Do You Sense the Storm That’s Coming?

He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind — Proverbs 11:29

A storm is brewing. A perfect storm motivated by human frustration – which will, if unleashed, swamp everything in its path. The cause of this potential cyclonic change is a simple idea, which is the governing principle in the complex psychological, political and social world in which we live. The principle affects relationships between women and men; the boundaries of democracy and free speech; how we access entertainment and technology – what you can watch, listen to and read; where you travel and go on holidays; how you raise your children (and what they are taught at school); the culture of your job and how you engage with your co-workers and employers – and, in broad terms, the philosophical principles that guide each of our lives. In other words, almost everything that concerns the average human being.

The problem, in brief, is the institutional capture of bureaucracy and how it has affected everything from major international organisations, such as the United Nations, to the impact it has on the laws governing the Human Resources department in your job. The tempest, which will instigate a revolution unless we reform politics, is the inevitable outcome of a philosophy created by a moralistic, hectoring class sitting in communion at a round table in narcissistic self-regard. The issue, in summary, is that ordinary, everyday people are sick of being told what they can say, think and believe; and, in particular, they are tired of being told how (what language they are allowed use), they can articulate their understanding of the world.

This imposed self-censorship – being allowed speak, but not being allowed to use truthful and accurate language, which delimits honesty and gives succour to con men, virtue signallers and ideologues, is the curse of what could be termed postmodern modernity; and it is behind the frustration that led to Brexit, the election of Donald Trump, the growing contempt for intersectional feminism, and the hatred of identity politics in all its forms, whether it manifests as sexual, gay, racial, trans, cultural or political. It underpins the pervasive distrust of elites (the politically correct Establishment, in other words), who lie with the certainty of the elect, and always with the ethics and confidence of a smiling assassin or of a television evangelist. Its most recognisable trait is that of the eternally wagging finger.

The latent, inchoate storm, which could be unleashed at any moment, was created by an earlier perfect storm – the once in a hundred years confluence of disparate philosophies: socialism, environmentalism, feminism and postmodernism, which together have created an intolerant establishment that is anti-democratic in theory and practice.

What the capture of institutions and the policing of language means is that all political, social and philosophical issues are already weighted in favour of progressives, who immediately, when challenged, shout epithets to silence dissent. Their words are protean, endlessly malleable to contemporary circumstances, and revolve around some iteration of the following insults: racist, sexist, homophobic, colonialist and classist. What this top-down language inquisition means, is that critics of progressive ideology are hamstrung before they speak. The dice is weighted in favour of the elites who utter feel-good platitudes instead of engaging in robust debate. The die is cast even further, though, because, if critics of the Establishment use the language of their tormentors, they’ll be accused of ‘dog whistling’. Anyone who strays outside this linguistic convention is attacked and derided as an extremist, or an uneducated and grotesque fool.

This has profound, real-world consequences, because our knowledge of the world is a constantly evolving process. Science is never completely settled and new perspectives on age-old issues should be welcomed. That, though, is not how the equality consensus works. Nothing that undermines the idea that people are equal on every measure is allowed; and every lie or disingenuous untruth to further this mythology is encouraged.

The perfect storm of institutional capture works as follows.

The feminist idea of ‘social construction’ — in essence, that there is no reality outside language — has brought us to the ludicrous position of denying biological reality. Women and men are interchangeable and any differences in political, social or economic outcomes are the result of sexism. Also, men are women and women are men and there is no ‘privileged’ standpoint from which we can determine sex. Scientific evidence is entirely rejected.

Socialists invented political propaganda before the Nazis, and they have been more successful in its implementation to the extent that commonplace socialist lies are uttered everyday by people who do not identify as socialist. The strategy is deliberate. Trotsky argued that lying in the cause of proletarian revolution was not lying; it was justified to overthrow capitalism and liberal democracy. The Frankfurt School in another iteration of the equality consensus introduced the concept of ‘cultural hegemony’, a refinement of Friedrich Engels’ notion of ‘false consciousness’, the idea that no-one understands their own needs and desires, and that people are so naïve that they can be manipulated at will by the puppet masters of capitalism, and not the simple truth that Jack would like to play the guitar or Jill wants to drive a car.

Environmentalists have made so many apocalyptic predictions that haven’t come true it is extraordinary anyone still listens to anything they say. The world has been coming to an end since the first Earth Day in 1970. Miraculously, we’ve survived 53 years past the beginning of Armageddon. While environmentalists may believe they are saving the planet, in real terms, they are attacking the idea of merit and enforcing equality. We can all be miserable together.

The glue that brings the disparate strands of the perfect storm together is the anti-rationalist philosophy of postmodernism, which rejects all notions of truth. The arguments underpinning the ‘colonial oppression’ argument of the Voice’s proposal for constitutional change in Australia, for example, are based on a wholesale rejection of historical evidence. Narrative, mediated through mythology, folklore, and lived experience, is given more credence than reason.

The dominant ideology, in essence, is equality based on self-esteem, and nothing is allowed undermine what has, through constant repetition, assumed mythical status. The difference in physical strength between men and women, the intellectual and technical achievements of Western civilisation versus indigenous cultures, and the comparative difference in wealth between capitalist countries and everyone else, are all examples of claimed systemic oppression, and have nothing to do, according to the equality consensus, with reason, culture, biology or good policy.

All the strands come together in a perfect storm of emotionalism, irrationality and a smug refusal to listen. Instead of raising people up, the ideology, because of its underlying philosophy of self-esteem, drags everyone down to the lowest common level, with the result that we have a mental health crisis among the young who are constantly told that they are neurodiverse, non-binary and could possibly be living in the wrong body. If everyone is disturbed, then no one is disturbed. It’s the self-esteem of no expectations. Recently, Target, Budweiser, Starbucks and other companies lost billions of dollars in market value as a direct consequence of their support of transgender ideology. This is a squall in the coming typhoon. Ordinary people are finally noticing that this enforced, anti-democratic, anti-free speech, anti-truth agenda is impacting negatively on their lives and the lives of their children. And they are breaking free of the constraints of ideologically imposed language.

Another perfect storm is on the horizon.

Batten down the hatches. We’re not in Kansas anymore.