb is a mass of insensible protoplasm.
  • The killing of the old and the ill is merciful, even when the recipient of such tender concern is not consulted.
  • There is no such thing as truth, an axiom regarded as true.
  • Green energy is a social and economic good irrespective of crony profiteering, exorbitant cost, wildlife devastation, and unworkability in its present state.
  • Storms, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, floods, tsunamis and mortality itself are natural phenomena, but Nature, which cares nothing for human life, is nonetheless sacred, vulnerable and at the mercy of human indifference.
  • Women are disadvantaged in the workforce, academia and society at large despite the fact that high-end hiring practices, legal judgments, custody protocols and university appointments, as well as student enrollment, wholly favor women to the detriment of men.
  • An enemy is a friend.
  • Criminality is innocence.
  • Losing is winning.
  • Prosperity is avarice.
  • Redistributing wealth, i.e., robbing the affluent and productive, is a form of compassion and basic justice.
  • Those who claim victim status are always credible.
  • Accumulating debt is an economic stimulus.
  • Big government is a boon to mankind.
  • War is passé (so 19th century).
  • Diplomacy and talk—the higher Twitter—will prevail over barbarism.
  • The most gynocentric society ever created is a rape culture.
  • Palestine is a historically legitimate nation.
  • Uniformity of thought and action equals cultural diversity.
  • An exploded lie merely confirms what it lies about (e.g., Rigoberta Menchu).
  • Morality is relative.
  • Merit is an unearned distinction.
As Solway points out, a civilization that succumbs to beliefs like these that are palpably and provably untrue (i.e. "what is, is not and what is not, is"), is in the throes of a death spiral, one that's going to be awfully difficult--and perhaps even impossible--to halt.

Okay, I said it was a must-read. I didn't say it was going to be a cheerful one.

1 comment:

Carlos Perera said...

David Solway and his equally estimable wife, Professor Janice Fiamengo, are a much needed tonic of sanity and solid common sense in a Western Civilization that has gone--or been driven--mad. (Incidentally, the couple made a rather touching video in which Mr. Solway sings an encomium to his wife, which I take the liberty of linking below, for the possible enjoyment of Scaramouche's more sentimental readers.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfpAEpFikrA