March of the Mad

The madness spreads. When Sarah Huckabee Sanders agreed to leave the Red Hen restaurant for fear of triggering the gay waiting staff who, presumably, felt she might demand they be thrown from the roof, it also triggered a sympathetic wave of idiocy among those who call themselves democrats and liberals. Maxine Waters  seized the opportunity for a bit of personal glory and called for republicans to be harassed in public. This is the left, ladies and gentlemen. Those who would have you believe that they act through the simple goodness of their overflowing hearts.

The nominally right tend to exercise disdain by individually withdrawing their patronage – because they can – but the left has convinced itself of a certain victim status and thus such a peaceful avenue is closed to its powerless members and instead unrest it must be. By any stretch this is surreal, but then they genuinely believe they occupy a higher moral ground and such action is justified. But this isn’t true; rather, due to the magnetic flux density of mutual reinforcement, their moral compass is out of whack and their needles rock and spin. Every direction is north if they say it is.

Mass delusion is not only real, it is a universal human instinct. Confirmation bias is natural and insidious, groupthink can ensnare even the loftiest thinker and when it comes to moral relativism it is practically a necessity that they keep inventing ever more fantastic stories to hold the narrative together. Thus it is that you get feminist groups unable to criticise islamic practices towards women and girls because shared perceived victimhood trumps even the actual agenda that brought them together.

Fake news, manufactured crises and even the incitement of violence – for Waters’ rallying cry will foment violence – is all excused because it is in the service of a higher moral truth. By many measures Obama was a mediocre president, but he was excused any shortcomings because he was a darling of the American left. His charm and easy manners wooed the like-minded across the world. Why, they gave him a Nobel peace prize just for winning the presidency!

Of course he didn’t bring world peace, eradicate inequality or invent a cure for cancer; he couldn’t fix everything, you idiots. Give him a break, goddammit. He wasn’t omnipotent, but he was, despite his wealth, power and influence, an identifiable member of an acceptable victim class and could, therefore, do no wrong. Lefties will insist they judge everybody by the same standards, yet Trump must personally micro-manage every last thing to the satisfaction of the eternally dissatisfied and everybody who supports what he stands for must also be so charged with direct responsibility for every outcome of every policy, whoever originated it.

There is no agenda here...

Here in the UK, Richard Dawkins, normally a paragon of logic and scientific method (although his fanatic atheism does bear all the hallmarks of the devout) allowed himself to be enveloped in the warm fuzzy blanket of groupthink when he tweeted that, among the people’s vote march he felt good to be with the decent half of the population. Wow. Such arrogance, such certainty. What is wrong with these people? Healthy scepticism used to be considered a virtue, but today that will get you nowhere. No, if you want to fit in, pick up a placard, grab a brick and go on the march. What are we marching for; who cares, eh?