The stupidity epidemic

It was Oscar Wilde who observed that “fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable we have to change it every months.” He was thinking in terms of bustles and cravats, but the passion of those jostling to hold forth, often and at great length, on ABC’s gabfests and in other fora suggests that various loud causes also wax and wane.

Not so long ago, for example, we were being treated to many breathless warnings that an obesity epidemic was super-sizing the population, especially not-so-little kiddies in their playgrounds. Don’t you care about the children, the advocates tirelessly demanded, often wondering how it could be that McDonald’s and sugary soft drinks were still permitted by the authorities to be widely available? Nutrition advocates, the noisy ones, often disapprove of what other people eat and how they raise their families, and being intolerant (but not stupid) long ago grasped that tame reporters reproducing canned quotes do much to secure the publicity and grants on which any form of advocacy preceded by the words “public” depends.

Alas, the nutrition nazis seem to lack the legs of the warmist crowd, which has made a prolonged art of extracting cash from the improbable, contradictory and absurd. A climate scientist leads a shipload of weather worrywarts to Antarctica to observe ice he says has melted, gets caught fast in that which is no longer supposed to exist and has to be rescued at enormous cost and inconvenience. Do the dire prognostications cease? Does embarrassment silence those who have proven themselves so spectacularly and repeatedly wrong? Not at all. Here we are, more than 18 months after the Ship of Fools wedged itself in an icefloe, and yet the alarmist absurdities continue to pour forth. The latest: that killing sharks  somehow boosts global temperatures.

You couldn’t make this stuff up — shame would forbid it — but climate careerists crank out utter nonsense without the slightest blush. If only extollers of sprouts and vegan fare had linked chubby moppets to global warming they might by now be enjoying longer-term leases on nicer offices, plus the pleasure of additional hotel reservations in the interesting locales where fussbudgets and confabulators inevitably convene their conferences.

Lately, in case you haven’t noticed, domestic violence is the issue du jour, with few news bulletins or talk shows going to air minus the requisite victims to articulate preferred narratives. As the Daily Telegraph‘s Miranda Devine discovered when she noted, correctly, that poor neighbourhoods and Indigenous communities see many, many times the number of perpetrators and victims as well-heeled areas, such honesty is beyond the pale.

The response from femi-fascists was to try to get me sacked, silenced and banned from twitter.

They called for my “sterilisation”, branded me a “murder apologist”, a “troll”, a “sicko”, an ”idiot”, “a bimbo”, “a vile creature dangerous to kids”, “nasty and vicious”, “stupid”, “a disgrace”, “rabid old hatemonger”, “a typical Australian”.

“Your victim blaming has done almost as much harm to victims of Domestic Violence as the abusers,” read one email.

Yes, the faux-rage meter was at full tilt.

The party line, of course, is that women get thumped everywhere, that no demographic is more guilty than any other, and the universal culprit (need it be said?) is maleness. Yesterday and on cue, the SMH linked a new story to one of its earlier reports recounting the bruising experience of a woman who took up with a very bad sort. It was shocking stuff, this woman with such poor taste in men recalling how she was throttled and beaten and abused — the full victim experience, in other words. Way down in the account, however, there was this (emphasis added):

One night, Lowe tried to strangle her in their Point Piper apartment. With no idea where to go, she ran to Rose Bay police station but Lowe later coerced her into retracting the AVO they issued.

Go figure that one. A woman who cites her intelligence and success chooses quite deliberately to waste the time and efforts of the police who answered her plea for help, withdraws her complaint and returns to the bruising arms of the man who terrorises her.  This, we are told, is a case study in domestic violence — but it might also be a catalyst for some grant-eyed activist (or twenty) to place a new cause at the top of the pops.

What about some public funding to address the Stupidity Epidemic? There is certainly a lot of it about.

Miranda Devine’s response to the narrative police can be read via the link below.

— roger franklin

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