I haven’t checked on whether today is actually the Autumnal equinox. I learned in school that it was September 21 and I’m stickin’ to it.
Springfield, OH
The accusation that Haitian immigrants in a small Ohio city are abducting and eating their neighbors’ cats and dogs relies not on one falsehood but on a web of them. The rhetoric evokes racist tropes about “savages” who do not conform to our civilized Western world. There’s also a religious angle: the idea that Haitian refugees are voodoo occultists who might be worshipping the devil. As an evangelical Christian who actually believes in the existence of Satan, I agree that we can indeed see the work of the devil at play here, only it’s not on the menu of the Haitian families but rather in the cruelty of those willing to lie about them.
There is little ambiguity about whether Springfield, Ohio, is a hellscape of raptured pets, held at the mercy of marauding refugees. Law enforcement has told the world that there’s no evidence of this behavior, and the mayor and governor have confirmed this. But in the social-media age, none of that matters against A friend I know there knew somebody who said that she knew somebody whose cat was gutted and hanging from a tree. Other conflict entrepreneurs, when asked to provide evidence, sound like a radical deconstructionist in a 1990s faculty lounge, appealing to the “larger reality” of immigrant crime that is so true that the facts of the particular case, even if shown to be untrue, are beside the point.
…
To sing praise songs in a church service while trafficking in the bearing of false witness against people who fled for their life, who seek to rebuild a life for their children after crushing poverty and persecution, is more than just cognitive dissonance. It’s modeling the devil himself, whom Jesus called “the father of lies” (Jn 8:44). That’s especially true when the lies harm another person. “Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer,” the apostle John wrote, “and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him” (1 Jn 3:15).
Conversion Therapy bans
The Tenth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a ban on conversion therapy (attempts by licensed professionals to change the sexual orientation, and (perhaps) “gender identity”, of an adolescent patient):
Judge Rossman dissenting said in part:
The issue in this case is whether to recognize an exception to freedom of speech when the leaders of national professional organizations declare certain speech to be dangerous and demand deference to their views by all members of their professions, regardless of the relevance or strength of their purported supporting evidence. As I understand controlling Supreme Court precedent, the answer is clearly no….
In particular, a restriction on speech is not incidental to regulation of conduct when the restriction is imposed because of the expressive content of what is said. And that is the type of restriction imposed on Chiles….
The consensus view of organizations of mental-health professionals in this country is that only gender-affirming care (including the administration of drugs) should be provided to minors, and that attempts to change a minor’s intent to change gender identity are dangerous—significantly increasing suicidal tendencies and causing other psychological injuries. The organizations insist that this view reflects the results of peer-reviewed studies.
But outside this country there is substantial doubt about those studies. In the past few years there has been significant movement in Europe away from American orthodoxy…..
Source: Religion Clause
Epistemic crisis
Related to the prior item is a generalized crisis of trust in experts because, among other things, experts have repeatedly beslimed themselves by spewing nonsense and claiming it was “science.” The American Academy of Pediatrics, which once innocently misled us on peanut allergies is now doubling down on nonsense about puberty blockers for adolescents who suspect they were born in the wrong sexed body.
I’m a broken record on this but to be clear, here are a few examples of misinformation that have been banned. From the top! Talking about whether Covid came from a lab; Hunter Biden’s laptop; anything to do with the various trans debates. Take basically any hot-button topic of the last decade, and whatever isn’t the progressive line is called misinformation.
It doesn’t help that one Presidential ticket makes shit up for the delight of its base of trolls.
I suffer more from the humiliations inflicted by my country than from those inflicted on her.
Simone Weil, from a letter to Georges Bernanos.
I don’t do any of the major social media, but I have two sub-domains of the domain you’re currently reading: (a) You can read most of my reflexive stuff, especially political here. (b) I also post some things on the only social medium I frequent, because people there are quirky, pleasant and real.
Tipsy Teetotaler ن 