The Hypocritic Oath

Imagine the scenario. The country of Wokistan invades Bigotonia. The inhabitants of Bigotonia fight back and are denounced for creating a war.

“Why didn’t you just let us peacefully invade? You’ve created a really divisive and nasty mess by defending yourselves”

It would be hard to imagine anyone taking such a view of the inhabitants of Bigotonia seriously. And yet this is precisely what the ‘woke’ do. They attack all sorts of cultural institutions and when people object, when people defend their values and institutions, it is the defenders who are blamed for stoking a “culture war”.

The resultant war, fought online and in workplaces and in the courts, can indeed turn a bit toxic¹. On both sides.

What happens then? Well, then the ‘woke’ present themselves as the “reasonable” ones and point to the toxic divisions that are being created, without ever once mentioning it was they who created them in the first place.

We saw this kind of thing playing out in the recent UK election fight². The brand new PM of the UK, Sir Shiny Starmer, waffled on about how these issues are divisive and that he and his Party of the Pompous Platitude would sort it all out and reduce tensions.

It seems that the way these Gormless Goons are going to do this is to introduce more ‘hate’ speech legislation.

Oh yippee. Just what we fucking need.

Translation : We’re going to ‘reduce’ tension by so controlling the debate that there is no debate at all.

It’s very similar to the covid playbook; stigmatize any opposition to the official narrative as coming from deficient people. Not only scientifically deficient, but also morally deficient people. And then suppress their ability to reach an audience.

You have to hand it to the ‘woke’. They’ve been hugely successful at painting themselves as the ‘good guys’, the holders of virtue and the grand defenders of morality.

They are, of course, nothing of the sort.

The majority of those supporting ‘woke’ are not bad people at all. They have been hoodwinked into believing themselves to be doing the right thing, the compassionate thing. They’ve been seduced and charmed by words like inclusion, equity, tolerance, love, empathy and compassion.

Who doesn’t want to be seen as compassionate?

It’s a very selective thing though. Oodles of (so-called) compassion for people in the right groups, and no compassion, or even hatred, for those in the wrong groups. The divisions are created both on ideological and identity grounds. If you are in the right identity group you’re good to go. If you’re in the wrong ideological group, you’re very much not good to go even if you check all the right identity boxes.

This is why, for example, you can have black people who oppose ‘woke’ ideology described, by these so-called ‘good guys’, in vile and racist ways.

It’s not difficult to see how this can be engineered. You label a bunch of people as The Oppressed™ and identify another bunch of people as The Oppressors™ and it’s pretty much job done. Good people will feel an instinctive revulsion at those doing the “oppression”.

It’s OK to hate “oppressors” isn’t it?

Over the last couple of decades everything seems to have gone all a bit “drama queen” on us.

Kids don’t just have bad days, they have anxiety issues. People get traumatized when the wrong pronouns are used. People with a bad fake tan are a threat to ‘our’ democracy. If you want to hire the best person for the job, you’re a racist. Looking at a woman in the wrong way is sexual harassment³. People feel themselves to be unsafe when they hear a counter opinion. J6 wasn’t a protest it was an insurrection. And we’re now in the era of global boiling.

I suppose it’s (sort of) fair enough. After all, I am myself perhaps a bit too over fond of overblown rhetoric. What can I say? It helps to pass the time. We all have our ‘hot button’ issues. But I’m just a weird rando on the internet with next to no influence. I expect more, much more, from those who have a responsibility to be more measured and balanced.

We only need to recall the bizarre spectacle of the Nebraskan senator Machaela Cavanaugh giving a ‘speech’ in support of trans people. It’s oddly compelling, like one of those nature documentaries in which gorillas take a dump and proceed to eat it. You watch with a kind of horrified fascination (3m 6s)

It’s nothing but a bundle of emotion. I’ve watched this clip several times now with always the same degree of fascination. It’s kind of essential viewing if you want to get an insight into what’s driving things. (Hint : it isn’t careful rational thinking).

Emotion is fine. We need our emotions. They often spur us into great acts of selflessness and nobility. Uncontrolled emotion, however, can be a very dangerous thing indeed.

You can see how ramping up the drama dial plays out. Take, for example, the following progression :

Some cops are bad —> All Cops Are Bastards (ACAB) —> Defund the Police

You go from a reasonable position to batshit crazy in next to no time at all.

Another example can be found in the treatment of J.K. Rowling. If you read the things she writes, and in particular the essays that seem to have kicked off the whole anti-Rowling sentiment, you have to do a stretch worthy of Reed Richards to find anything remotely resembling ‘hate’ in her writing. And yet she’s reviled (by some) as being an extremely hateful person.

You kind of want to take these people to one side and give them a good shake and tell them to stop being such drama queens.

We might want to point to several potential factors as being responsible for this current trend of hypersensitivity. We might blame the media (with good reason), or social media, or the obvious decline in educational standards. We might even think about various endocrine disruptors that might have entered our diet.

Have a look at the speeches by the great politicians of yesteryear. Pick whichever ‘side’ you like. They are, often, superbly eloquent, thoughtful and powerful, delivered by people with a clear intellect who have thought deeply about the issues (even if you think they’re wrong).

Today you get the impression that swathes of PR people have taken our ‘leaders’ to one side and told them “you need to talk to them as if they’re 5 years’ old - and not very bright 5 year olds, at that”.

Politics has always been about swaying our emotions to some extent. The ancient Greeks recognized this only too well and put arguments into 3 categories; pathos, logos and ethos. A typical argument, in totality, may well contain all 3. Broadly speaking these are :

Pathos : an appeal to emotion
Logos : an appeal to logic
Ethos : an appeal to authority

You’ll note that a lot of ‘woke’ arguments almost exclusively centre around the pathos and ethos bits.

The Oppressed™ : an appeal to emotion (pathos)
Lived Experience™ : an appeal to authority (ethos)

I sometimes get the impression that the whole PoMo program was about eliminating logos as an acceptable form of argumentation. That’s probably far too simplistic, but now we have people talking seriously about things like “your truth” and not “the truth”.

Your truth (ethos) has to be respected (pathos) and, in many cases (if not most), supersedes the actual truth.

The problem when you unbalance things like this is that you can pretty much steer things in any direction you like. Therein lie the gas chambers.

Pathos, Logos, and Ethos are a bit like the three arms of government in the US. They’re meant to provide a kind of balancing system so that nothing gets out of control. Without the logos bit we get the drama dial reading “Max Trauma” all the time.

In the context of the culture war it’s often quite amusing to see commentators accusing the ‘right wing’ of losing their minds over trivial shit. A bit like some bloke in a dress having a hissy fit over being ‘mis-gendered’, then?

It’s usually the woke who seem to get their panty-clad bollocks in a sweaty mess, if I’m being honest.

This kind of behaviour has been termed “The Iron Law of Woke Projection”. I think it was James Lindsay who coined it.

Hypocrisy seems to be more accepted these days than it should be.

We can all be hypocrites. Of course. We’re imperfect creatures. It happens. But we should, at least, aim for some degree of humility and attempt to recognize and correct our hypocrisy. Without humility there can be no honest and genuine self-reflection.

Like good managers, governments should be enablers. Most of us probably know the nightmare of having to work with a “micro-manager” who just can’t seem to leave everyone alone to just get on with their job. Governments have become the ultimate micro-managers these days.

Governments expect us to trust them, but have no trust whatsoever in us.

Hypocrites much?

1. Comments online can get a bit nasty on both sides, but it has to be said that one side does tend to be rather more extreme than the other with a much higher frequency. Actual violence is also more or less the exclusive province of one side, too. Bash the fash and punch a TERF in the fucking face being two examples of the attitude

2. It wasn’t much of a fight. It might rank as the least inspiring UK election ever. Around 40% of the eligible voters thought so, too. They couldn’t be bothered to vote at all

3. This was actually listed as an example of sexual harassment by a BBC article