An Observation on the Disposition of Spiritual Enemies
Three times so far in my career I have been the subject of what Orwell describes as the Two-Minute Hate. By this I mean, an attempt, usually by a small and pathetic number of people pretending to be a grand and great number of people, indulging in the Internet equivalent of a shrieking contest apparently directed at me, or some imaginary version of me they have conjured in their fevered brains for that purpose. It is booing.
Always this is accompanied by swearing, giggling, hissing, cavorting, evil dances, gibberish, monkey-antics, blather, blither, halfwitticisms, and all fashion of juvenile eccentricism that is self-humiliation if not self-parody. Sometimes this is accompanied by threats of boycott from people who are not customers, but who do not seem cognizant that one must be a customer to be a boycotter. (And I am not sure the wares I sell would be comprehensible to minds unable to grasp the idea that one must be a customer before one can cease being a customer.)
While they are certainly free to boo, it is the timing of the spasms of gibberish that betrays the true nature of those who indulge in this odd pasttime.
You see, I often make statements which a sensitive soul, either of the Right or Left, might find too harsh or too imprudent, and my language is archaic, direct, and unrefined, for I use legal or Biblical terminology like ‘sodomy’ or ‘unnatural acts’ to refer to the sexual acts arising from same sex attraction. I hold that wives must submit to their husbands and women should not speak in Church, and I am doubtful if the experiment of offering the votes for women has produced the promised benefits. And I have dozens of other opinions so outrageous, so out of step with the tenor of the times, and so offensive to the Eloi, that one might believe I am overdue for chastisement at the angry yet lisping lips of the self-anointed guardians of the public weal.
But, no. It is never for these things I am upbraided. I am called a misogynist, but never when I say a misogynistic thing. I am called a homophobe, but never when I criticize the laws and customs encouraging unnatural sexual acts. I am called a fascist, but only because the dolts know no other word to express their disapproval for my love of liberty. And in any case, I am never called this in reply to me expressing an opinion about politics or economics.
The first Two-Minute hate was in response to my criticizing the Sci-Fi Channel (as it was known then in those days, back when they knew how to spell) for bowing to political correctness, that is, submitting to an inquisition of gossips. The second was in response to my criticizing science fiction authors for bowing to political correctness, that is, submitting to an inquisition of gossips. The third was in response to my criticizing the Science Fiction Writers of America for bowing to political correctness, that is, submitting to an inquisition of gossips.
The gossips are not trying to defend women from my opinions, nor defend gays, nor defend totalitarianism, nor defend the poor, nor defend social justice, nor defend the glorious revolution of whatever.
The gossips attack when someone calls them what they are: gossips.
Let us never again, dear readers, call them ‘Social Justice Warriors.’ That is much too flattering a nickname, because it assumes their motive is a love for social justice. Their motive is a love of power.
They are people who try to use social cues, peer pressure, and an artificially-generated illusion of public opinion to cow their neighbors into conformity.
They lust for control over the minds over man. They want you to conform to their dogma, without thought, without questions, without hesitation, without scruple.
They are the Inquisition come again, but without a Spain.
In Victorian times, the elite would enforce conformity entirely by informal social cues. Never was a court of law involved; it all was enforced my means of whispers and rumors between the womenfolk, from one anonymous source to another. With no one ever directly confronting the pariah, one woman would be denounced, cut off from the henflock, and simply never invited to parties again, her calling card not returned.
Of course the gossips themselves were probably guilty of whatever lapse or faux pas of which they accused the pariah, who was probably innocent. This is why the Victorians have these days such an odious reputation for hypocrisy and herdlike conformity.
They are the Victorian hypocrites come again, but without a standard to betray.
In Puritan times, the Puritans had an impossibly strict and high standard of moral behavior, which some attempted to achieve, but which more often was merely used as a tool of social control. When the standards are impossible, everyone is preemptively guilty, and when everyone is guilty, a complete uniformity of opinion is easy to enforce by informal social means.
In this case, the neo-Puritans have an impossibly low standard of moral behavior, since sexual perversion is the touchstone of conformity here, but the standard is still impossible, because it involves several self-contradictions. But the same hatred of joy and prosperity which characterized the earlier Puritans is present. Those Puritans hated their Catholic fathers and grandfathers, and denounced the impure with tongues of poison and tongues of fire, in part because of the haunting guilt of cutting themselves off from the ancestors who gave them life. The parallel to these modern thinkers and postmodern nonthinkers is too obvious to dwell upon.
The are the Puritan killjoys come again, but instead of upholding Puritan sexual purity, they uphold sexual perversion.
Why are they so angry? It is because they are frustrated and guilt-ridden.
Why so frustrated?
Leftism is the sin that looks like a mental disease. It is the state of mind where an otherwise grown up man pretends he is an infant who cannot form the concept of cause and effect. He then demands the effect without the cause.
This is true from the lowest to the highest of their thought. They want prosperity without the hard work and Anglo-American laws protecting private property which alone make prosperity possible.
They want peace without the good armed men ready to suffer the hell of war and eager to work painful harm on evil armed men which alone makes peace possible.
They want equality of law without the blindness of justice to matter of race and creed and rank and color which alone makes equality possible.
They want equality of women without the chivalry and chastity and other uniquely Christian social artifacts which alone make equality of women possible.
They want modern science without the rigorous objectivity of thought, the rejection of consensus and the academic independence of inquiry which alone makes modern science possible.
They want a universe without a deity to create it. They want a moral code without an objective source of virtues to create it.
They want the benefits of civilization, but without the Greco-Roman philosophy, the Judeo-Christian values, and the Anglo-American law without which civilization is the hell of vice and tyranny in the hellhole of misery and poverty (cf. ancient Babylon, modern Red China).
They want an flying unicorn pony with rainbow magic sparkles to fly them to the moon which they want to be made of green cheese and they want it NOW.
Why so guilt ridden?
Because the rejection of cause and effect requires that they create the very evils they say they are fighting. One example out of a universe of examples will do: They say they are fighting for women’s equality, and yet they lure women into murdering their own unborn babies, and such a pile of little corpses is heaped up that even the pit of the Apothetae in Sparta would overflow. There is no guilt worse than being a murderer, unless it is being a murderer of one’s own kin; and there is no guilt worse than being a kinslayer, unless it is to slay one’s own child; and it is worse for a mother to kill her own child than a father, because her love is supposed to have been deeper and more holy.
So they can never actually engage in a debate, or even an open discussion, with anyone who knows what they are. Their guilt, their shame, their frustration, their hatred, their anxiety, all prohibit this.
These gossips are creatures who believe they have the power over public opinion to enforce conformity. And so they are nervous, even frantic, because they know that power is fickle, resting only on their ability to attract and maintain the good opinion of a capricious and easily-distracted mob.
Some are utterly dishonest and pretend they are motivated by a concern for totalitarian social justice and state-mandated compassion. Some are half-dishonest and pretend that they are motivated by hatred and contempt for bigots or sexists or Islamophobes or Global Warming Deniers or whatever the croquemitaine of the season might be, on the grounds that the world would be nicer without such nasty and wrongthinking unpersons.
But, at least as far as my experience confirms, the honest and real motive, and the only thing that actually provokes them to speaking up and begin their make-believe denunciations of their make-believe scapegoat ritual, is when someone tells the truth about them and their motives.
The only thing that actually angers the professional gossips and self-anointed inquisitors, the thought policemen and the self-appointed enforcers of conformity, is when someone calls them gossips, inquisitors, thought-police, and conformists.
That is what puts a bee in their bonnet. The truth is their kryptonite.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
