I have definitely had a shift in my views on whether or not it is worth my time to try to persuade people to X point of view. I can roughly point to gay marriage and the trans movement that came from it as the genesis of this. If you can't recognize the difference between a boy and a girl, no persuasion is possible. You may as well argue with a convinced solipsist. I still feel that two or three decades ago it was worth getting out there and debating ideas, but maybe I am wrong even about that. To me, it feels like about 1935 or so in Nazi Germany. That is, the die has been cast, and now there is nothing for it but to try to get through it, alive.
I was thinking about this when viewing a comment elsewhere on social media in response to someone advocating for having armed guards in the schools. The response was "this would not be necessary in a civilized society."
And I wondered, how could she not know that there is no such thing? Insofar as we perceive that society is civilized, it is the result of effective checks and balances against the 'uncivilized.' To wit, it is because of armed men that we enjoy the shreds of civility that we think we have. These would be the ones, in the first place, who stand watch for us in the military, and then the ones that we send into harms way during mass shootings, but also the individuals who are equipped to defend others in the moment before anyone else can arrive (who, if this woman had her way, would be kept defenseless.)
There are other checks and balances, too, because 'uncivilized' takes many shapes (eg, Fauci, Lehman Brothers, etc), but once the barbarians are in the gates, there is no more talk of checks and balances. If people are hungry enough, civility is the first thing to go. It is every man for himself.
This woman clearly knows none of this, although it is almost as plain as understanding what boys and girls are. Do I tell her, since she does not know?
No. I scroll on. There is no saving these people from the calamity that grows against them, in large part for the simple reason that it is they themselves that are fueling the conditions for the calamity.
