One of the more frustrating things about being on the ‘outside’ of the official narrative is that the usual suspects in media (and their Main Street parrots) often assign some sort of malevolent motivation for our speech and actions. For example, you couldn’t simply be somebody who knew that masks were worthless at stopping covid — according to the media, you were “anti-science” (actual data be damned) and “didn’t care about old people” the masks were supposedly saving. You couldn’t be somebody waiting for long-term vaccination data (or somebody who understood the short-term data) — you were THE PROBLEM that was KEEPING US FROM MOVING ON:
Note how they assume the moral high ground here.
WE DID THE RIGHT THING, THE HONORABLE THING. THOSE OTHER PEOPLE ARE ACTING LIKE CHILDREN! THE SELFISH IDIOTS AND LUNATICS ARE IGNORANT AND WILL PAY THE PRICE BECAUSE WE WILL JUST LET THEM DIE! WE COULD HAVE PREVENTED ALL THE DEATH IF PEOPLE WOULD JUST GET VACCINATED!
Pick any topic of the day and you find the same sort of attitude. You can’t be just against the war in Ukraine and our endless financing of it, the media claims you're a Putin apologist. (Shades of Iraq, there) You can't be concerned about election integrity, you're a democracy-hater who wants to deny Americans the right to vote.
Frustrating as it is, this behavior is not a new phenomenon:
“The Law” was written in 1850.
One of the most perfect examples of this “holier-than-thou” attitude revolves around illegal immigration. For decades, Democrats have proclaimed that people who were worried about border security were simply racists who wanted to deny minorities a better life. Recently, the Biden administration won a lawsuit forcing Texas governor Greg Abbott to remove buoys discouraging illegal border crossings across the Rio Grande - to the cheers of the media.
However, this celebration of more illegals streaming across the border doesn’t extend to the places where they’re actually being sent. In fact, New York City Mayor Eric Adams believes the arriving illegals are going to “destroy New York City.”
How quickly an attitude changes when the ‘leaders’ actually have to deal with an issue instead of just posturing about it. After all, it’s easy to be a sanctuary city when you don’t actually have to provide sanctuary in your city. Declaring NYC a sanctuary city was free virtue signalling right up until the point where the city had to figure out how to deal with 110,000 new illegals with little support from the federal government. (As the border towns have been doing for decades.)
But since illegal immigration is hitting blue enclaves, NOW the issue is an emergency — and gone are the morality arguments. Nobody in the media is calling Adams racist, nobody is saying he doesn’t care about minorities. This is how you know the name-calling was just a performance designed to rile up the left and give them yet another excuse to hate their political opponents. (More about this later!)
This fake morality is also evident in California’s policies demanding that schools keep secrets from parents — all while citing statistics involving bullying AT SCHOOL. (Chris Bray wrote an excellent article about this) “We the government knows best for your OUR kids, and we must save them from you — the terrible parents of the world.” But after the school ruins the life of child passing through its doors, who’s there to pick up the pieces of a shattered life? Not the principal, that’s for sure.
Government spending (specifically on social issues) provides another example of misplaced morality. If you don’t support government taking from the productive and giving to the unproductive (after taking a nice slice off the top, of course), then you’re a BAD PERSON who doesn’t care about the poor.
But who is actually hurt the most by a rising cost of living? It’s not the rich, who have access to newly printed cash — it’s the people who were already barely getting by. Price hikes across the board (due to excessive printing) leaves poor people in a precarious spot. Rent or food? Food or medicine?
While the effects of inflation on the poor were mostly a thought concept during the “peak” Ron Paul years (unsurprisingly leading to the media calling him uncaring), we’re now seeing the real-life effects of excessive printing as more and more people slip under the waves of rising prices and see the costs of an incompetent government that can’t handle basic services but wants to create rules about the weather (and what you are allowed to do so you don’t affect it).
Mostly, the effect of such morality projection is to divide us. Why would you listen to somebody on the other side if you’re convinced that person has malevolent motivations? (I know I don’t listen to the World’s Evilest Fuckers or their minions) Ultimately, all ability to discuss and debate is lost because each side refuses to talk to other. This is an extremely dangerous situation, because discussion and debate is how we solve the biggest issues of the day. This is why it’s important that people realize the ‘leaders’ (left OR right) don’t have monopoly on morality - they just want you to think they do.
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SC, feel free to disregard this and I will not be offended. For one, I do not know what the etiquette for such a thing is on Substack and two, the conclusions drawn may not be something that you would even agree with. That being said, in my crusade to salvage a future worth living in for all of us, I feel obligated to ask. Actually, from my point of view not asking would be a crime this late in the game.
Would you be willing to host the following article on your stack for your readers: https://tritorch.substack.com/p/apathy-is-the-fire-in-which-we-burn
You can make it anonymous if you want to it makes no difference, the goal is simply to get these ideas in the minds of those who would make good use of them.
Either way, thanks for your consideration. Feel free to delete this comment. (I don't know how else to get in touch with you.)
“The Law” was written in 1850.
I frequently think, why should I write anything? Bastiat already told it much better than I could. I am sure you have the same thoughts. Yet you write, thank you for that.