Your Sickness Just Makes Us So Sad

we're not angry, we just need you to be healthy and conform

An engineering professor at a state university offers a really long thread about the environment on college campuses, and click on that link only if you don’t already know. The tl;dr is that he had a comedy night for students, if you can imagine being such a vicious and disgusting monster, and a bunch of students showed up and enjoyed it — after which the process-as-punishment began, in a long series of meetings with the department chair and the dean and the DEI staff. They were concerned, you see. They reluctantly agreed that the funny professor hadn’t broken any rules, sure, but….they were just….very….concerned. Mid-thread sample:

John Lund @AttilaTheLund

January 17th: NOT DONE! Chair sends out an e-mail to the entire department, CCs the Dean.

Tell jokes, trigger an army of administrators who respond with an “Equity & Inclusion Listening Session.” Squishy totalitarianism: He’s still employed, but trapped from all sides by humorless wokescolds who won’t stop making sad faces at him to make sure he doesn’t ever doing anything so horrible and cruel ever again. Have some time for a meeting this afternoon, John? We want to go over what was said in yesterday’s meeting about the meetings the day before.

This model is blossoming like a turd flower.

In a post today, Steve Kirsch notes in passing that the State of Washington is considering a bill to establish a tedious commission on domestic extremism that promises to adopt a “public health approach” to hate. Like the army of academic administrators scolding and finger-wagging at a professor who hasn’t done much of anything, the state officials who are pushing this tediousness aren’t saying what they mean — they’re just, you know, like, just saying. Here’s a laugh-out-loud funny exchange between a tedious midwit PBS reporter and Washington’s tedious midwit attorney general, mush-mouthing at each other like toddlers:

Laura Barrón-López:

And then you also recommend a more public health approach, one that's led by the community and by different community institutions.

What does that look in practice, though?

Bob Ferguson:

Yes, so the way to think of this — and it's fairly detailed — but, at a high level, up to this point, as a nation, really, we have addressed this type of extremism from a law enforcement standpoint, to criminalize folks who engage in that behavior, which is, of course, entirely appropriate.

Those folks need to be held accountable. What we're trying to get at is something a little bit different, to broaden the scope, look at it from a public health standpoint, because that is what it is. We should view this holistically.

Let's engage in prevention, of getting folks — avoiding them being radicalized in the first place. If somebody is radicalized, and wants removal, move away from that, how can we help them with counseling, for example, to get them away from that ideology?

So, looking at from a more holistic standpoint, we think, addresses prevention, addresses helping folks who've been radicalized and take a more holistic view of this to address what is a huge challenge, not just in Washington state, but all across the country.

Here we have a useful how-to for anyone looking to work as a state official in Washington: Say “holistic” a lot. Being holistic means being, I think, more holistic. (Rub your chin and look thoughtful.) And remember to be holistic as a community.

What they mean under all that nothing is that political disagreement is hate, and hate is sickness. They mean that disagreement requires “prevention,” as a health measure, through “counseling” — to help you to understand that you shouldn’t think things that aren’t healthy. You can get therapy to defeat an ideology. It’s a visit from Oprah Mussolini, inviting you to get in touch with the right kind of feelings that will help the state to not be sad anymore because of your deviation from healthfulness. Like psychiatric hospitals in the late Soviet Union, the hoped-for government commission on the repression of improper political thought cares.

Dig into the text of the bill, and you discover that it says as much nothing as the attorney general who’s promoting it. The anti-extremism commission will be tasked with doing things like this:

Identifying community-led and evidence-based solutions to combat disinformation and misinformation, address early signs of radicalization, and develop public health-style responses….

Review the bill, and the interview with the attorney general, and look for the place where this “public health” approach is defined and explained, or for the place where they distinguish between “disinformation” and disagreement. Spoiler alert: none of it is there. It becomes a circle, in which the consensus-demanding culture of nagging and scolding that leads to the creation of a commission on people who make us sad because they’re sick with hateful disagreement leads to a culture of more nagging and scolding. Will public radio cover the discussions of the commission on domestic extremism? Reader, they will. You can already hear the tone of voice they will use for the report.

Remember how the California legislature defined medical misinformation in its bill that allows the suspension or revocation of medical licenses over COVID-19 discussions between doctors and patients: “false information that is contradicted by contemporary scientific consensus contrary to the standard of care.” Things that contradict the consensus are presumptively false.

Disagreement is a sickness, you poor thing. Why don’t you rest a while until you get your mind right? Here’s a little something to help. Hold still while we cure you. It’s lucky for you we’re such kind people.