So there was this:
We’ve seen similar things before. The claim that the 2nd Amendment was originally to allow government-run “militias” and did not, in any way, refer to an individual right to keep and bear arms (this latter I have dispensed with before).
And we get told a whole variety of things. The primordial “matriarchy” where women ruled in peace and goodness before those evil men took over. The “noble savage” of primitive societies living in harmony with nature and, again all peace and goodness. People of color living in universal benevolence until those evil White Men came and upset their applecarts.
It’s all crap. None of it has a lick of basis. Matriarchal societies may have existed but they were neither common nor particularly peaceful (or if they were they did not last long–the Gods of the Copybook Headings will not be denied).
There is a common tendency, however, to dismiss these various claims as “stupid.” They’re not. They’re far worse than that. They’re a deliberate attempt to paint a picture, to change history from what really happened to what suits the narrative of the ones seeking power over us. They’re the kind of thing expressed in 1984 with “The past was alterable. The past never had been altered. Oceania was at war with Eastasia. Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia.” (George Orwell, 1984)
It’s gaslighting. It’s the deliberate attempt to change our perception of the past so as to dictate the future the proponents of that change want. It’s “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past” (again George Orwell, 1984)
It’s not stupid. It’s deliberate evil.
Fortunately, gaslighting only works when there’s no challenge to it. It only worked in 1984 because there was no challenge to it and anyone who really questioned it (like Winston Smith) would be subject to “extreme measures” until they, too, accepted it.
For a long time, that was true in the US. The media were all in lockstep pushing a particular narrative while pretending to be simply impartially presenting the news. Education and entertainment had similarly been captured by the purveyors of that singular narrative (the mere fact that anyone would be willing to give Zinn and his “people’s history” the time of day demonstrated that). We were being fed a continuous stream that ranged from “spin” to outright lies all in the interest of furthering a Leftist political agenda.
And when people, through their personal knowledge of some issue or other–someone who actually fought in the “Tet Offensive” and knew that it was a decided American and South Vietnamese victory, someone who actually spoke with Soviet ex-pats and knew just how horrible the Soviet Union was, and so forth–well Gell-Mann Amnesia is a thing. Without other channels for widespread data dissemination, such individuals could easily think they’re alone (much like Paula Anton in Gaslight) and maybe it’s they who are wrong rather than everyone else.
More recently, however, with the rise of New Media (including, in its own humble way, things like this blog) the monopoly of the left on information dissemination has started to crack. The Left, too, can use New Media, as demonstrated in the captured image of Hogg’s tweet up top. However, what they cannot do, despite their best efforts, is shut down challenges to their fictitious narratives. People can point and laugh, publicly, at Hogg’s risible claim (and it is risible; the history of gun control has been to keep guns out of the hands of “those people”–blacks, American Indians, whoever the discriminated against of the day had been–and it’s the disadvantaged people who were trying to level things by seeking arms for themselves). Sure, Facebook can block posters who challenge the narrative too broadly, and being in “Facebook Jail” has become a badge of pride for many. Google can play tricks with search results to make challenges to Leftist dogma more difficult to find, or to be lost in a sea of nonsense, where the real criticisms are mixed in with a multitude of “tin foil hat” nonsense (which, I’m sure, some will claim this post to be).
But, the Internet treats censorship as damage and routes around it. More and more people are using alternate platforms like MeWe and alternate search engines like DuckDuckGo. The numbers may be small relative to the giants, but they’re growing.
And the narrative, the gaslighting, is crumbling.
The Writer in Black 
While I agree that it has to spoken against, so much of it is pure idiocy. (Especially this one from Hoggy.)
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That’s a comforting belief. If it’s just “pure idiocy” you can so easily dismiss it.
And that’s what makes it so dangerous. Here’s the thing, do you really think Hogg believes that? That he is so stupid/uninformed that he thinks it’s objectively true? I don’t. I’m quite convinced he knows it’s a complete fabrication. I would say that it’s falsehood doesn’t matter except that its falsehood is actually the point. People will cheer it, accept it as true, and become that much divorced from reality. They will be willingly gaslighted because it suits how they want to see the world. After all, blaming the “big bad white man” for all their problems absolves them of responsibility, and makes their own looting of “the patriarchy” downright virtuous.
We’ve seen this game played before. It has rarely if ever ended well.
It’s easy to point at Hogg’s sat scores and his statements divorced from reality and say “how stupid” but note that he has parlayed those statements into admission to Harvard. Watch and see if he doesn’t continue parlaying them into an actual degree (regardless of his performance, or lack thereof, in his classes) and into some kind of political position after graduation. He may not have academic brilliance but he’s got a lot of political cunning.
Dismiss folk like Hogg at not just your peril, but at the peril of the Republic.
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If it didn’t mean the end of the West, I find myself occasionally daydreaming that fools like him (ESPECIALLY effete little skinny weaklings like him) would actually get their dues if their fantasies of being overrun by hardcore Islamists came true.
(Also, what the hell is he blathering about? What ‘gun violence prevention movement’ is he claiming existed ‘centuries ago’?)
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yeah he knows. He lies,. Because the left has no standards and no values except power. Which is why they can’t be trusted ever.
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That he is so stupid/uninformed that he thinks it’s objectively true?
Oh yes, I thoroughly believe that.
he’s got a lot of political cunning
Disagree entirely. He has political usefulness. I don’t think he has parlayed anything. I think he has been gifted these things because he makes a useful martyr* for the cause.
(* “martyr” in both senses – a “witness for the faith” and someone who will be “persecuted” for it.)
He supposedly holds moral high ground because he was a Parkland student, and he was a child when this particular stupidity began, so they could leap about in righteous indignation whenever he was opposed.
Dismiss folk like Hogg at not just your peril
Oh, I dismiss him. But not his arguments.
He, himself, is merely an avatar for the leaders of the anti-gun cult. He is a useful tool to fling poo at the walls and see what sticks. So mock him mercilessly. But more importantly, point out how very wrong his idiotic proclamations are.
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I really need to pick up a hard copy of MiG Pilot so it can’t disappear into a memory hole
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This quote from ‘Chernobyl’ comes to mind: What is the cost of lies? It’s not that we’ll mistake them for the truth. The real danger is that if we hear enough lies, then we no longer recognize the truth at all. What can we do then? What else is left but to abandon even the hope of truth and content ourselves instead with stories? In these stories, it doesn’t matter who the heroes are. All we want to know is: “Who is to blame?”
What useful idiots like Hogg, Sanders, AOC, et al don’t grok is that gaslighting, playing games with the truth and the past- all of it, it all leads to disaster. The Gods of the Copybook Headings may be patient, but the longer they wait, the more blood and slaughter they inevitably bring.
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I believe that part of the desperation of today’s left is the rise of the New Media. As every election passes where they do not get complete control, another time period is coming in which more people will turn away from the Democrat Media Complex and to the New Media.
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They believe this nonsense even though there’s no basis in reality because of a mix of sanctimony and confirmation bias. It’s what they want to believe and it gives them a nice warm feeling to pretend they’re better than other people.
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Anyone who thinks groups of women are peaceful and non-confrontational, has never been around women.
I know. I am a woman, and the crap they get up to when in female-only spaces leaves me shaking with fear.
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