What do you call a civilisation that cannot tell the difference between a man and a woman? How about a civilisation that allows men to use the female restroom because they identify as female? And (in the case of America) a civilisation where large multinational companies boycott whole states because those states pass laws defining the terms “male” and “female” as a person’s “immutable biological sex as objectively determined by anatomy and genetics at time of birth”?
What do you call a civilisation that legally kills hundreds of thousands of its own citizens each year? How about a civilisation where those that support those deaths do so by invoking words like “my choice” and “my right”? And (again in the case of America) a civilisation that, when faced with a barrage of videos exposing the harvesting of baby organs, prosecutes the guy that made the videos, rather than the organ harvesters?
What do you call a civilisation where hundreds of thousands of tiny children are put into day care, while their mothers go into the workplace to pay for them to go into day care? How about a civilisation that responds to the increasing behavioural problems of children by coming up with a series of acronym-labels to attach to them? And a civilisation that treats those acronymed children with powerful drugs to pacify or stupefy them?
Hopefully, you will have correctly identified it as an asylum, a madhouse of gargantuan proportions where craziness and folly, far from being looked upon as things to be avoided, are celebrated with banners and ribbons and parades and held up as evidence of something called “progress”.
Progress? Bruce Springsteen certainly thinks so. He recently cancelled a show in North Carolina because the state legislature there thinks that men really are men and women really are women, and that folks have the right not to be forced to write slogans that they disagree with on cakes. And he did so apparently because he wanted to raise his voice “in opposition to those who continue to push us backwards instead of forwards.” That’s right. Correctly identifying an X chromosome as an X chromosome and not a Y chromosome is a mark of backwardness, and forcing bakers to write stuff that directly contradicts their ethical beliefs is a sign of forwardness.
A few years back I wrote a satirical piece for another publication which dealt with what I called “Transkindophobia”. I was trying to get ahead of the curve to anticipate a time when, bored with merely changing genders, someone somewhere would come up with the idea of changing their kind. From man to giraffe in fact. Not only this, but a new “hate” label would have to be invented for those who called out this madness: Transkindophobia. But things have moved on apace since then, with reality not only catching up with satire but kicking up the dust in its face as it sprints on past, and so I was only mildly surprised when I read recently of a man who having first tried to become a woman (emphasis on tried – it’s that irksome Y chromosome again), is now trying to turn himself into a dragon. I’m not sure what chromosomes dragons have – D maybe? – but he’d love to have it. And no, unfortunately I’m not kidding. Google Eva Tiamat Medusa if you need convincing and prepare yourself for a shock.
The problem, though, is not so much the odd “transgender dragon”, but rather that what two minutes ago was seen by 99 per cent as obvious folly now has the official stamp of approval. “Men are men”, “women are women” is something that every previous generation – without fail – would have readily confirmed. But now men may be women, or six-year-old girls or even dragons, and this is sold to us like the unearthing of infinite wisdom that has been buried beneath thousands of years of human backwardness and repression.
But though the answer to the “what do you call a civilisation” questions at the beginning might well be “open day at the asylum,” the stakes are much higher than that. It is also clearly a civilisation on its last legs. That’s irony for you. The Bruce Springsteens and the “progressives” of this world see a new world opening up before them, one where the old certainties are being left behind and we’re all being made new again. Forward march! But unfortunately what they took to be a new world opening up before them turned out to be yawning chasm – you know, the one that Wile E Coyote sees out of the corner of his eye just moments after he thought he’d finally caught Roadrunner, only to realise he’s heading for the splat!
This is what cultures look like before they die. They proclaim their great and infinite wisdom exactly at that moment of embracing the biggest follies. Yet the arrogance and hubris won’t allow them to see it, and it’s left for the future historians to scratch their beards and wonder how it was possible for that many people to have believed that up and down are interchangeable concepts. We need to rediscover that up really is up and down really is down, and we need to do so urgently before we find out that down really is down as we take a tumble off Wile E Coyote’s cliff and find ourselves splat on the rocks below.
(Image: joergermeister)
