Wednesday, February 10, 2021

Culture war essay: Being too nice

 Professor Blosser posted an essay by an Australian who works for their parliement...it is by Edwin Dyga, published in the New Oxford Review on why the courts have slid into pushing the "progressive" side of the culture war.

read the whole thing, or download it to read slowly and carefully when you have uninterrupted time to do so.

Now that Biden is president, the oligarchy doesn't even try to hide their agenda to tell ordinary folks how to live.

And their enemy is clear: Not only the 74 million "deplorables" who are now being called terrorists, but a lot of us who are "blue dog" Democrats and still believe in traditional values, and object to their destruction by those who think they are wise enough to change them.

instead of a revolution, we have a slow revolutionary takeover of cultural beliefs by the radicals, something that started in the 1960s and was imposed on America by the courts, not by democratic means.

The activists infiltrate and take over the institutions, and as this is slowly done, the lone conservative voices are aggressively targeted until they yield and change their mind; others will find a way to go along with it (often justifying this as they are trying to limit harm), or for the stubborn, they are ostracized so badly they quit or are fired under some pretext.

Early indications that defending western traditions was verboten could be seen in the destruction of the careers of Brian Eich or Anthony Esolen.

Now such attacks, ostracism and losing one's livelihood are commonplace, and nearly every day one reads of another who are being criticized in a way that is reminiscent of China's Red Guard revolution, often for trivial remarks but especially if one dares to follow the morality and ideas of our ancestors and our cultures.

Yes, I saw this in medical school 50 years ago, when the class, which was anti abortion and defended the Hippocratic oath, quickly morphed into pro abortion opinions because the law was changed and our professors promoted the idea...(until my fellow students actually were forced to assist in abortions and got sick at what they saw, but hey, they were assured that feeling of disgust and guilt was not their conscience bothering them, but merely an emotional reaction that they should ignore).

so what happened to those who said "no"? Well, they "failed" me in my OB class in medical school. (I threatened to sue them under the Civil Rights law of 1964, so they backed down). However, my friend was not a citizen and in her residency, was threatened by the hospital with being fired from her residency, (and losing both her job that supported her family and her visa status). So she complied. 

However, the Muslim OB residents at her hospital also refused to do abortions, and when the administration threatened to fire them, all of the Muslim physicians working as residents got together and said: If you fire them, we will all quit. Since the hospital couldn't afford to lose this source of cheap labor, the administration backed down.

yet where were the "official" Catholic and Christian groups in our medical school, and why didn't the student organizations try to protect our consciences? And where were the "christian" doctors when they changed the Hippocratic oath to let us do abortions? 


In medical school, the law changed so we had to go along with it. To object was to make waves, and in a company or fellowship, harmony is important. You get the reputation of a trouble maker. And how dare you object to aborting that 12 year old abused girl who would have a malformed child (the strawman argument behind changing the law). You lacked compassion, and if you lacked compassion, you should not be a doctor.

So people kept quiet, for they were too nice to point out the lack of logic or the lack of morality in that argument (not to mention the G word, that maybe God might have plans for that baby) So no one protested of course. Except for Dr Koop, who at the time was a teacher and Pediatric surgeon, no one among the faculty dared raise a question against doing abortions or even forcing students and residents to cooperate with this evil.

But the story shows what the essay is saying: A lot of the reason that the aggressive left wins in the courts is that once the law is changed (even by judicial fiat), then people are too polite to object and say no: it's just a lot easier to think that you are wrong and others are right, so just go along with the crowd.

The cultural takeover is now almost complete: it ostracizes those who dare say no, often forcing them out of their job, and but most of those who object will simply decide to be nice and say nothing. Eventually those who object will "change their mind" because cognitive dissonance is too much for them to live with.

the internet helped allowed opposing opinion to get heard, meaning and between the internet and talk radio, people found they were not alone in their opinions.

 But now we see censorship by the social media platforms, making it harder to find thoughtful opinions that help them express what they think. And alas, the "alternative" forums get clogged up with the real crazies (one wonders how many of them are actually trolls or bots to make you think your opinion is similarly psychotic). How soon until these platforms are censored and those who read them get investigate as the enemy of the state?

but hey, even these platforms will be censored in the near future. 

and remember the meme: On the internet, no one knows you are a dog?


well, now everything your write is on a database somewhere, as is your face (even when you didn't do a crime).

internet forums have people reporting being interviewed by the FBI because someone (a neighbor? A bank with access to their credit card charges?) reported they might have attended the (mostly peaceful) Washington protest.

WTF?

40 years ago, we were warned  by an activist that if we protested a dangerous nuclear power plant, that the FBI would be taking photos of our faces and we would be put on their data base. 

Well, cellphones and facebook make those actions look primitive, and yes, people have lost their jobs: not in the government but those who work in the private sector and were identified by their local activists. Because facial recognition software is available to anyone nowadays.

LINK


So not just the FBI but private corporations and social media are out to monitor you for bad thoughts.

this is what one sees in China...

Thomas More call your office: They are doing it again.



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