Zero Tolerance, Evil Objects, and the Psychosis of the Left
Progressives pride themselves on their highly evolved psyches, their awe-inspiring good intentions and their admirable sense of right and wrong. Indeed, so sure are they that they are right, disagreement can only be an insult. Opposition triggers instant hatred, in a chorus chanted so loudly that nothing said, no evidence presented, will be heard or considered. Indeed, in order to cement a belief, whatever the left decides to believe magically becomes new science, granted an exemption from any sort of scientific process because the leftist has declared that a consensus of leftists makes something scientific. Belief alone is the sole test. This process is, quite literally, detached from reality, as if written by an inebriated Charles Dodgson.
Yet, how evolved or scientific is it to believe something that cannot be true under the laws of nature? Isn’t history full of cultures that believed in impossible things because their place in time, or the limited information available to them, fed their fears and amplified their illusions? Human sacrifice pleased their gods. Birth defects were punishment for sin. Witchcraft explained accidents or coincidences. Such creatures would be considered primitive and un-evolved in our time, given the span of human progress, the explosion of knowledge, and the fact that we are at the pinnacle of whatever evolution we have undergone so far. We look back at the prejudices of such people and recognize, from our more informed and enlightened perch, that their beliefs were driven by their limited ability to know the reasons for what occurred around them, and that in the absence of knowledge, irrational fear needs the comfort of answers, even if contrary to nature.
How then to explain that, despite human progress, such people are still among us in astounding numbers, defying the very Darwinian theories to which they have vehemently sworn allegiance? Proudly, even aggressively, they practice the ignorance our species has spent centuries overcoming, reverting to the purely emotional embrace of mythology and superstition to explain what they do not understand, or to validate their deeply held prejudices, even though evidence refuting their fantasies is readily at hand. Aside from the latest superstition that weather is punishment for man’s misdeeds, fewer delusions are more firmly held on the left than the pure certainty that guns, despite being inanimate objects, are possessed of evil.
While there are certainly progressives who rationally understand the political obstacle that guns present to their political enslavement of other men, such powerful operatives are numerically few, even if possessed of much power. The majority of the delusional are of lower influence but are innumerable, and appear convinced that their survival depends on controlling or abolishing what they do not understand, and which does not threaten them in any event.
Indeed, in the example of guns, they expressly believe that some firearms possess quantifiably greater evil than others, depending entirely on their appearance, despite being lifeless objects. An equivalent belief would be that a paring knife is certainly evil, but a carving knife is purely demonic. To a rational person, such an unhinged thought process more than merely hints at lunacy. Inanimate objects do not possess inherent evil. It can’t be built in, absorbed or grown inside a gun. In fact, the only things on Earth that have that ability are people. And yet, despite living in a world defined by reality, evidence, facts, logic and physics, progressives deny all truths that conflict with their beliefs. They practice pure, unadulterated anti-intellectualism. They have substituted magic and mythology for truth.
The progressives’ ideation of guns fully crosses over into the talismanic realm. At the capacity of their reasoning on this issue, they believe that not just a gun but even a picture of a gun, or a shirt referencing a gun, or fingers that clearly are not a gun, or a Pop-Tart bitten into the shape of a gun is possessed of actual evil, and that all of these exercise a remarkable, powerful influence on human feelings and action. If not, why else “control” them? They believe these objects or images emanate a force they cannot see or feel, but one they are absolutely convinced is there and magically affects others, if only their philosophical and political opponents on a range of similarly divergent beliefs. Progressives personify the gun by attributing to it human evil. What they believe is so ludicrous as to be, quite literally, insane: each gun, even the idea of a gun, must be “controlled” or it will do harm.
As we have seen when behavior is unmoored from reality, the fears are indulged and the voices appeased by irrational action. Just as the mentally affected attacker is so disconnected from reality that he believes his actions to be justified no matter the innocence of the harmed, the progressive believes that all harm he or she does in the name of conquering these inanimate objects is necessary. It is a self-serving release of their emotions into concrete action, and by asserting even defective control, they believe they are defeating what is evil within their limited ability to understand. It matters not that there is no actual connection between belief and reality. It only matters what they believe. Truth and evidence, once valued commodities, are now derided as the deceptive tools of modern day “deniers”.
Of course, when irrational people are entirely convinced of imaginary things, the only foolproof way to deal with the offending thing is to destroy it. As we are beginning to see in the increasingly zealous prosecution of absurd zero tolerance rules, such as suspending a kindergartner for the equivalent of terrorism because he pointed his finger, there is no middle ground. Scare them young, make examples of the clearly innocent, and all will see and fall into line out of fear of the state and those who will imprison you over imaginary threats.
Where such psychosis leads is now on display in Connecticut, which has adopted an Obama’esque “red line” by implementing a gun registration law that most have refused to obey. Connecticut’s budding fascists must either go Full Brownshirt in their determined assault on the Constitution, thereby fomenting open revolt by those peacefully doing what the Constitution protects, or they will have to back down and risk criticism for not preventing the evil they believe the guns will do if not forcibly taken from those who lack their total disconnection from reality.
Throughout history, the progressives of each era started with propaganda, then “progressed” to banning, confiscation, imprisonment and worse. They are the book burners of our age. Knowing they must rig the game to win, they have enacted laws necessary to criminalize their fellow citizens. No matter their assurances, the only thing that will quell their fear and smother dissent is to wage war on the imaginary, extending their control even to how one is allowed to think about make-believe things. Despite their past denials, and their ridicule of those who employ logic and reason, they have exposed themselves, finally forced by their legislation to explain how far they are prepared to go to quiet the voices in their heads. Confiscation is how far. Nothing else will ever be enough.