Intellectual Genocide–The Systematic Destruction Of Thinking

Facebook has recently introduced a Fact Check function, an offspring of the fake news hysteria of the Trump years.  Not only was Trump a racist, misogynistic bigot, say critics, he was a liar, a deceiver, a manipulator of the truth.  

Trump’s supporters, however knew enough about what’s what to get his conservative message and enjoy his bombast, vaudeville, and Las Vegas runway glitzy overblown outrageousness.  No one ever took his hilarious incorrectness for anything but what it was – a thumb in the eye of the hectoring, righteous Left.  

Of course things weren’t the wildly exaggerated, impossibly out-of-left-field accusations Trump said they were; but the point was made.  Message, not conveyance.

As a son of Hollywood and Las Vegas; a performer, vaudevillian, and big tent revivalist in the old American tradition, Trump doesn’t mean what he says.  He says what he means.  His is a political circus act with a semiotic foundation.  Crazy as a fox and as smart as a whip, Trump speaks a firestorm and ridicules his opponents who speak in platitudes, shopworn nostrums, and appeals to ‘truth’. No one but the unreconstructed liberal elite takes him at face value.  Everyone knows that his exaggerations are hyperbole, circus act exaggeration, and vaudeville.

Liberal myopia is not surprising, for despite progressives’ claims to objectivity, rationality, and on-the-one-hand-on-the-other tolerance and consideration of differing opinions, they intend no such thing.  Their canon of diversity, race-gender-ethnicity, and social liberalism is as enshrined and worshipped as any. Such political and philosophical absolutism ipso facto requires blinders.  In progressives’ a priori world where right and wrong are pre-determined and absolute there is no room for due consideration or rational debate.

Put more simply, the Left made up its mind about Donald Trump a decade ago and is still hammering away, still worried about and desperately afraid of him.

There is nothing genteel or honest about politics, nor has there ever been.  Presidential campaigns have been marvelous, wonderful circus acts and side shows.  The righteous, God-sent William Jennings Bryan who ranted and raved about the evils of capitalism, the greediness and devilish cabal of the industrialists who were building America.  John Kerry confabulated and pimped his Swift Boat Vietnam War record.  Gary Hart lied about his affairs, confronted the press with marvelously concocted lies about back-door exits and ‘friendship’.   

Governor Mark Sanford of North Carolina absconded from office to be with his Argentine lover in Buenos Aires, but told the press and the public he was hiking the Appalachian Trail.  George Bush Senior told the American public, “Read my lips.  No new taxes”, when of course he, like all politicians, intended to do just the opposite.  Richard Nixon sat in front of the camera and pounded barefaced lie after lie.  Bill Clinton who displayed his intelligence, legal training and sheer chutzpah denied ‘having sex with that woman’ and parsed the English language like no other (“That depends on what ‘is’ is”)

All would be as it should be if progressives’ cant about truth, justice, and transparence had not filtered down and clotured free speech everywhere.  When asked why she thought cancelling free speech was a good idea, a well-known academic replied that the truth was too important to be ‘left to the ignorant’.  

She and her colleagues under university mandate were advised to censure ‘offensive’ language wherever it occurred.  Free and open debate, long the ethos of the American university, was no longer in play because it had been distorted by right wing bigots.  Received wisdom was in, suggestive allusion out, and outright denial punishable by death. 

It was settled policy, she said, that gender fluidity was a fact and that all alternative sexualities should be championed as equal.  It was also settled that the white man is a racist; that the black man, thanks to his African, tribal, naturally environmental roots is superior in insight, intelligence, and spirit; that individualistic capitalism is a scourge, and that socialist redistribution of wealth and power is the only Christian, moral, and socially right policy.

The social media responded in kind.  They, as vehicles for community and individual expression, had a duty to police speech.  It was definitely not OK to joke about race, gender, or ethnicity; to pillory the sententious, or to caricature media ambulance-chasers, progressive shills, and Congressional darlings.  Each was a hanging offense, but when they collided in a perfect woke storm – such as attacks on Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez for incoherence or Whoopi Goldberg for racial pandering – women of color – it was double indemnity.  Only flaying, burning at the stake, and then beheading offenders would be good enough.

Satire, humor, and standup comedy disappeared entirely.  The ethos of universal offense was the new meme.

Yet, Facebook, Instagram, and their likes weren’t through.  If falsity, fake news, and irresponsible comment were the tricks of the trade of Donald Trump and racist misogynists everywhere, then all falsity, fake news, and irresponsible comment were fair game. Truth was incontestable, and so untruth must be found out and eliminated.

College campuses were likewise infected with this dreamworks virus.  The list of offenses in the progressive canon was exhaustive.  There was only one, true, absolutely righteous and morally just person – the black, transgender woman – and she was allowed…encouraged to speak her mind, to stand up and be heard, preach like never before.

The rest of the student body were automatons – walking carefully along a tended path, quietly, respectfully, and demurely. They were encouraged not to speak for even those most outspoken in favor of the black man were criticized for their appropriation of black things.  How could they possibly know anything about the black experience? Their faux sympathy, empathy, and brotherhood was part of the problem, not the solution.

College campuses became gulags – barbed wire and guarded perimeters.  Students were there only conditionally.  Any breaches of unwritten contract to adhere to campus policies of diversity, equity, and inclusion were grounds for public censure and dismissal.

It seemingly can’t get any worse, the bottom of the barrel has been reached.  George Orwell was right.  Americans live in a Soviet state.

Progressives who should be happy about this turn of events and despite their near universal smothering of dissent are still humorless.  The fight is far from over, they say. La lucha continua and will continue until the day of social perfection comes. 

The rest of America belly-laughs. The sight of one more chicken-necked, ambulance-chasing, somber black man on MSNBC sends them into hysterics, one more transgender woman defending her God-ordained right to be sexually twinned; one more furry economist denouncing private enterprise as unholy, give them the jollies.  This too will end, they know, and soon.  Not soon enough, but surely and certainly around the corner.