Hostility Toward Reality

Hostility Toward Reality

Eric Peters

Orwell wrote about telling the truth being a revolutionary act – in a time of universal deceit. But what led to the time of universal deceit? Such as the one we’re living in right now?

These are, indeed, dangerous times – precisely because the truth is no longer universally respected, however much we may at some times and in some instances be unhappy about it. As for example when we step off the edge of a cliff.

In place of truth, a series of lies – often hysterically hewed-to. It is easy enough to understand why that it is.

James Kunstler pinned the tail on the totalitarian donkey the other day. He wrote that “a society hostile to truth can’t possibly remain civilized, because it will also be hostile to reality.”

And that explains everything. Makes sense of the otherwise insensible.

How else to explain the hostility toward the telling of truth about – let’s start here – the electric vehicles that the government, via its regulatory regime, is effectively forcing the car industry to manufacture and thus leaving car buyers fewer and fewer new car options that are not “electrified”?

The truth is there would be few, if any, electric vehicles available for sale were it not for the regulatory regime that advantages them and disadvantages their functionally superior competition. The latter being functionally superior – as well as significantly less expensive. Thus accounting for the need to disadvantage them.

These are inarguable truths, just the same as the truth that – if people weren’t paid to buy EVs via subsidies – even fewer would probably buy them than the few who have.

But when you give voice to these truths, the response is not acknowledgement of them but hostility toward those who voice them.

They are accused of all manner of things, including Ludditism and “denying” that the “climate” is “changing” – and thus it is necessary to give up cars with engines that weigh 3,200 pounds that get 35 MPG and cost $30k for cars that cost $50k that weigh 5,000 pounds, about 1,000 pounds of the latter being accounted for by inefficient energy storage devices (the battery packs) that require orders of magnitude more natural resources to be extracted from the Earth putatively being “saved.” 

As well as massive amounts of electricity to keep them charged – most of which is produced via the burning of hydrocarbon fuels of one kind or another.

Instead of – yeah, you have a point – it is often something like the snarl of an angry Doberman affronted because you got too close to its owner’s yard. How dare you! You have stolen my dreams!

Whether EVs are interesting in their own way – or have their own virtues, such as silent operation and immediate and forceful acceleration – are entirely beside the point as regards the truths about them being pushed rather than freely desired to a degree sufficient to warrant their being manufactured in large numbers.

But if you say it, expect to experience hostility rather than acknowledgement of the facts.

The hostility used to shut-up the truth-teller.

We saw the same – and are still seeing the same – with regard to the truth about “masks.” They did not and do not “stop the spread,” especially if the person wearing the thing hasn’t got anything that is spreadable. You may remember the untruths that were spread about “asymptomatic” spreaders, which is a thing of a piece with a bite from creature that lacks the necessary equipment.

But those who acted in accordance with the truth about “masks” – and questioned the lies being told about them – were treated with a degree of general, widespread hostility never before seen in this country.

For a time, it became like another country – its name need not be mentioned – in which people who refused to wear another piece of cloth signifying approbation of a great evil were likewise treated with hate for their refusal to play along with what wasn’t true.