It’s been a while since I published a written post on this newsletter — the last few months have mostly been podcasts. Part of it is NFL season requires me to devote my energies to Real Man Sports, but also I’ve felt like much of what there is to say, I’ve already said. There’s only so many words one can devote to what happened to the minds of so many who cast their lot in with large pharmaceutical conglomerates and deranged gender ideologues at the expense of their values for social and professional expedience.
The topic that’s been on my mind of late is the idea that after Charlie Kirk’s assassination we need to find a way “come together,” “heal the divide” or “tone down the rhetoric.” I think that kind of therapy-speak will only perpetuate the divide and paper over the central issue: that too many regular people who know better are unwilling to uphold basic standards required for a functioning civilization.
I am not talking about the cultists justifying (or even celebrating) Kirk’s murder because he expressed views with which they didn’t agree. The people who during summer of George Floyd thought it was okay to burn down cities for “racial justice.” I don’t believe those people can be reached, and I genuinely feel sorry for them living with so much hate and delusion. I fear many of them will never make it back.
I am talking about the average person, the one who in private expressed misgivings about disfiguring minors, committing them to a life of pharmaceutical interventions before they were old enough to drive, but said nothing. The person who didn’t necessarily want the covid shot, but felt he had to take it for his job and travel and said nothing. The person who saw colleagues being shunned and cancelled simply for dissenting and went along with it — even to this day, paling around with the most ardent advocates for coercion and cancellation while treading carefully with their once-cancelled friends.
I am talking about the non-brainwashed person, the one who knew in his gut things had gotten out of hand, but refused to stand up for himself or his family. There are basic standards in a civilized society — things like medical treatments of any kind always being voluntary, established after WWII via the Nuremberg Code. Things like free speech, the right to express dissenting views. Like protecting the innocence of children, not exposing them to the perversions du jour of adults working out kinks and fetishes peculiar to their particular psychologies.
I believe for healing to take place, we need to return to these basic standards like civil discourse, wherein those who disagree with you are not “nazis” or “fascists” whose murder is justifiable but actual humans who simply don’t see the world as you do. If we don’t re-establish these basic norms, there is no “coming together,” no possibility of healing. The paradox of tolerance is you cannot tolerate the intolerant lest tolerance be lost forever. And that’s exactly what you are doing by enabling these derangements, hoping it’ll all pass without affecting you, nice, reputable, decent person you believe yourself to be.
It’s not a question of forgiveness or judgment. Whether I personally in my heart of hearts forgive a violent drug addict from a broken home is irrelevant. It’s about upholding standards for yourself and those with whom you interact. Just as you wouldn’t spend time with a person who hated and was openly cruel to black people, why are you spending time with one who wanted to put pharmaceutically non-compliant people in camps?
And I don’t mean the (rare) person who got caught up in a mania, admitted his error and expressed genuine contrition, but the unrepentant, those who would double-down in a heartbeat as soon as it were to their social and professional advantage to do so. You still tolerate the intolerant, and you say nothing. You still tread carefully around them, sure not to offend or upset, even though they would turn on you and your family just as quickly if you ran afoul of the next edict du jour.
What’s lacking isn’t compassion and kindness but courage. The courage to stand up for what’s right, the courage to do so even if it’s not in your social and professional interest, the courage to be disliked.
I can’t tell anyone what to do — every situation is individual, and the appropriate response is always case by case. But generally speaking, the problem I see is not mostly with the far too large minority of people who have irretrievably lost their minds this last decade, but with the majority who enable them.