In the developed West, rationality has fled — in favor of an unending stream of assertions about bias

12 October 2020

Identity insanity is drowning the United States' ability to reason

Below is an example typical of much of the supposedly developed Western world.

Mercifully, rather than pitting "blacks" against "whites" — it pits white women against white men.

Gender pride?

Vox writer, Anna North, got herself bent out of shape because some allegedly misogynistic men took issue with female Michigan Governor, Gretchen Whitmer's totalitarian COVID performance.

Recall in this, that a divided Michigan Supreme Court has already attempted to put a stop to Whitmer's Mussolini impression. (My phrase, not the Court's.)

After reading what Ms. North had to say, one can tentatively conclude that she treasures gender-respect even above arguably overarching Constitutional substance.

Implicitly, according to North, if a woman is disrespected because she is a tyrant, it must be because she's a woman. And not just (or mainly) because she is a tyrant:

Earlier this year, a man named Adam Fox recorded a video in which he called Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer a “tyrant bitch” for closing the state’s gyms.

[H]e and five other men known as the “Wolverine Watchmen” have been arrested on conspiracy charges, accused of plotting to kidnap the governor in retribution for her actions to limit the spread of Covid-19.

Whitmer became a lightning rod for protesters in part because . . . she instituted restrictions early.

Whitmer isn’t just a Democrat or a governor telling people what to do — she’s also a woman telling people what to do.

That’s . . . especially unpopular now that Trump and others . . . [are] peddling the idea that it’s manly to ignore the risk of the virus.

[I]n April, Whitmer introduced new restrictions to battle the virus, including a requirement that large stores close off sections devoted to gardening supplies and furniture.

Conservatives in the state said the restrictions felt arbitrary . . . .

The language of many protesters . . . . took on misogynistic overtones, as demonstrators carried signs comparing Whitmer to “a tyrannical queen and an overbearing mother["]. . . .

Whitmer has received a degree of personal attention . . . that her male counterparts haven’t necessarily experienced.

That may be because . . . she’s running up against the still widely held belief that any woman seeking or holding power is treasonous, underhanded, or illegitimate.

Talk about incoherently turning the larger Freedom issue . . .

. . . into a smaller one concerning gender respect.

North's perspective is figuratively identical to a "black" person telling the arresting "black" cop that:

"You're abusing me just 'cause I'm black"

. . . while the arrestee is standing over (yet another) black person that he has just shot.

North conveniently overlooks the fact that Whitmer's COVID-based restrictions on Liberty arguably exceeded, in scope and detail, those taken by any other state.

Indeed, judging by California (where I am at the moment), Governor Gavin Newsom — a male and arguably somewhat less blanketly dictatorial than Governor Whitmer has been reported to be — has taken equally hostile vitriol from essentially the same group of libertarian-minded folk that Ms. North incriminates.

As a result of that (and other applicable comparisons), Governor Whitmer's pandemic policy excesses — and the manner the opposition's criticisms — are arguably not all that gender-pertinent.

North possibly belongs to the same group that maintains that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election just because she was a woman. Not, perhaps, because Clinton promised to do exactly what a high proportion of Americans already hated about the Obama administration's failure to listen to them.

Hillary Clinton, the electorate seemed to agree, embodied abrasively displayed privileged status:

Was this because she was a woman?

Or maybe just because she was politically inept, as well as a not-so-appealing human being?

The misogyny issue may not be as overt as Anna North seems to imply.

The moral? — Missing the core point to any problem —is what most of us now seem pride themselves on

I agree with Paul Craig Roberts that:

We are witnessing the surrender of Western Civilization to barbarians.

I might have used the term, "idiot-barbarians" instead:

Throwing Baby out with (his, her or its) bathwater, is the now gone-viral trend.

We have become lemmings headed for the proverbial cliff.

Hopefully, we will volubly respect each other's identities, as we plunge (in variegated mass) to our shared, skull-crushing ends.

Is this progress — or just disproportionately displayed sensitivity in action?

PeteFree.com

In the developed West, rationality has fled — in favor of an unending stream of assertions about bias