Amerika

So let’s say you wake up one morning believing Proposition X. You don’t just factually accept it. As Karl Marx once put it: the idea “tastes good.” This will typically drive anyone who buys into Proposition X to defend it vociferously. It’s now the mental equivalent of a free cheeseburger. Now let’s say further that a bunch of mockers and wise-guys start punching some decent-sized holes in this wonderful proposition. Assume further that you eventually get some dings against Prop X that you can’t fix.

This leaves you three alternatives.

1. You can do what most reasonably scientific or logical people will do. Admit that the critiques make a good point or two and then come up with Prop X’ which is a wee bit different from Prop X. You guys can freely debate the logic and scientific reason typically shown by Bernie Sanders, but he came up with a textbook example of a Prop X’ at last night’s Democratic Primary Debate in Houston.
   

   “Anybody that does what Maduro does is a vicious tyrant,” Sanders said in response to ABC moderator Jorge Ramos. “What we need now is international and regional cooperation for free elections in Venezuela so that the people of that country can make, can create their own future.” “In terms of democratic socialism, to equate what goes on in Venezuela with what I believe is extremely unfair,” the Vermont Independent said. “I agree with [what] goes on in Canada and Scandinavia, guaranteeing health care to all people as a human right. I believe that the United States should not be the only major country on earth not to provide paid family and medical leave.”

   He may want socialism, just not that socialism. Slick move.

2. If you can’t even hold the fort with Prop X’, then the radically honest man will go down the hard road. You have to admit that whatever emotional “goodness” you may have banked for yourself by believing anything like Prop X has just gone where excremental mortgage-backed securities went to die in 2009. Prop X does not explain the meaning of life as much as you wish it could. It’s a sunk cost, you write off the loss.
3. Door #3 is where dishonest people go. They invent terms d’ arte such as “Scientific Decency.”
   

   Scientists at the University of Jena in eastern Germany have called for the term “race” to no longer be used, saying there is no biological basis for the classification of humanity into races. “The primarily biological justification for defining groups of humans as races — for example based on the color of their skin or eyes, or the shape of their skulls — has led to the persecution, enslavement and slaughter of millions of people,” the scientists wrote in the Jena Declaration. “However, there is no biological basis for races, and there has never been one. The concept of race is the result of racism, not its prerequisite,” they continued.

   Post WWII Germany’s fundamental foundational myth is that they are a society that is NOT(Hitler). Amidst this desire to pretend that they would have built an autobahn without The Adolf, there are lots of Proposition X-like beliefs that are at philosophical risk of vivisection when confronted by the wrong sort of hate truth. Since they are all lovers not Hitlers in Germany these days, it is very, very hard to admit any colinearity between race-consciousness and affirmative, empowering national identity. So professional German scientists proclaim that race realism = !RACISM! And then the “Scientifc Decency” garbage commences.

Scientific decency is only just one subspecies of The Holiness Spiral parasite. If you intend to get plastered and chill on The Vegas Strip, leave that “Mussolini Had a Point!” T-shirt in your luggage. The fashion police now actually serve judicial warrants.

Red flag laws? There is nothing to worry about. There isn’t any kind of politically motivated round up going on since the El Paso shooting…oh wait, there is. Just a few days ago, two drunk guys were arrested out in Las Vegas for threatening a mass shooting with a pellet gun. They were allegedly shouting about “white supremacy.”

Things like “scientific decency” start out as a method to surpress unpopular truths or to protect morally cherished truths that just aren’t true. Then, as they fail to surpress Hate Truths, they get weaponized in legal statute and the doubleplus ungood get taken away some place. We haven’t hit the point where the state turns the doubleplus ungood into doubleplus undead quite yet. That will take a few more 5-4 decisions by Chief Justice John Roberts. But mark my words. “Scientific Decency”, political correctness, and any other policing of thought crimes will lead to the enstupidation and then the death of Amerika as a nation.

Tags: scientific decency, truth filters