A portion of my life was spent in government where I learned that while poor decisions are usually generated by ignorance and sloth, not all of them have those roots.
We’ve entered an era of meanness, one where zealots believe they have a monopoly on the truth and that any non-believers are enemies.
This affects everyday conversations. After all, when one is seized by the certainty that truth is already possessed, there is little interest in discussing its location.
As a result, there are two camps: the intellectual bullies and their targets.
Targets were taught to beware of narrowmindedness and to be open to considering the opinions of others. They learned to listen carefully to counter-arguments in order to see if there are potential areas of agreement. They were told to avoid personal attacks.
The intellectual bully camp does not follow those rules. When they set the table for discussion, it is designed to facilitate a pre-ordained result. Their door to truth is identity and there is no greater identity than that of the victim.
As a result, victims are regarded as having perspectives not available to the non-victims - such as those inherently evil white males - and therefore the view of the victims is the one which should govern. Their view will be the truth.
You and I know that not every victim is wise or correct. Not everyone gleans the right lessons from their victimhood. Some may have been warped by the experience and some, truth be known, have become victims due to their own conduct. No one else is to blame and cultivating that excuse can severely prolong victimhood.
If you’ve been following cancel culture, however, you know that such possibilities are accorded no weight.
If this seems to resemble the coercive techniques used in China’s Cultural Revolution, that’s because it does. The more you object and call for broader perspectives, the guiltier you are.
Consider the significance of that. In many of our circles, silence denotes assent and thus an innocent who is accused of wrongdoing will vigorously object.
There are others, however, who believe that if you are truly innocent, then you don’t respond to allegations that don’t pertain to you. You simply ignore them and remain silent.
Ah, but if the allegations do apply to you and you object, you’re the dog in the pack that was hit by a thrown stone. You yelped while the others remained silent.
Your protests mean you are guilty.
Which brings to mind the old story of the peasant who told the Czarist prosecutor that he’d never harmed a fly. The prosecutor responded, “And the fly that you spared brought disease to a village.”
People who sincerely engage in quests for truth possess a level of intellectual humility. They don’t pretend to have all of the answers. They want to review the evidence.
Their opposites, however, are adept at intellectual bullying. They operate with the certainty that they have the answers and that anyone in their way needs to be subdued or removed.
There was an often-heard line in the Sixties: “If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.” That’s catchy but it avoids the key questions:
Just who will decide what is the problem?
Who will decide what is the solution?
Rest assured that those who loved that line were eager to provide the answer.
When corporations, governments, and non-profits began to slip into the swamp of speech-squashing and mob-pleasing, many of us wondered why none of the usual guardians, such as lawyers and Equal Employment Opportunity officers, protested.
Those people are so well-trained and confident, we assumed that they must be able to raise objections and sound the alarm.
The hard truth is that many of them may have been silenced by fear: fear of protests, career suicide, and embarrassment.
And one other: the threat of physical harm. A shameful aspect of our times is the extent to which people who do not bow to the bullies have to hire private security firms.
When the usual guardians are silent, there is always a reason.
They may have gone over to the other side. After all, they don’t have to become advocates. Passivity or studied neutrality may be very attractive. All that they have to do is to remain silent while pretending to do their job and the bullies will win.
It’s a modern version of the old Sherlock Holmes story involving the dog that didn’t bark. That silence was the unusual occurrence and it happened for a reason.
[My debut novel, Pilate’s Magician, is available at Amazon.]