The last time I talked about politics at work was April 29th, 1992. Since then, I’ve kept my mouth shut.
How can I be sure of the date? That’s easy. It was the day the verdict was announced for the trial of the LAPD officers that beat the shit out of Rodney King.
I was living in South Florida at the time and my office was filled with minorities. Well, technically, in South Florida, I was the minority. But let’s just say there were a lot of Rodney King sympathizers working in the cubes near mine. And they were pissed.
For most of the day, I listened to them bitch about how unfair the verdict was. But I didn’t say anything. Eventually I walked by a group of people, and they prodded me for my opinion.
You Asked…
I told them that I hadn’t seen the actual beating, nor had I seen any video that showed what prompted the officers’ response. I wasn’t at the trial, and hadn’t I seen any of the evidence or heard any of the testimony. And neither had they.
So, they really had two choices. They could either have no opinion at all or have the opinion that the jurors made the right call. <crickets chirping>
Based solely on the look of horror on all their faces, you might think I had just clubbed a baby seal to death. But I didn’t. I merely told them the opinion they cajoled me into sharing.
They all believed that Rodney King was an innocent victim, not because they had facts to back up their opinion, but because they felt he was innocent. In their minds, their subjective opinions outweighed the objective facts. Facts, I should add, that they weren’t even aware of.
If you lived in Southern California at the time, you could get trial updates by watching the local news. The people living in South Florida had to rely on CNN. Or, more specifically, CNN Headline News. For those of you who don’t remember, that was back when Headline News ran the same stories every half hour. Essentially, they were reinforcing their narrative every 30 minutes, 24 hours a day.
I realized right then and there that most people simply parrot back what they hear on CNN. Because that’s all they know. CNN destroyed a good portion of America’s ability to think for themselves.
Shortly after that, I decided to never talk about politics at work. Well, technically, my wife decided for me. But that’s practically the same thing.
Last week, my thirty-one-and-a-half-year streak almost ended.
Video Lunacy
I was on a video call with someone at work. We were talking about nothing in particular. Somehow, we got on the topic of the cost of living, and how everything costs at least 30% more than it did a couple of years ago. The guy I was talking with said something like, “Yeah, it used to be that you could pretty much count on the cost of living increasing 5-6 percent a year. But since COVID that’s no longer the case.”
I stared at him with my mouth hanging open for so long he thought the video had frozen. Finally, I shook my head to get my brain working again and told him something like, “If that’s what you truly believe, then we need to have a conversation at a different time. But I will say that the reason that everything costs almost half again what it did two years ago has absolutely nothing to do with COVID.”
He gave me a blank stare and we changed the subject.
My brother posted a meme the other day that I really like. It said, “The dots are practically touching, and people still can’t connect them”.
I’m constantly amazed at some people’s ability to remain ignorant. I mean, it’s hard work. With all the sources of information available, it requires some real effort for people to keep their heads stuck so firmly up their asses.
Why do you suppose that is? I have a theory about that.
Relativism
A few years before the trial, in 1987 to be more precise, a guy named Allan Bloom published a book titled, “The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today’s Students”.
His book was, at the time, a best seller and was met with either acclaim or derision, depending on one’s political beliefs.
In the book, Mr. Bloom points out that the problem with the youth of the 1980’s, and by extension, the problem that persists today, is that they’re being taught the dangerous and ridiculous notion of “relativism”.
Relativism is, in simple terms, the belief that there is no absolute truth, only the truths that a particular individual or culture happens to believe.
Yup. You heard that correctly. But I’m going to say it again a different way. According to relativism, nothing is objectively true or false. Everything is subjectively true or false.
And therein lies the problem.
Let’s look at a couple of examples.
You and I look at female circumcision, honor killings, and gang rape and believe that those are horrible things. But a relativist (if that’s even a word) believes that we need to consider the culture of the people doing the female genital mutilation, honor killings and gang rapes. Because those things are part of someone’s culture, then it’s considered acceptable if someone within that culture does them.
Same thing goes with Hamas senselessly killing and raping thousands of Israeli civilians. A relativist won’t condemn those acts because they’re part of the Palestinian culture. Because killing Israeli civilians must be just for the sole reason that that’s what Hamas did.
It’s also why people afraid of guns want to ban them, why men are allowed to compete in women’s sports, why little girls are forced to share restrooms with full-grown men and why people are against Trump simply because they think he’s mean.
Ever wondered where all these insane Liberal ideas originate? The answer is simple…relativism. And they’ve been teaching this shit to university students for nearly five decades.
Relativism teaches that the facts don’t matter. The only things that matter are the feelings of the person making the observation.
So, for example, it doesn’t matter that the facts clearly show that there are two sexes. What matters is how someone feels about their gender.
There is only “the truth”
You’ve heard people say, I think Oprah popularized the term, “my truth”? That’s relativism.
The term “my truth” is just another way of saying “my opinion”. Opinions and facts are two completely different things. You and I can have wildly differing opinions, and yet neither one of us has any facts to back our opinions up. I have no problem with people having opinions. But someone forcing me to make their beliefs my beliefs is where I draw the line.
What I find interesting is that the people who are so adamant about forcing their “truths” on everyone else are the same assholes who violently protest the rest of us simply stating our opinions.
Now, you can be a dude who believes he’s a woman. I don’t really care. If that’s “your truth” then…whatever. The problem is when you try to force your “truths” to be everyone else’s “truths”. And that dog won’t hunt. I won’t allow you to replace my objective facts with your subjective beliefs.
It’s been nearly thirty-two years since the Rodney King verdict and people still can’t think for themselves. As bad as it was back then, it’s only gotten worse. Most people now just believe whatever their phone tells them to believe. And instead of the narrative being reinforced every 30 minutes, it’s reinforced every few seconds. 24 x 7.
The convergence of relativism being taught in the classroom and a screen in every pocket has turned generations of people into unthinking drones, eager to agree with even the silliest of notions, as long as it gets them “likes”.
Social media has replaced cable news as the go-to source for the next generation, and students are being taught that critical thinking and having the good sense to question the increasingly-ridiculous Liberal agenda, is hurtful, non-inclusive and triggering. Oh yeah…and racist.
And it’s exactly that thinking that’s the reason people have become so quick to jump on the bandwagon of the latest made-up social injustice that they have closed their minds to asking the right questions.
Or any questions at all.
