I have said for years in these spaces that participation trophies, as opposed to passing out awards to those who actually are victors in whatever they do, is a celebration of mediocrity, and underneath that celebration of mendacity.
I regard Barack Obama receiving a Nobel Peace Prize for…. what was it he got that for again, now?… and now Bruce Jenner receiving Woman of the Year… awards to be the next logical step on this particular highway to hell.
It doesn’t take a great stretch for somebody to see that it’s this kind of intellectual dishonesty that brings us to the notion that Islamic terrorism is not a threat. That we can tax our way to prosperity. That the unborn are not human beings. That socialism of any stripe can in any way be considered a success towards the stated goals of it, or that it ever has a hope of being so. That global warming is real. Or is it global cooling. Or is it climate change. I keep losing track. And so on.
I insist that all these things are directly related. The common thread is a level of intellectual dishonesty that is deadly to human advancement, and in the end I believe to humanity itself. The first step down this road was foolishness in accepting the proponents of such nonsense with an equal voice at the table, instead of shouting them down.
There is a backlash coming but I wonder if it’ll be of sufficient force the pushback this nonsense that we allowed to become part of our national and cultural mindset.
Part of the problem here is that the arguments for such nonsense are not rooted in reality, and therefore cannot be defeated on that plain.