One of the best books I’ve read is Steven Pinker’s 2011 book, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. Pinker argues that, despite the horrific convulsions of the 20th century and the first decade of the 21st century, Western man had improved—if you believe, as I do, that a civil society controlled by law and order is an improvement over the stone-age model of endless warfare and violence. The Z Man has written a thought-provoking essay arguing that Democrat policies over the last few decades have reversed this trend, not just politically, but at a biological level.

In The Better Angels of Our Nature, Pinker describes how sadistically violent humans have been. All Stone-Aged tribes are defined by a lust for torture and murder as a mechanism to control their own societies and subdue others. The same violence consistently carried through in the West for millennia, from the Bronze Age to the Renaissance. Then, in the 18th century, this lust for pain and death slowly subsided.

According to Pinker, many things set the stage for this slow civilizing process. Our improved ability to provide resources ended the never-ending battle for those resources. Now, “climate change” madness sees the left returning us to a time of diminished resources.

Another brake on violence was deterrence. When the West was able to repel attacks with explosive force, attackers thought twice about engaging with the West, creating more room for civilization to develop. Biden, by chaotically leaving Afghanistan, turning our military into a social justice experiment, and sending our weapons to Ukraine, has weakened our deterrence capabilities significantly.

Image: Spiteful mutant montage by Andrea Widburg

Good government quashes violence within a society. In a lawless society, violence controls, and the most violent have a genetic advantage because they get access to women. In a law-and-order society, vigilantism and revenge cycles become unnecessary as those who commit violence are imprisoned or executed, not only removing them from society but from the gene pool too. Democrats have spent decades reversing this trend, with broken communities rewarding violent men with access to women. Leftists celebrate violent people like George Floyd.

There’s also what Norbert Elias calls The Civilizing Process, which is a society’s deliberate decision to become less cruel and violent. In the West, the harbinger was medieval etiquette books, written by men who envisioned a more civilized world. The left threw etiquette out the window as a disgusting remnant of the White patriarchy.

I also believe that part of our civilizing process was coffee and tea. Before these drinks, everyone lived on alcohol (wine, beer, etc.), which reduces inhibitions and encourages violence. The alternative of drinks made from boiled water led to greater emotional control. Note, too, that the left is encouraging drug use, while leftist colleges breed an alcoholic culture.

All of this gets me to the Z Man. In “Rise of the Spiteful Mutants,” he doesn’t cite Pinker. Instead, he cites Anthropologist Peter Frost and population geneticist Henry Harpending who wrote a 2015 paper arguing that pre-modern Britain’s heavy reliance on the death penalty removed that 2% of the population most prone to violence, leading to a less violent society. A low-violence society has greater trust, providing space for innovation. (Z Man adds the theory that the Black Death mostly killed stupid people but I don’t buy that.)

What happens, though, when a society deliberately reverses all the brakes on violence and cultivates stupidity (by degrading education, entertainment, and the media)? Then, argues evolutionary psychologist Ed Dutton, you get what are called “spiteful mutants.” Z Man sums it up:

Spiteful mutants are the men in dresses demanding everyone pretend they are some third sex rather than a lunatic. These are the feminists who make war on the normal sexual relations of society. The people policing speech online and inflicting Diversity, Equity & Inclusion programs are spiteful mutants. These are the human defects slowly making life impossible in Western countries.

Professor Dutton points out that we used to have social mechanisms for minimizing the impact of human defects. The death penalty is the extreme example, but social pressure reduced mating opportunities. The scold’s bridle was used to control what we now call feminists. Of course, most of what we think of as feminists were called witches in the past and properly burned at the stake.

Because we have systematically dismantled these mechanisms for minimizing the impact of human defects, we are now being overrun by them. Western societies are becoming unbearable due to the spiteful mutants. They have infected every aspect of society to the point where things are starting to break down. Even basic things like elections are proving impossible due to these mutants.

This is all theoretical, of course, but when one looks at the shriekers and groomers today, it’s a theory that suddenly makes a whole lot of sense.

(You can read Z Man at his blog. He also did a great podcast at Coffee and a Mike.)