When Ideology Overrides Sanity

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It's been less than two weeks since I blogged about a certain Austrian painter whose regime murdered fifteen million people (before we tally war deaths). My hope that I could set the N word aside for a while proved to be laughable, with my Congressman, Jamaal Bowman (D-NY16), offering a "messaging guidance" memo wherein he did indeed go Godwin. He (or, if we are to believe his post hoc damage control, someone on his staff without his approval) offered, as part of one of nine talking points offered to his fellow Democrats:

Republicans need to instead focus their energy on the Nazi members of their party before anything else.

Rep. Bowman, why so Reductio ad Hitlerum?

Could it be you (or, purportedly, some staffer who, as far as I know, has not been fired for asserting that there were multiple Nazis in Congress under the Republican banner) panicked after being caught pulling a fire alarm during last minute efforts to forestall a government shutdown? Did someone inform you after the fact that you may have committed two felonies and a misdemeanor in doing so? Was your sheaf of "talking points" intended to cast doubt on both the act itself and the Occams-Razor most likely explanation insufficient without declaring that there were literal Nazis sitting across the aisle from you?

The N-bomb (not that one, this one) has become so overused in the past couple decades that we now bear witness to people claiming that actual Nazis... weren't.

Bowman will certainly be defended by his party, and will almost certainly face no blowback other than in the court of public opinion for his stunt supposed lapse in reading comprehension.

That's to be expected of politicians. Liars and charlatans, the lot. Yes, there are exceptions, I'm obligated to say, but in most cases I've encountered, those exceptions come across more "he's my guy and I like him" than "he's one of the few honest ones out there."

It's also to be expected of the legacy media. Defense of one's team, above all else, is what passes for journalism nowadays.

Mike Godwin's observation should have served as a warn-off, and if it were heeded, we wouldn't hear the N-bomb dropped as often as it is nowadays. Instead, people have learned that the emotional impact of the word is an easy way to be heard above the wild cacophony of politics, and tribalism serves as a "free pass" from one's side of the aisle when it is invoked. Yes, there is fault to be found with the Republicans who are excusing the January 6th riots, but no, that does not make them Nazis. Yes, there are Nazis in America, and not just in Illinois. No, that pack of fringe nutters is not a significant force in domestic politics, not by any stretch.

All this should be obvious to anyone with two functional brain cells.

Know what else should be obvious?

• That subordinating biological gender to unconfirmable declarations of identity would invite bad actors to act badly. A long-running annual conference for women in tech was inundated with men when the organizers opened it up to "nonbinary" persons. Women's prisons are housing "persons with penises," because some criminals figured out that they just have to declare themselves "women" in order to gain access to a lot of incarcerated vaginas. Ditto for locker rooms and shelters.

• Pursuing policing reform by decriminalizing or non-prosecuting acts of theft and violence will be taken advantage of by criminals.

• Offering financial/housing support to foreigners simply for sneaking across the border will prompt a deluge of border crossings.

• Unsubstantiated allegations against a Presidential candidate will prompt some of his supporters to excuse and pretzel-logic his actual misdeeds and character flaws.

• Overemphasizing non-traditional gender roles and overstating their prevalence in society will prompt impressionable and susceptible children to make inaccurate declarations, sometimes with tragic outcome.

• If a new technology requires government coercion to be adopted, it's a safe bet that it's not going to be cheaper for the consumer. A better mousetrap in a free market will soon become very popular. But, we are deluged by such coercions, in major appliances, in vehicles, in heating and air conditioning our homes, and in many other of our uses of energy, under the claim that they will save us money.

• Telling refugee immigrants they shouldn't adopt the cultural mores of their new home will undermine those mores. Nations such as Sweden, France, and the Netherlands welcomed Middle Eastern migrants, but didn't teach them about Western liberties or expect them to respect those liberties. Instead, the notion of "multiculturalism" was put forth, no matter that the refugees fled the consequences of certain cultures, with bad result. Similarly, Californians fleeing the Golden State's statist abuses brought their statist attitudes to such places as Nevada and Texas, thwarting the purpose of their expatriations.

• Terrorist organizations with the openly declared goal of ending Israel heading up “Palestinian” governments is not conducive to peace or permanent solutions in the Middle East. Giving billions of dollars and pretzeling one’s nation into a treaty with a nation avowing the same goal isn’t, either.

That’s just a few. Got a favorite? Hit me up in the comments.

All these irrational policies, actions, and behaviors continue to be defended by their defenders, even as the consequences become more and more obvious. This is ideology over sanity, partisanship over reason, zero-sum winner-take-all jockeying over the health of society or the good of the nation.

“Yeah, but they started it!”

“Yeah, but if I give an inch, the bad guys win!”

“Yeah, but if I admit I was wrong, they’ll pounce on me!”

“Yeah, but the other team is totally awful and evil and kills kittens and eats puppies!”

All rationalizations for refusing to allow evidence to intrude on one’s preconceptions. I get it - cognitive dissonance is a real thing and can be a major ego-crusher. But, if you want things to get better, you have to be willing to adapt your views as reality informs you. And, reality is real, I am forced to write. The post-modernist nonsense that everything is relative to one’s perceptions and life-story is at the source of so many of the delusions that are unraveling society. If it doesn't stop, things will spiral to chaos.

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A footnote. I am beyond disgusted by the rush by some of our Best-and-Brightest to support Hamas and demand that Israel not react to the murders, rapes, kidnappings, beheadings, and other atrocities committed by that terrorist organization. That the same people claim to be the champions of women and the oppressed, and the sole ones at that, is hypocrisy that’s shocking in its audacity.

The Palestinian matter is a fraught one, obviously, but I’ve concluded that, on the Arab side, it’s an artifice intended to mask the true goal: the elimination of Israel. This attack seems timed to disrupt normalization of relations between Israel and the Saudis, a move that would work against the fanatics’ hatred and their continued ability to vilify Israel (and by extension, the Great Satan America) as a means of preserving their power and deflecting from their own failures of leadership.

Our “Squad,” whom I’ve concluded is awash in antisemitism, disgrace themselves with their response to Hamas’s attack. Next time you hear AOC or Omar or Tlaib or Pressly or Bowman or any of the rest of them make noise about women’s rights or object to bigotry and hatred, remember this.