OPINION:
I opened the front door the other day and my daughter walked in, exclaiming, “Is everyone taking crazy pills?”
The Bruce-Caitlyn Jenner thing had sent her over the edge. But it wasn’t really the Olympic Decathlon champion’s bizarre claim that he, a male for 64 of his years, is now a 65-year-old pinup girl, which is his “authentic self.”
No, what sent my daughter into head-shaking were the comments all over the Web and Facebook from people who are going along with this fiction on the grounds that not to do so is somehow ignorant or mean.
Still, your heart has to go out to poor Mr. Jenner, a father of six who may one day wake up and deeply regret what he’s done after all the publicity dies down.
Meanwhile, the cultural ripples of denial are widening into floodwaters.
For example, on “All In With Chris Hayes” on June 2, while discussing “the Jenner Effect,” guest commentator Michelle Goldberg noted, as reported by Newsbusters.org, that “a lot of the younger feminists no longer want to use the word ’woman’ in relation to abortion because it excludes trans men.”
Never mind that 100 percent of abortions are performed on women, even if some of them go on to identify as “trans men.”
Likewise, legislators in various states are moving to remove the terms “husband” and “wife” from marriage statutes, replacing them with the genderless term “spouses.” It’s a way to cement the fictional notion that men and women are no different and are interchangeable.
Even more dishonest are jurisdictions that now allow people to change the sex on their birth certificates, thus committing a retroactive lie. At least one forward-looking official has suggested doing away altogether with reporting on a newborn baby’s sex.
For ideologues, truth is a speed bump that you can drive around. Years ago, in a graduate political science seminar I attended, the class was discussing the staffs of U.S. presidents. When it was her turn, an outspoken class feminist insisted on referring to members of “his or her Cabinet.”
My female professor blinked and cocked her head. She noted that while we may have a woman president someday, we have not had one up to this point. This did not faze the feminist, who said, “Well, we should have had one by now,” and went on using the “his or her” references.
Day after day, we’re told to ignore what our hearts, minds and eyes tell us is true and to embrace falsehoods. As you read about the latest massacres all over the world, remember that they have nothing whatever to do with the “religion of peace.”
The media are so far gone that they no longer even pretend to tell the truth. In 2009, they committed journalistic malpractice, often by omission, to aid the Democrats’ passage of Obamacare, and they’re still misleading us.
An Associated Press article this past week proclaimed, “Affordable health insurance plans, which kept many workers shackled to traditional jobs, are more accessible because of the Affordable Care Act.”
This is a flat-out lie. Costs have gone up, not down, under Obamacare. And more hikes are on the way. Coverage has declined. What once bought a pretty good policy with a low deductible will now buy only a catastrophic version. So you pay more and get less.
Does AP think we didn’t notice Obamacare wreaking havoc on the private insurance market?
How about the media letting big-spending Democrats get away with posing as budget-cutting, middle-class-loving fiscal hawks? Or letting the Clintons pose as selfless philanthropists while racking up literally billions in their slush fund of a foundation? Or letting race hustlers falsely claim, over and over, that voter photo ID laws “suppress” the minority vote?
It wouldn’t be so bad if the chronically deluded kept it to themselves, but they want us all to salute their fabrications.
As Ronald Reagan famously said, “Well, the trouble with our liberal friends is not that they’re ignorant; it’s just that they know so much that isn’t so.”
If you fail to take your crazy pills, you might just think the world is going mad around you.
• Robert Knight is a senior fellow for the American Civil Rights Union and a Washington Times contributor.
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