Day: June 20, 2020

When my kid was very little, she asked me about a photo of me at the 2000 New Year’s party, and I replied, “Oh, this was before you were born.”

She didn’t like that at all. The idea that there was a time before she existed was intolerable. “I was born, Mommy! I was born!” she insisted. “I remember it! It was a great party!”

Gradually, she learned to understand the concept of the past. Instead of threatening, it became interesting, an object of curiosity.

This is what normal development of a human brain looks like. At first, the idea that the world existed before you and people have relationships and interests that are not about you is terrifying. But then you grow and get over it. Once you are completely over it, childhood ends.

Or if you didn’t go through the age-appropriate stages of development, it doesn’t end. Then, you run around, possessed by rage and destroying everything that reminds you that you are not the center of the world, that there are people who are valued more than you because of the important, grown-up things they accomplished, and that life existed before you and will go on after you.

This is the same thing that motivates the fantasies of “the world ending in 12 years.” It’s called “a narcissistic wound” and it makes people lash out in irrational, childlike rage against the intolerable knowledge that the entirety of human civilization is not about them.

People keep assuming that the destruction of the monuments to Cervantes or Ulysses S. Grant or the AIDS Memorial are “a mistake” on the protesters’ part.

A forthcoming post on this blog will explain how it’s not a mistake. It’s not a bug, it’s a feature.

Stay tuned.

Klara grabs a pair of American flags, hands one over to me, and says, “Let’s go fill the bird feeders, Mommy!”

“Why are we bringing flags?” I ask.

“Because we are doing this for America,” she explains. “We are helping American birds! That’s a very nice thing to do for America.”

Turns out that the same people who destroyed the statue of Junípero Serra vandalized the Cervantes statue nearby.

Cervantes, of course, wasn’t completely perfect. Certainly, he wasn’t nearly as perfect as the sainted protesters. Plus, he was Hispanic, and that’s icky.

What’s really funny about leftists is that when you express an opinion they don’t like, they immediately try to educate you, offering inane Wikipedia links or Instagram memes aimed at enlightening you.

It does not occur to them that somebody might have access to the facts but has simply reached a different conclusion. If anybody on the planet disagrees with them, that can only be because those who disagree are either evil or stupid. No other possibility exists.

They have really bought into the argument that holding the opinions they do is a sign both of an incandescent moral virtue and profound knowledge. This is why semiliterate teenagers on Twitter are sincerely exhorting scholars with decades of experience in fields like biology to “educate themselves” on biology.

The statues whose toppling actually hurt my feelings are Columbus and Junípero Serra.

There’s nothing cute about the destruction of the Hispanic legacy of this continent in the name of the indigenous whose opinions nobody asks even while avenging the sin of not asking their opinion.

The only culture the “protesters” can tolerate is that of Facebook memes. Everything else is too complex, flawed, and confusing.

Please spare me the childish accounts of Serra’s imperfections. I don’t happen to believe that the creation of a gigantic Spanish-speaking culture in this hemisphere was a bad thing. And if you do, I suggest you find some Hispanic people and address your reasoning as to how their existence is a huge historic mistake to them.

Although knowing the self-centeredness of the “I’m morally superior to history” crowd, they just might.

A professor is removed from his position for stating a fact.

Everybody (except for the most brainwashed) know that the professor spoke the truth. Even people who forced him to resign know it. What’s the purpose of faking outrage against him, then?

Well, the way it works is that everybody has to prove allegiance to the regime by loudly defending things they know to be untrue. You are of no use if you parrot the parts of the dogma you have sincerely accepted. No, you have to go against what you absolutely know to be true.

And you have to prove your complete loyalty by denouncing a friend or a relative over a belief you share. That’s the ultimate test.

Unless you can do that, you’ll get no peace. You’ll be pushed and goaded and forced to accept increasingly monstrous lies.