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Made-up Words? Covfefe, I Say!
I have two related thoughts that I think explain why the left and the youngs are the way they are.
An idea that penetrated from the heights of American culture down to elementary schools around the turn of the century was the idea that being judgmental was a vice rather than a virtue. This is contradictory because it is a moral judgment itself. It is the ethos of puritanical nihilism: the only morally correct way to live is not to acknowledge that right and wrong exist.
Maybe they couldn’t win the moral arguments, so they decided to call the whole idea of morality backward. This is what laid the groundwork for the gay rights movement and now the trans movement. It was just “I think this is wrong!” versus “Don’t judge! That’s mean! Don’t think about right or wrong!” As far as gay marriage is concerned, I don’t have a strong opinion, but I resent having to have a strong opinion. Lately I have become extremely defensive of the people who were opposed to it, refused to change their views just because those views were unpopular, and are now broadly slandered as bigots.
But that case is lost. Maybe it’s for the best, but this whole trans thing is a whole other can of worms. The left, in their desire to be inclusive, seems unlikely to acknowledge that not all girls who like short hair need hormone injections at age 12. I fear they will be successful if they can frame it as another fight against judgmentalism. No one has pointed out that if you believe in right and wrong, you are exercising judgment and could be called judgmental. The negative connotation is undeserved. I do not know where it came from, but it is the fundamental notion (‘twould be generous to call it an idea) that explains why charges of homophobia and transphobia and xenophobia and fatphobia are effective, to varying degrees. In the latter case, the fact that it is even a word printed in newspapers is cause enough for alarm.
These ain’t phobias, Jack. This is my second point. Phobias are psychological conditions: claustrophobia, arachnophobia, etc. The newly invented, incoherent* compound words were not created by psychologists, but they sound like irrational mental disorders that should be dismissed out of hand. Xenophobic arguments about border enforcement shouldn’t be taken any more seriously than arachnophobic arguments about the looming threat of giant spiders.
The previous sentence would be true if xenophobia were being used to describe people who had a psychological condition that made them irrationally afraid of outsiders, but it is not. None of these hot new words are phobias, properly understood, which is to say that they don’t exist. Not only is a belief in traditional marriage not homophobia, there’s really no such thing as homophobia. This word and those like it were invented to slander people who hold unpopular opinions. Actually, it’s even worse than that. When the word started popping up, it was used to slander people who held the popular opinion and bully the rest into changing their minds. None of the diversity-equity-inclusion stuff would have caught on to the degree it has without the foundation of anti-judgmentalism.
I should clarify my homophobia denialism. Belief in traditional marriage is not based on hate or fear. One can believe that marriage should be reserved for one man and one woman and still treat gay and lesbian folks with respect. Some people don’t treat gays and lesbians well. Maybe those people are jerks, but I don’t think that makes it a fear-based psychological condition. Even if you want to say it does, lumping these two groups together is awful.
One additional layer of contradiction is that, by making dissenting opinions sound like mental disorders and simultaneously showing disdain and loathing for people who voice those opinions, progressives stigmatize mental illness. How very reactionary.
*Homophobia should mean fear of the same. Transphobia should mean fear of change. They added a Greek suffix to words with a Latin prefix and completely dropped the base word: sexual. I guess the sex is implied.
Published in Culture
Discrimination likewise gets a bad rap. We should all be more discriminating.
According to at least one source, covfefe is a real phrase in a foreign language:
So, that’s better than “homophobia,” et al.
Now that is fact-of-the-day material
Thanks for the thoughtful post. I like your main point.
Classifying dissent as mental illness is a pretty common trick of the Left. If you disagree with us you must be insane. I tried turning the tables on them a few years ago when I made some bumper stickers that said, “Hoplophobia Can Be Cured.”
Yep, just get out to a range. Shooting is fun. It’s also a great competitive skill.
Yes, it is ironic that it has become mandatory to hate those who oppose your viewpoint, because by opposing you they become ‘haters’.
I don’t oppose same sex marriage, but I do oppose telling any religion that they have to support and participate in it. This freedom thing, it goes both ways. If you want to marry someone of the same sex, be my guest, but don’t ask my church to be a part of it. G-d’s word is not up for debate nor modification to meet popular sentiment.
Who hates whom more, the devout person who considers it a sin and opposes putting a veneer of sanctity on that sin, so disagrees with same sex marriage ( a religious union at heart), or the one who would see those people who disagree with them ostracized, put out of business and employment, and even have their very religion de legitimized by the government?
Religious people, for the most part, do not hate, nor even shun, homosexuals. They have in the past, but it is hardly the norm today. They just disagree. And for that they are hated with a passion. The hate is on the other side, and justified as opposition to hate.
The left. Busy blaming everyone for doing that which they are the only ones doing.
Bingo. If you want to know what they’re up to, look at what they’re accusing us of doing.
I found the reasoning presented in this OP to be superior to the dreck the New Left puts out on morality. I plan on borrowing several well constructed statements you made over the next few times a New Leftist tells me to get aboard the program.
One consideration you might need to realize: the New Left is not above thinking a matter is right or wrong.
If a person whose politics come from from the Center or The Right, and that person disapproves of a person of color committing a serious crime, that person is Wrong. This is especially true if the judgement is against an illegal alien.
You only have to look at how the New Left pampered the drunken lowlife Zarate after he killed Kate Stenle on a crowded tourist pier in San Francisco to see what I mean.
Zarate was an immigrant, here illegally, and even the fact that his defense was he went to the pier to shoot seals did not allow the Left to abandon him. (If you or I had been found on a pier with a gun, claimed we found the gun, and that all we wanted to do was shoot seals, the Leftists would be gathering on our front porches for months spitting on us.) Instead the Lefties raised enough money for attorneys that Zarate basically got away with Stenle’s death scot free.
Also in the last ten days, a VA policeman was suspended or fired for trying to turn a person he arrested over to ICE. I mean, is it not heartless of the police to not consider the background of a an illegal immigrant after they commit a violent crime? (sarcasm intended)
OK, but lets say I want to win an argument even though the facts aren’t on my side. Surely, I can just say that everyone who disagrees with me has some strange new psychological disorder, right? Or are you a vance-a-phobe?
I think the left is a bunch of Eleutherophobics. Not to mention Epistemophobics.
But there are many more phobia’s they seem to suffer:
Phobia list
(Eleutherophobia = the fear of freedom
Epistemophobia = the fear of knowledge)
My favorite phobia:
Hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia- Fear of long words.
How cruel is it to diagnose that?
Dr. Shrink: I’m sorry sir, your fear of long words makes you a Hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobic
Patient: AAAAAAAAAH!!!!!!
Well, their ideas are so terrible, it’s no wonder they’re epistemophobes! They come by it honestly.
Thank you. It would be encouraging if more people were supportive of traditionalists for this reason alone.