It’s a fool’s errand to believe that something could never happen to you, but this is the common belief system of our modern cultural and political landscape.
The people who are blinded by pride overtly rationalize how the ends always justify the means to bring dominance over their adversaries, and their foresight impairment prevents them from recognizing how those means can end them as well.
They live in denial about how far they’ve gone to extend the powerful arm of government or cultural normality and are ill-prepared for the grip of power that could hold them down, too, in the near future.
Recently, Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley promised to sharpen the knife of the federal government, seemingly unaware of how easily it could be used to carve away at the civil liberties and safety of anyone who dares to have an opposing view.
Ms. Haley exclaimed that “every person on social media should be verified by their name.”
“When you do that, all of a sudden people have to stand by what they say, and it gets rid of the Russian bots, the Iranian bots, and the Chinese bots, and then you’re going to get some civility when people know their name is next to what they say, and they know their pastor and their family members are going to see it. It’s going to help our kids, and it’s going to help our country,” she said.
Ms. Haley believes that this action will bring “civility” to conversations, but instead, it would make doxing individuals easier if they dared speak out of line, including Republicans who dared to say something that’s counter-narrative, in the future.
It’s in vogue to want to rid the world of speech that you find offensive, but the ability to do so only provides a path for it to one day be used against you.
As much as I can’t personally stand certain people who have illogical and utterly despicable rhetoric, I simultaneously recognize that if there’s a mechanism to silence them, it’s only a matter of time before it could be used against me.
The problem is that the people who hold the current acceptable mainstream position never consider the day that they’ll lose the popularity high ground. When they’re on top, they’re not satisfied with only standing above their opposition, and the traps they set for the people they despise become the ones they’ll one day fall into.
This is what we’re seeing play out on college campuses across the country in response to the conflict in Gaza.
The leftists of yesteryear had the backing of the mainstream narrative makers in the media to normalize the social ramifications inflicted on anyone who challenged their demands for constant racial awesomeness or overreach surrounding COVID-19 measures.
Getting “anti-vaxxers” fired from their jobs for having dissenting views surrounding COVID-19 was rationalized as holding them accountable, and performative sadist behavior was encouraged as being included in the “new normal.”
However, once the power of public ridicule, doxing, and economic ruin by public demand becomes an applicable weapon as a response to defend a mainstream position, it'll take a Herculean effort to close this Pandora’s box.
After the heinous acts committed by Hamas on Oct. 7, left-wing activists made it publicly known that they were standing beside the Palestinian people even if that meant glorifying Hamas as being “freedom fighters.”
What they weren’t ready for was the pendulum to swing against them and for the very tactics that they had crafted for years to be used against them. For every college campus protest that showed alliance with Hamas, the campaign to expel students caught on camera grew more fervent.
If the past few years have shown us anything, it’s that time is the only indicator of when you’ll be on the wrong side of what’s popular and that narrative power is capable of making monsters out of any of us.
Remove the pride from your eyes and remedy your foresight disability by asking yourself this singular humbling question: “How could this be used against me or something that I like?”
