The Sooth and Nothing but the Sooth, Forsooth
Although I can be stubborn (can’t we all?) I will, eventually, change my mind on things when presented with new evidence. The quality, precision and depth of argument of Senator Machaela Cavanaugh completely changed my mind on the trans issue, for example. You can listen to this brilliant speech here (3m 3s). You’ll be amazed at the sheer intellectual rigour and evidence she brings to bear.
The argument presented, stunning in its simplicity, consists of almost 3 minutes of chanting;
Transpeople belong here. We need transpeople. We love transpeople.
If you haven’t seen it before, I can thoroughly recommend watching the entire thing - even though you will find an almost impossible to resist urge to turn the psycho loop off after maybe 20 seconds or so.
I enjoyed it more than the last Marvel movie I watched - which probably isn’t saying very much.
What’s impressive here is the sheer vacuity on display. There’s no substance to her speech at all. It’s just a grandiose and self-serving display of emotion.
Perhaps it might be a useful exercise to compare this to Thomas Jefferson’s first Inaugural Address in 1801. I’ve lifted just the first two sentences here:
Called upon to undertake the duties of the first executive office of our country, I avail myself of the presence of that portion of my fellow-citizens which is here assembled to express my grateful thanks for the favor with which they have been pleased to look toward me, to declare a sincere consciousness that the task is above my talents, and that I approach it with those anxious and awful presentiments which the greatness of the charge and the weakness of my powers so justly inspire. A rising nation, spread over a wide and fruitful land, traversing all the seas with the rich productions of their industry, engaged in commerce with nations who feel power and forget right, advancing rapidly to destinies beyond the reach of mortal eye -- when I contemplate these transcendent objects, and see the honor, the happiness, and the hopes of this beloved country committed to the issue and the auspices of this day, I shrink from the contemplation, and humble myself before the magnitude of the undertaking.
Both speeches are self-serving1, but Cavanaugh wins it, hands down, for me in the “look at meeeeeeeee!” department.
What a difference 222 years makes, eh?
What the hell happened?
Sooth is an old English word meaning “truth”. A soothsayer was someone who was said to speak the truth.
What we have these days, however, are soothe-sayers.
They don’t orate, they emote.
They probably do, at some level, actually genuinely care, but these public displays are really about demonstrating to others how much they care.
Cavanaugh’s weird little psychotic episode served no-one but herself. It didn’t ‘help’ transpeople one jot - and may well have actively done more damage to them. It’s like the poor optics of Pride Month which, perhaps, should be called Fetish Month judging by some of the pictures we see. I really wish it was only a week long celebration - at least then we could call it Freak Week.
When you see Cavanaugh’s speech you don’t think “maybe she has a point”. No, you think, “What a fucking lunatic. Is this what trans is about?”
How have we gone from the power and eloquence of Jefferson to the emotional incontinence of Cavanaugh?
A clue might be found in a recent high school debate competition. I don’t know much about debating in the US (or the UK, for that matter), but I understand it in its formal sense of being a kind of “sport” designed to train the next generation of politicians and lawyers; people who can create the most fantastical garments from the flimsiest of cloths.
The idea is that you should be able to take some position, even one you profoundly disagree with, and argue its merits - and the quality of the arguments used, the evidence you bring to bear, and how you tie everything together is judged. It’s not an exercise in seeking “truth” - it’s a battleground in which there is a winner and a loser based entirely on the quality of the arguments and not their truth.
The summary of the debate, the final of a prestigious national debating competition (at High School level), is basically that Team A decided not to participate in arguing the assigned topic because the topic they wanted to discuss (trans genocide) was more important. Naturally, Team A were judged to have “won” the debate.
Apart from the baffling bonkerosity of the judges’ decision here2, there was a very interesting statement made by one of the members of Team A.
It's important to recognize that debate is not about winning an argument. It's about making sure everyone feels okay and making sure everyone feels safe
That’s almost the exact opposite of what a formal debate is. It’s about destroying your enemy on the debating floor. If either side feels “safe” during a debate, then they’re doing it wrong (or are just already wiping the floor with the opposition).
These people would try to cook a burger at a “safe” temperature and end up giving everyone food poisoning. They’re weak and fragile. Their “compassion” has turned them into simpering fluff-balls of emotion. The emotion is all sweet and sugary when applied to the “oppressed”. The emotion becomes dark and disturbing when applied to the “oppressor”.
This is not about the merits, or otherwise, of a formal debate structure, or its aims. This is a fundamental shift in attitude towards argumentation and the very processes we use to determine truth.
Uncomfortable questions, it seems, are off the table.
The pernicious influence of the PoMo notion that there is no “truth” to be had has also fed into this absurd state of affairs. Couple this with the vapid vacuous vilification of the “oppressor” and the notion of emotional safety and you’ve got one hell of a recipe for societal degeneration.
Apparently, Ben Shapiro, who regularly defies the laws of physics by making his mouth move faster than the speed of light, has recently had a debate at the Oxford Union. The content is worth chasing up but, again, what’s interesting here is the attitudinal shift implicit in some of the comments. Like this, for example:
Oh - pity the poor women! Just can’t do the machine-gun mouth like the men can, eh?
But the sexism implicit in this comment isn’t what’s disturbing. It’s the (incorrect) statement that debate is about mutual “respect” (etc) and not about “winning” - once again.
Why should anyone “respect” a view they find incorrect?
The ‘woke’, the Slogan People, certainly don’t respect opposing views, or anyone who disagrees with them do they?
I’m OK with that - as long as they don’t require of me what they, themselves, are not prepared to give.
As my mum used to say “if you can’t stand the heat, then get out of the kitchen”. To which I would add - and definitely don’t cook any burgers.
We’ve taken a wrong turn - we’ve let the lunatics run the asylum. Things like “diversity” and the whole attitudinal shift it implies3 have become our weakness, not our strength. There is no “diversity” of truth. Facts, however uncomfortable, are just that; facts.
How we deal with facts, how we interpret them - well, that’s a whole different thing altogether. You cannot wish facts away because you feel bad about them - but that’s precisely what The Slogan People seem to be doing - wittingly or otherwise.
The stifling of debate, the refusal to participate in debate, the unwillingness to be challenged, these are not healthy things at all.
We need far less soothe, and much more sooth.
All speeches of politicians are self-serving to some extent. There’s not much we can do to change our essential nature as human beings. If we had some unit of “self-serve”, let’s call it a Preen, then Jefferson’s speech might have a few tens of Preen. Cavanaugh’s speech is well into the GigaPreen territory.
To be fair, I think Team B conceded because they were afraid of appearing to be “transphobic”. Some debate, huh? Both teams should have been told to grow up and come back again when they’ve retrieved their balls from whatever safe space they’ve been hiding them in.
When “diversity” is given the woke makeover.
The bar is so very low these days... What happened indeed. I think shorter attention spans has a lot to do with it.
The rise of feminism, then postmodernism and now wokeism parallells perfectly the shuttering of mental institutions in all western nations. The US started shuttering most of those in the 1970s and 1980s, most of Europe outside the Eastern Block followed suit in the 1990s.
While correlation isn't proof, it's the first thing you look for and the corollary to "correlation isn't causation" is "ceteris paribus" - all else being equal.
(I'm folding all the Adorno, Foucault et al-inspired professors into the unholy trinity of feminism, postmodernism and woke.)
What else changed during the 1970s to the 1990s? How "higher education" is funded, both from the side of academia and the student in spe. The more students, the more money. A higher percentage of the population having gone to university or similar equalled - to the politicians - progress. An unsavoury and unsanitary, mentally speaking, union between politics and academia was born from this:
Academia validates and gives the seal of approval to politcal programs deemed insane and evil by the constituency; politicans fund academics in perpetuity and make laws to keep said academics from having to face such trifling things as needing proof.
"Som en gyllne ring i suggans tryne, är skönhet hos en kvinna som saknar vett";
"Like a golden ring in the sow's snout, is beauty in a woman lacking wisdom"