The Fat Edge of the Wedge

Every morning I spend a little time perusing Twitter. I see something that tweaks my interest and save a link, or some image, thinking about how I could use this in the future to make some point - or just for laughs.

It sounds like a good strategy, but I now have several folders with stuff I’ve collected and I have no idea where it’s come from or what the image relates to.

A case in point. I’ve no idea where the following came from - a news article, perhaps? It’s a comment on the practice of racial discrimination against Asians practiced by elite universities in the US.

Is there an acceptable proportion of Asians? The mind boggles. I have difficulty comprehending the mindset required to even think such a sentence, let alone publish it.

I’m sorry Mr Lee, I know your family have been here for 4 generations, and you’re as American as I am, but, you see, if I let you into my restaurant it would mean I have an unacceptable proportion of Asians in it. Can you just wait for an hour or so, and try again?

Oddballs, weirdos, and people several spikes short of a virus have always been with us. As have thoroughly nasty, vile and hateful folk. It’s hard to tell whether proportionally things have stayed constant - but I’m certainly seeing a lot more batshit bonkers babblings than I ever did before. One can only hope it is simply because this stuff is more visible now because of social media, and not because it’s more prevalent.

Somehow, though, I doubt it. The capture of governments, institutions, and corporations by these new social astrologies has been widespread, and perhaps almost complete. It has, in my view, gone quite a long way beyond the mere amplification, and higher visibility, of the views of a bunch of weirdos on the internet.

I can understand corporations making a commercial decision to protect themselves against potential lawsuits for causing (emotional) “harm”, or having (emotionally) “unsafe” working environments. Putting in place various departments of, and training programs for, Diversity Woo might be seen as a sound protective investment to ward off legal, financial and reputational damage. The problem, if this is a correct assessment for some corporations, is that they have to do this at all.

At some point ‘we’ (the collective we) decided that certain opinions, certain statements, caused ‘harm’. Some words, some opinions, were even equated with violence. And, even though, no sirree, should we ever use the slippery slope fallacy, the number of things classified as “hate speech” seems to grow daily.

Remember when the President of the US recently called a significant chunk of the population of the US “extremists” for supporting his erstwhile opponent? This wasn’t “hate” speech (of course not) but supporting the Orange Man was deemed to be evidence of “hateful” opinions.

You could BLM¹ to your heart’s content, and get light sentences, or even none at all. But getting a bit frothy on Jan 6th - that was deemed to be in a different category - almost treasonous, because you were part of an insurrection! From this side of the pond, and admittedly I probably don’t know all the ins and outs, it looked like the most lame ass insurrection in the history of insurrections to me - even though there were, regrettably, some violent moments (which were wrong and as deserving of legal punishment as those perpetrated by the Summer rioters).

But at least in the Jan 6th Protest and the BLM protests there was actual harm done.

I’ve mentioned this one before, and I will mention it again because it’s one more of the many cases where I have to consult my Vietnamese friend Wot DaPhuq. The police in the UK actually arrested someone for causing anxiety. That’s kind of bad enough - having a crime of “causing anxiety” is problematic, to say the least². But the guy was arrested for calling someone else a muppet. You’re ‘anxious’ because someone called you a fucking muppet? And the police arrested someone for this ‘crime’? Wot DaPhuq, please help me out here.

And the recent case in the UK of the woman arrested for praying, to herself, within 500m of an abortion clinic. She said nothing, did nothing, carried no placards or signs - she just stood on a public street and prayed silently. Technically, she was arrested for violating previous court orders - as lots of people have pointed out in ‘defending’ the police’s actions here. But this is, probably deliberately, missing the point. The prior court orders were issued for? Yes, you guessed it - the same thing³. Silently standing and praying.

One of the ‘standards’ used by the law in the UK in deciding these cases where ‘offence’ might play a part (at least in the past) is the notion of a reasonable person. Would a reasonable person find the remark ‘offensive’ or ‘hateful’?

If you are able to manipulate thinking so that, for example, some new, all-improved reasonable person finds misgendering offensive, what then? Tricky one that, isn’t it? This shifting of what is “reasonable” might be a good thing. None of us, I hope, want to go back to the ‘good old days’ where overt racism and homophobia was rampant. I certainly don’t. So, societal attitudes about what constitutes offence, and what is reasonable, do change for the better.

But is there a limit here? In ten years’ time might this so-called majority reasonableness find a statement like “sex is binary” to be offensive? And if you’re in the US, might you be given a fine for wearing a MAGA hat, or placed on some terrorist watchlist?

The magnificent, and much missed, Christopher Hitchens expressed the problem beautifully (as he did with so many other things)

To whom do you award the right to decide which speech is harmful, or who is the harmful speaker? . . . To whom would you delegate the task of deciding for you what you could read - to relieve you of hearing what you might have to hear? To whom would you give this job?

This all-pervasive notion that we must be protected from ‘harmful’ opinion extends into medicine. If, as a clinician, you’ve looked at the data and come to the opinion that a particular course of treatment might carry unacceptable risks, for example, or that some off-licence re-purposed drug might be beneficial, you are no longer free to exercise your professional opinion in some jurisdictions. Sure, you might be wrong - but your professional ability and right to make that assessment on behalf of your patients is now out of your hands. You must adhere to the government line.

I’m seeing a lot of promotion of masking popping up on my Twitter feed recently. Yes - that superstitious bullshit all over again. But how long will it be before a clinician loses their medical licence for questioning the efficacy of masks? Wouldn’t happen? I certainly wouldn’t bet on it.

And what about another ‘medical’ issue - biological sex? At the moment it’s safe to say that ‘reasonable’ opinion is still squarely on the side of science - the majority of folk think the new Gender Astrology is a load of bollocks and that if you have bollocks, you’re a man. But as one talk recently demonstrated, students get a bit annoyed when faced with anyone making statements that only women have wombs. Here’s a couple of screenshots taken just before the gender astrologists erupted in protest

Jordan (Marmite⁴) Peterson is under attack in Canada - he’s being asked to submit himself for some kind of “re-education program” by the official body responsible for accrediting clinical psychologists. If he does not undergo this process and, one presumes, have his wrongthink corrected, he is in danger of losing his licence to practice as a clinical psychologist. Apparently some of his Tweets and other statements, including some that criticize Justly Turd-Oh, are not acceptable.

The point of this attack, of course, is not to take down JBP. It probably won’t succeed. It’s to use an extremely high-profile individual to send a message to other psychologists : stay in line, or else.

How long will it be before doctors are prevented from considering weight as a medical issue? Will they have to affirm their patient in their lardosity? It’s another of those things that probably won’t happen, but how much are you willing to bet on that?

And if we can’t be re-programmed to be ‘body-positive’ then there’s always the wacism angle.

Libs of TikTok @libsoftiktok

Wanting to be skinny is racist

I was devastated, devastated I tell you, to learn that my New Year’s Resolution to get myself back into shape, to reduce my ample lardosity, was just another example of my white supremacy in action.

And what would 2023 be without a reminder of the Pendulous Protrusions of Progressivism?

The point (or points?) here isn’t that this may, or may not, be a spectacular troll. The issue here is that the ‘officials’ - the school and school board etc, defended this clearly inappropriate behaviour.

Well, I use the word ‘clearly’ here because I think it is reasonable to view this as inappropriate. But how much longer will my position here be viewed as reasonable?

1. Burn, Loot and Maraud.

2. It’s not wholly stupid - one must acknowledge that emotional distress might be a factor to consider in cases of stalking, or prolonged harassment, for example.

3. At least as far as I currently understand the situation. I would welcome correction here - it’s possible her previous court orders were for different behaviours that could warrant them.

4. Marmite is a polarizing substance that is spread on bread. It is said that you either love it, or hate it. I love the stuff - a Marmite and (cheddar) cheese butty is awesome.