In the eerily prophetic novel 1984 by George Orwell, the hero Winston Smith is being tortured in the ‘Ministry of Love’. His interrogator is trying to ‘cure’ him of his belief that reality is what is real, as opposed to what the State says it is. As he informs Smith:
You believe that reality is something objective, external, existing in its own right. You also believe that the nature of reality is self-evident. When you delude yourself into thinking that you see something, you assume that everyone else sees the same thing as you. But I tell you, Winston, that reality is not external. Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else. Not in the individual mind, which can make mistakes, and in any case soon perishes; only in the mind of the Party, which is collective and immortal.
The scary thing is, although written 66 years ago, it seems to be coming about before our very eyes. There is a move to make insanity normal, and to punish those who don’t go along with all this. We used to have mental asylums filled with people who could not live with reality and were making up their own realities.
These folks were locked away for their own safety and the safety of society. Now these sorts of people are running our countries, teaching our children, leading our societies, and controlling our media. They are telling us reality and biology do not exist, and we can believe – and be – anything we want.
Thus we now have males thinking they are females, whites thinking they are blacks, non-Indians thinking they are Indians, etc. They are not being locked up, but paraded, celebrated, promoted and glorified. And there is no stopping all this it seems. If someone wakes up one day and says he identifies as a basketball, there will be all sorts of secular lefties more than happy to go along with this decision.
Well, I have beat some of these folks to it, by declaring that I am really a can of Dr Pepper. You see, I am actually a can of DP trapped in a human body, but I have now found liberation and freedom. I outed myself some days ago, and you can read all about it here: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2015/06/15/18908/
Today the trans stories are never ending. We have a guy who decides one day he wants to be a girl, and everyone applauds his decision as being “courageous” and “authentic”. Um no, this guy is having mental problems, and as such, he needs help, counsel, therapy, prayer and so on, but he needs no encouragement and applause.
And as usual, the ones to suffer the most are the children. They are the poor pawns in the twisted and ugly games of delusional adults who have nothing better to do than destroy society and declare war on reality. Fortunately some parents are starting to fight back. Consider this story from Italy:
Parents from the north of Italy have organized a massive demonstration, called “Defend Our Children,” against gender ideology in schools, which will be held this Saturday in the Saint John Lateran Square in Rome. The demonstrators will be protesting Italian educational programs that are meant to blur the sexual identity of children.
In the northern Italian city of Trieste, parents are in uproar over a taxpayer-funded elementary school program that includes dressing little boys as girls and girls as boys to overcome so-called “gender stereotypes.” Schools are calling the exercise “the game of respect,” which purportedly adopts many guidelines from the European standards on sex education, attributed to the World Health Organization.
It is hoped that before Western civilisation is completely destroyed, some more sanity and reality will return. Surely enough normal people still exist who have had a gutful of all this dangerous PC moonbattery and hyper-radical social engineering.
I hope so, otherwise we are all toast. One commentator who believes there might be a bit of a turnaround here is Daniel Payne. And he notes how mental delusions and confusions are a part of the left’s war on reality here:
As the past few news cycles have proven, the Left appears to be losing the transgender debate, in large part because its position in this debate is preposterous, anti-scientific nonsense. “A man can be a woman if he wants to” is a clearly false statement—demonstrably so—and the growing pushback against this ideology may be a sign that things are turning around. It’s possible the public may finally stop treating a mental illness as a celebrated social-justice cause. One can hope.
Nonetheless, progressives have become desperate to regain the ground they’ve lost, and increasingly their tactics resemble the phenomenon known as “gaslighting,” in which one party tries to convince another, through rhetorical dishonesty and outright fakery, that the latter’s memory, intelligence, and even sanity are in doubt.
And Stella Morabito explains how the gender bender movement is resulting in more Big Brother government, the very thing folks like Orwell and others warned about:
The transgender movement has strong totalitarian overtones that Americans (especially certain senators) don’t fully understand. How else to describe a crusade with such far-reaching consequences for First Amendment rights? The legal destruction of gender distinctions will inevitably dissolve family autonomy, thereby uprooting freedom of association. Free expression becomes “hate speech” if one doesn’t fall into line with the directives of the transgender lobby or its pronoun protocol. Freedom of religion takes a direct hit any way you look at it.
Under the guise of “rights,” the transgender movement can serve as convenient cover for consolidating and centralizing power under an ever-expanding State. Once we allow the State to refuse to recognize that children result from the male-female union, we grant the State more power to separate us from our children. As power becomes more centralized in the State, the individuals and institutions of the State, inevitably flawed, end up owning our personal relationships. With weakened mediating institutions—family, churches, private associations—we lose the buffer zones that stand between individuals and an encroaching state.
Contrary to popular belief, this push to eliminate distinctions of sex from law and replace them with variable and sundry perceptions of gender does not do what it promises. It doesn’t simply provide us with a panoply of gender identities from which we can choose, like the 50-something identities available on Facebook. Rather, it’s the setup for a gender vacuum. As you enter this vacuum of gender-neutrality, less and less separates and protects you from the State.
Let’s think this through a bit more. If gender distinctions are erased in law, all marriage will become legally obsolete. The elites pushing same-sex “marriage” have known this all along.
As mentioned, treatment and therapy is what these folks need – not promotion and exaltation. One expert who should know is Dr Paul; McHugh. He says this about himself and his work:
For forty years as the University Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins Medical School – twenty-six of which were also spent as Psychiatrist in Chief of Johns Hopkins Hospital – I’ve been studying people who claim to be transgender. Over that time, I’ve watched the phenomenon change and expand in remarkable ways….
At Johns Hopkins, after pioneering sex-change surgery, we demonstrated that the practice brought no important benefits. As a result, we stopped offering that form of treatment in the 1970s.
He tells us why this work was stopped:
In fact, gender dysphoria—the official psychiatric term for feeling oneself to be of the opposite sex—belongs in the family of similarly disordered assumptions about the body, such as anorexia nervosa and body dysmorphic disorder. Its treatment should not be directed at the body as with surgery and hormones any more than one treats obesity-fearing anorexic patients with liposuction. The treatment should strive to correct the false, problematic nature of the assumption and to resolve the psychosocial conflicts provoking it. With youngsters, this is best done in family therapy.
The larger issue is the meme itself. The idea that one’s sex is fluid and a matter open to choice runs unquestioned through our culture and is reflected everywhere in the media, the theater, the classroom, and in many medical clinics. It has taken on cult-like features: its own special lingo, internet chat rooms providing slick answers to new recruits, and clubs for easy access to dresses and styles supporting the sex change. It is doing much damage to families, adolescents, and children and should be confronted as an opinion without biological foundation wherever it emerges.
But gird your loins if you would confront this matter. Hell hath no fury like a vested interest masquerading as a moral principle.
Indeed, the maniacs have declared war on the rest of us. As Payne remarks:
If someone does not agree with the tenets of Progressive gender politics, then he will be painted as a deranged, antediluvian, backwards-looking hatemonger who can’t get past his own outmoded psychological neuroses. Conservatives are increasingly on the receiving end of a full-blown gaslighting, while progressives and libertarians congratulate themselves on how open-minded and tolerant they are. Meanwhile, the transgender suicide rate hovers around 40 percent.
Robert Tracinski puts it this way: “When the insane are normal, the normal are insane.” Indeed, it is extremely difficult to talk sense with the social revolutionaries and sexual anarchists who have declared war on reason, biology and reality. They are now running the asylums, and they want to intern all of us who dare to differ.
A final quote from 1984 might drive these points home a bit better:
Interrogator: “How many fingers am I holding up Winston?”
Winston: “Four”.
Interrogator: “And if Big Brother says I am holding up five fingers, then how many fingers am I holding up?”
Winston: (after being suitably tortured) “Four”.
See him saying that the definitions of male and female should be removed from law – in a submission to the Federal Government.
Recently I sent an email to my church (Lutheran Church of Australia) which is due to hold a Synod here in Brisbane soon, asking why, in the face of the aggressive push for same-sex marriage, the church is so silent. I haven’t received a reply. Maybe I never will. But satan is at the door and the Christian Church as a whole seems cowered before the assault.
Good on those Italian parents for standing up to the ideological gender bullies in schools. There have been similar rallies and demonstrations in Canada with outraged parents – many of Asian appearance – holding up placards saying “teach mathematics not masturbation”.
How has it come to this?
Bill, it wasn’t a rhetorical question. How HAS it come to this?
I’m a Catholic and in the last fortnight the Australian Catholic bishops’ correct response to the absurdity of homosexual ‘marriage’ was circulated in our churches. But it’s years too late!
Why were Catholic bishops asleep while you were working like a trojan trying to alert people to this madness?
Thanks Antonia. Yes far too many folks have been asleep who should have known better. In a few minutes one champion, Fred Nile, will go into the lion’s den on Q&A, single-handedly taking on angry atheists and homosexuals. I am glad a few good men are fighting the good fight courageously.
I’m sure you saw this tweet, very funny – but sadly true
corybernardi: The new ‘right’ is the right to choose your own reality or deny it completely. http://t.co/HfTciKw6rc
I created a new Google account the other day, I was asked to choose my gender male, female, other.
What the heck is other? Google, MS, Apple, Firefox, they are all pushing this nonsense.
The transgender agenda has monistic overtones: If “one” is the “other” and “all” equals “one”, then “male” might equal “female” and androgyny would be the “gender status” closest to nirvana or the final escape of the soul from the sensory and mental assaults of physical existence. After all, Hindu myth has the god Shiva defeat a demon by transforming himself into a seductive dancing-girl mohini and the endangered, foetal Dionysos survives the latter part of his “in-utero journey” encased in the thigh of his father, Zeus!
I have wondered about the relevance of body dysmorphic disorder and aspects of the transgender experience – a condition which also entails surgery in order to follow the dictates of the transgender person’s psyche…
The gender confusion has come to our church and I must say it is one thing to campaign against it and I do and I won’t stop, but to address it in real flesh and blood includes a whole different dynamics and powerful intimidation with it when what you are trying to say is misunderstood. It makes me want to cry all day when I hear people say that the way to bring them out of it is to first accept them in their new identity. In every other case of delusion you would point out the error of their actions and try and bring them back on the right path: a child may think it is invincible and walk in front of an oncoming car; what about a thief who is persuaded stealing is part of who they are. I am blind, I could insist on having a drivers licence and get behind that wheel and start to drive. I would hope and expect people would stop me from doing that out of consideration for my life and that of others. But in this case? We have said we would not call this boy by his newly adopted female name and have been called judgemental because of it. But I am beginning to understand why so many buckle under the pressure of the face to face confrontation which is so much harder than arguing the point in logical theory, because you have to stay both loving and truthful all at the same time. Being lovingly truthful is so often mistaken for high-minded moralising and we know false love that denies the truth is so damaging. But I guess this is the coalface at which we must prove ourselves to be truly Christ’s disciples.
Many blessings
Ursula Bennett
Well done Ursula in seeking to stand for truth even when it is difficult and costly to do so.
Bill I met three lovely young Christian women who were overseas students whilst working on yesterday’s outreach table. Two were Turkish and one from Kenya. Testimony one of the Turkish students of how the Lord through dreams, visions and a healing of her mother was breathtaking. Most of us become Christians through hearing the word but this lady’s experienced was a personal touch from God that she said no one can take from her. Her maturity as a Christian was remarkable. Why I mention it is that she told be how shocked they were to see Australia in real life. It wasn’t as Christian as she had expected. We are so tolerant they said that we allow Satan worshippers to parade in the streets. It shocked her because she expected a higher standard. The Kenyan student described how Christianity in deeply ingrained in Kenyan life and that is why the leadership rejected Obama’s overtures about accommodating LGBT agendas but still they were still trying to get into the schools. She told of a witchdoctor who was employed at a Christian school in her town so she reported him to the principal. The witchdoctor was sacked instantly. Maybe these ladies can begin to evangelise our rebellious nation.
These folks were locked away for their own safety and the safety of society. Now these sorts of people are running our countries, teaching our children, leading our societies, and controlling our media. They are telling us reality and biology do not exist, and we can believe – and be – anything we want.
The president of the NSW Anti-Discrimination board says you are not a man, and your wife is not a woman.
http://victimsofgaybullying.wordpress.com/2014/11/23/humor-stephan-kerkyasharian-ao-the-lesbian/
See him saying that the definitions of male and female should be removed from law – in a submission to the Federal Government.
Recently I sent an email to my church (Lutheran Church of Australia) which is due to hold a Synod here in Brisbane soon, asking why, in the face of the aggressive push for same-sex marriage, the church is so silent. I haven’t received a reply. Maybe I never will. But satan is at the door and the Christian Church as a whole seems cowered before the assault.
Good on those Italian parents for standing up to the ideological gender bullies in schools. There have been similar rallies and demonstrations in Canada with outraged parents – many of Asian appearance – holding up placards saying “teach mathematics not masturbation”.
How has it come to this?
Bill, it wasn’t a rhetorical question. How HAS it come to this?
I’m a Catholic and in the last fortnight the Australian Catholic bishops’ correct response to the absurdity of homosexual ‘marriage’ was circulated in our churches. But it’s years too late!
Why were Catholic bishops asleep while you were working like a trojan trying to alert people to this madness?
Thanks Antonia. Yes far too many folks have been asleep who should have known better. In a few minutes one champion, Fred Nile, will go into the lion’s den on Q&A, single-handedly taking on angry atheists and homosexuals. I am glad a few good men are fighting the good fight courageously.
I’m sure you saw this tweet, very funny – but sadly true
corybernardi: The new ‘right’ is the right to choose your own reality or deny it completely. http://t.co/HfTciKw6rc
I created a new Google account the other day, I was asked to choose my gender male, female, other.
What the heck is other? Google, MS, Apple, Firefox, they are all pushing this nonsense.
The transgender agenda has monistic overtones: If “one” is the “other” and “all” equals “one”, then “male” might equal “female” and androgyny would be the “gender status” closest to nirvana or the final escape of the soul from the sensory and mental assaults of physical existence. After all, Hindu myth has the god Shiva defeat a demon by transforming himself into a seductive dancing-girl mohini and the endangered, foetal Dionysos survives the latter part of his “in-utero journey” encased in the thigh of his father, Zeus!
I have wondered about the relevance of body dysmorphic disorder and aspects of the transgender experience – a condition which also entails surgery in order to follow the dictates of the transgender person’s psyche…
The gender confusion has come to our church and I must say it is one thing to campaign against it and I do and I won’t stop, but to address it in real flesh and blood includes a whole different dynamics and powerful intimidation with it when what you are trying to say is misunderstood. It makes me want to cry all day when I hear people say that the way to bring them out of it is to first accept them in their new identity. In every other case of delusion you would point out the error of their actions and try and bring them back on the right path: a child may think it is invincible and walk in front of an oncoming car; what about a thief who is persuaded stealing is part of who they are. I am blind, I could insist on having a drivers licence and get behind that wheel and start to drive. I would hope and expect people would stop me from doing that out of consideration for my life and that of others. But in this case? We have said we would not call this boy by his newly adopted female name and have been called judgemental because of it. But I am beginning to understand why so many buckle under the pressure of the face to face confrontation which is so much harder than arguing the point in logical theory, because you have to stay both loving and truthful all at the same time. Being lovingly truthful is so often mistaken for high-minded moralising and we know false love that denies the truth is so damaging. But I guess this is the coalface at which we must prove ourselves to be truly Christ’s disciples.
Many blessings
Ursula Bennett
Well done Ursula in seeking to stand for truth even when it is difficult and costly to do so.
Bill I met three lovely young Christian women who were overseas students whilst working on yesterday’s outreach table. Two were Turkish and one from Kenya. Testimony one of the Turkish students of how the Lord through dreams, visions and a healing of her mother was breathtaking. Most of us become Christians through hearing the word but this lady’s experienced was a personal touch from God that she said no one can take from her. Her maturity as a Christian was remarkable. Why I mention it is that she told be how shocked they were to see Australia in real life. It wasn’t as Christian as she had expected. We are so tolerant they said that we allow Satan worshippers to parade in the streets. It shocked her because she expected a higher standard. The Kenyan student described how Christianity in deeply ingrained in Kenyan life and that is why the leadership rejected Obama’s overtures about accommodating LGBT agendas but still they were still trying to get into the schools. She told of a witchdoctor who was employed at a Christian school in her town so she reported him to the principal. The witchdoctor was sacked instantly. Maybe these ladies can begin to evangelise our rebellious nation.
Good stuff Keith.