Authored by David Mackenzie via The Rebel,
A society that cares less about policy cares more about police. Nothing could illustrate this better than the recent experience of The Rebel’s own David Menzies while reporting on the Conservative Riding Association of King-Vaughan, northwest of Toronto.
When the rule of law is no longer respected by an organization’s supposed elite, the force of law is all that’s left. Due process bows out; the little guy bows down. That’s how it works.
Put another way: a society that cares less about truth cares more about power. We see this inverse relationship everywhere. We live inside a culture prone to fraud but eager for accolades. We’ll gladly lie and cheat for fame— which is just one way of saying that we’ll gladly trade the truth for power.
Think of the myriad ways in which fantasy is peddled in the hope of celebrity. We barely blink anymore at those bottom-dwelling web-ads which tell us that some blonde local-yokel is now earning $8K/week. Pictures apparently don’t lie— she’s partying right now on her private jet. And, amazingly, she’s from everyone’s hometown!
Where truth becomes irrelevant, what remains is power. This trend has various facets. A society that no longer cares about impartial principle becomes increasingly interested in advocacy. And what, precisely, is advocacy if it is not the desire for greater influence and power?
Hence, in times when truth matters less, partisanship matters more. Tribes and tribalism matter more.
Sounds like us.
A society that cares less about truth cares more about political image. That’s us, for certain.
Recently, an Irish investigative team stated publicly that in the now infamous 2011 trial of American doctor, Kermit Gosnell (the Philadelphia abortionist convicted of multiple counts of infanticide), prosecutors only brought eight counts of murder against him out of concerns that the annual murder rate in Pennsylvania might be significantly skewed if the full count was considered.
Sometimes truth hurts. Yet, if you haven’t noticed, culture is now more dominated by subjective feelings than by objective thoughts. Hence, it hates when it hurts.
In a Myers-Briggs sense, it increasingly looks as though all the thinkers have retired, leaving nothing but the feelers to dominate the culture. Dr. Jordan Peterson, a notable exception, is an eminent Canadian example of what happens when thinkers think irrespective of how cultures feel. Peterson is routinely swarmed by visceral outrage— but never logically beaten in debate. His graduate students are deprived of research grants— not because of shoddy research but rather because of the coercive use of financial power. Someone is offended.
And when truth becomes fundamentally offensive, all that remains is power.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-04-16/when-truth-becomes-irrelevant-what-remains-power?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+zerohedge%2Ffeed+%28zero+hedge+-+on+a+long+enough+timeline%2C+the+survival+rate+for+everyone+drops+to+zero%29
Realist - Everybody in America is soft, and hates conflict. The cure for this, both in politics and social life, is the same -- hardihood. Give them raw truth.
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