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 19^th 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.