Honesty seems to be going by the boards, these days. I suppose it’s bound to happen, in an age with the wise men at our looniversities spouting “your truth-my truth” (and somehow their truth always seems to win), as opposed to “the truth,” and insisting that there are no facts, but only “constructions,” etc.
One popular form of dishonesty is simply to shut down any inquiry which doesn’t give you the answer that you want to hear.
For instance, Brown University recently aborted its own study of “gender dysphoria”—that is, men claiming to be women and women claiming to be men, also known as “crazy stupid horse****”—because the, ahem, scientists conducting the study feared it might “invalidate the perspectives of the transgender community”.
Contrary to their expectations, they found something they called “rapid-onset gender dysphoria,” apparently caused by a combination of social pressure, especially among young people who listen very closely to their “friends”, and binge-watching of social media videos that encourage “changing your sex.” Before they decided they’d better just shut up about it, the scientists noted a kind of “peer contagion” at work. They ran away from their findings before they could address the question of whether a “sex change” might win its recipient lots of attention from people who would otherwise ignore them, applause, and even, maybe, fame.
Gee whiz, kids profoundly influenced by other kids! Who would have ever thought that could happen? The scientists really wanted their study to show that “gender dysphoria” comes from within, but kept finding that it comes the from outside, from the culture, instead. So they burked the study.
We also see a lot of lying by omission. Don’t make stuff up: just leave out certain features of the story. Which turns it into another story altogether, but never mind.
We saw this in Universal Pictures’ hot new movie about the 1969 moon landing, “The First Man,” in which the film-makers simply left out the planting of the American flag, by American astronauts, on the surface of the moon. Explained the Canadian actor who plays Neil Armstrong in the movie, the moon landing “transcended countries and borders.”
Oh. That’s how you turn an American moment into a “We Are the World” moment. It was American technology and American know-how, and American astronauts, with all the bills paid by the American people with their taxes, that put men on the moon. The world didn’t do it; America did it. And to this day no other country has been able to match that achievement.
Give them enough time, and enough encouragement, and they’ll wind up making a movie about the U.N. putting a couple of Tanzanian and Belgian disabled Muslim women on the moon.
Was it strictly honest, or even a little bit honest, to ignore that bit about the flag? Yeah, sure—and the three-card monte dealers on the street are honest, too. Will American movie-goers be big enough chumps to buy tickets to this mess? I’m rooting for us to have enough self-respect to make this one bomb at the box office. It would send a bad message if it didn’t.
A more subtle approach to dishonesty is to waste time on what can only be called trivia. Would you believe Florida cops recently busted a man for giving his girlfriend a wet willy? Well, they did. We may marvel that the Democrats in Congress have not yet called for stricter wet willy laws and threatened to unleash David Hogg against this abominable custom. If this is what passes for crime in Florida… Sheesh. You may get mugged just walking down the sidewalk, but you shouldn’t have to worry about anybody sticking a moistened pinkie finger in your ear.
Truth has value: certainly a lot more value than scientific studies that get called off because the snowflakes might not like the findings, and stories that get warped by purposely leaving out important details.
We disdain it at our peril.
I have discussed these and other topics throughout the week on my blog, http://leeduigon.com/ . Stop in for a visit, before I get banned. A single click will take you there.
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