Nancy Regan declared a war on drugs in 1982 when she told a highschool student to “just say no” to drugs. It launched a whole movement but critics are saying today that it may have actually made drug use worse. I wonder what Nancy would say today with the opening of these safe injection sites like those around Toronto and Vancouver. Yes, drugs are bad but we didn’t get anywhere treating the people who take them as bad. And there’s a hell of a lot more nuance to substance abuse than just the substance. I think we generally all understand this. And maybe it’s because substance abuse is old as time.
But yet with most other things we tend to push to ban any and all things surrounding a problem. After the Danforth shooting people cried for Toronto Mayor John Tory to ban handguns. Despite the fact that the Danforth shooter was not using a legal gun so a gun ban would not have changed any of the events anyway. It was being said that the gun was smuggled across the US border and now CBC is saying the gun belonged to his brother. Either way you look at it, a gun ban wouldn’t have prevented the shooting nor will it prevent future shootings. But that didn’t stop Toronto Mayor John Tory from calling for provincial and federal support in banning handguns and ammunition sales in the greater Toronto area. “Why does anyone in this city need to have a gun at all?” John Tory asked in a press conference in response to the greektown shooting. But let’s be real. The only people who are hurt from a gun ban are legal, responsible gun owners.
But it sure is eerie how similar it sounded to the London Mayor’s tweet, “there is never a reason to carry a knife.” London currently has gun restrictions to address violent crimes and now stabbings have gone up and they’re currently talking about possible bans on knives. Will it take banning of every utensil or sharp object before someone steps up to finally address the implications of fatherlessness, PTSD among refugees we attempt to integrate into society, community based policing or gang culture which is prominent in the neighbourhoods in poverty? Nope, that means we have to actually talk about the differences between us all in society and that’s just targeting the vulnerable and that’s discrimination. Words are violence and ideas are dangerous!
Thankfully the province had the sense to not support a gun ban. They increased funding to the police to put more cops on the streets and specialty services. Because what we have isn’t a gun problem, it’s a gang problem. It seems like there were cops who were abusing their powers. Did they decide to crackdown on the bad apples? Did they explore possible protections like body cams to hold all police more accountable? No, Toronto decided that carding was a racist practice and they decided to just ban carding all out. Oh, then gang violence spiked to record levels? No, there can’t be any correlation there. And we are seeing less police engagement as we do more and more to tie their hands. I’m not saying I have all the answers but I know we’re addressing the wrong issues for the sake of looking virtuous.
Another great example is anytime you see Trump take a position on anything, the left feels the need to oppose it to the utmost extreme. This is Trump Derangement Syndrome. Where feelings fuel your thinking. And so if Trump calls for a border wall? Trump wants to limit migration? Well then borders are racist! Ban all borders! Open borders for all! Really? All those egalitarian countries you love, did they get there by opening their borders? It even extends to hating those who enforce immigration laws as people protest ICE agents. Even Barack Obama was talking about cracking down on illegal border crossers and those who employ them.
These things don’t actually make things better, they just create more problems. You can see this kind of hysteria legislation in the upcoming UN Global Compact (which is a whole series of blog posts in it’s own right coming soon) where they seek to literally change the language of “illegal immigrant” to “irregular immigrant” so even the very discussion around illegals will be deemed discriminatory rhetoric.
We’ve been seeing this attitude in science with climate change. For me anyways, it started in 2015 when Mark Steyn decided to challenge the famous Michael Mann “hockey stick” climate graph. He was tied up for half a decade in the courts over it. But to have someone challenging climate science really felt like a climate denier. Steyn highlighted this when he was on the Agenda with Steve Paikin and pointed out to Steve that “it’s not a chair issue“. Like everything else that we move to ban and censor and sanction, we’re not mature enough to actually have the conversation. Despite the fact he was backed up by climatologist Tim Ball. He won his court battle against Michael Mann. Even the founder of greenpeace, Patrick Moore, has spoken out about the fraudulent science around climate change but it’s clear that if you are not a climate change scientist, you are a climate denier. How about I live by Al Gore’s example and stop once I have my own private jet.
There is no room for discussion. And all those who “deny climate change” must be silenced, deplatformed, shut up forever. In the effort to get everyone on board with climate change they feel the need to lie to people, which only pushes people away from climate change initiatives. Then there’s the conundrum of legislating against climate change. Which is too difficult so let’s just introduce a carbon tax to make people who pollute pay more taxes. But… we ALL pollute. So then you ALL pay #BecauseScience.
What’s going on in France right now is possibly the best example on how the left is failing its own people. President Macron may have had his moment to talk about how horrible nationalism is, completely dismissing the democratic system which gave him the mandate to look after such people of the nation he represents. Now there are riots in the streets and they’re being called bigots. The very people who were celebrated for voting down the french nationalists despite the countless acts of terrorism that traumatized the country. And that’s the thanks they get, because they don’t buy the bullshit of a carbon tax? Real classy.
The new thing on campuses across the world is that words are violence and ideas are dangerous. So instead of using free speech to challenge disagreeable ideas or opinions it’s far easier to just ban free speech or deplatform. Some of the best examples of these are the protests held against Milo Yiannopoulos at Berkeley University which cost $100 000 during his first visit where protestors threw molotov cocktails at police. And then his second visit cost the University $800 000. Or when Ben Shapiro came to speak. Or Jordan Peterson at Queens University where one protestor carried a garrote. When words are violence you must ban free speech, they say. Free speech is an excuse for hate speech, they say. Well I say political correctness has gone too far.
Earlier this year Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and others all decided to ban Alex Jones. Though there were references to comments made around his Sandy Hook conspiracy, there was no specific explanation as to how exactly Jones had broken the platforms code of conduct. More recently, Twitter just updated their hateful conduct policy to grant them the right to ban accounts who engage in misgendering or deadnaming trans people and other forms of hateful targeting of members within their “protected category”. And they’ve wasted no time in suspending accounts from people like Megan Murphy, who is controversial for advocating for women only spaces (i.e. women only gyms) to barr trans women (male to female). Also decorated peacekeeper and journalist William Ray had his blog (The Tranish Inquisition) removed off of “medium” and then was suspended on twitter. Even James Woods found himself suspended for tweeting out two apparently hoax hashtags (#LetWomenDecide and #NoMenMidterms). Their reasons being that his tweets could affect the political process. As if censoring tweets isn’t interference. “This is not about a celebrity being muzzled. This is about an American being silenced — one tweet at a time.”
Twitter apparently subscribes to this ideology from the trans movement that because some people have gender dysphoria then we should all be compelled to address people by their choice of pronouns, despite how vague or inaccurate or nonsensical. It’s to such an extreme now that to even identify that biological sex exists is a form of descrimination of it’s own, called essentialism. Because gender is all just a social construct and we can choose to be whatever we want if we could only be free of the oppressive patriarchy. Oh, but we’re going to still call them “trans” because they are transitioning from boy to girl. Or girl to boy. You know, gender reassignment surgery? If Gender was a social construct then you would never feel that you were in the wrong body. And I wonder what trans people are talking about when they refer to appearing “passable”. You mean, like, passable as the opposite gender? Should we target trans people who use the word “passable” as divisive hate speech rhetoric? If gender was truly a social construct then “misgendering” would be impossible and no one would require hormones. Well it’s clear what we must do, ban all biological sex!
And then there was Apple today with Tim Cook. “At Apple, we believe technology needs to have a clear point of view,” Cook said while addressing “those who seek to push hate, division or violence.” Well, none of those I’ve discussed here today qualify as “white supremacists”. And now you’re probably second guessing all those times you swiped to consent to apple to have access to all your personal information. Look, regardless what you define hate to be or whether or not you disagree with the positions of any of the people I’ve featured here, deplatforming doesn’t work. The whole reason Jordan Peterson is world famous now is in part because everyone has told you not to pay attention to him. Deplatforming reaps more division than any divisive comment.
But this is what we get for creating a world where everyone gets to have a voice. There are no private clubs or closed off group chats or anything that isn’t immediately accessible by the rest of the world. And so there is no privacy. So all the locker room talk and every opinion we disagree with is right there in front of our faces, promoted by third parties looking for clicks. Maybe we ought to address the nature of clickbait journalism and provocateurs. But we’re not mature enough for that. It’s far easier to just ban it all. If you don’t like the conversation, change the channel. When you’re so obsessed with spotting conflict you literally see everything as problematic. Now christmas classics are under fire just like old Disney movies. Like “baby it’s cold outside” was actually about rape. Rudolph the Red nosed Reindeer was only accepted for deviating from the norm because he was able to be exploited by the patriarchal Santa Claus. Santa Claus himself is now a white supremacist.
Everyone was on board when Charlottesville happened. People carrying tiki torches and chanting “jews will not replace us“. Yes, that’s a nazi. Alex Jones, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, Ted Cruz. These are all people who have said and done toxic, reprehensible things. Would I call them nazis? No, Alt right, sure. How about all conservatives? Nazis? Bigots? Now you’re starting to lose me. But now you’re putting other feminists, conservatives, scientists and me in the same camp as the guys carrying the tiki torch because we said “Bruce Jenner”? It’s so scary to see this snowballing assault on free speech. And how it’s actually celebrated. And it’s EXACTLY what the tiki torch carriers want.
Today it’s a simple twitter account. Tomorrow it’s all media that has any kind of conservative perspective. Then it’s all media that doesn’t agree to promote the “accepted narrative”. Then we will program AI to share these “values” and it’s only when we program them to “ban” all forms of hate speech that they suddenly move to end the human experiment. God knows if any one of us will survive that purge.
Society is too violent. BAN ALL GUNS!
Police profiling feels racially charged. BAN ALL CARDING!
Halloween costumes are cultural appropriation. BAN HALLOWEEN!
Ideas are dangerous. BAN FREE SPEECH!
Immigration isn’t fair. BAN ALL BORDERS!
Gender binaries don’t match everyone’s identity. BAN BIOLOGICAL SEX!
We pollute too much. BAN ALL CARBON FOOTPRINT!
It’s time to grow the fuck up and ban banning.
“The best way to fight hate speech is with better speech.” – Marilyn Mayo
Rule #8 