catching on

Styx is my personal prophet, my very own Hari Seldon; much of what he talks about turns out to be right and/or to be prescient. He's been beating the "moral panic" drum for a while, now, noting the cultural signs and clues that indicate we are indeed in the midst of mass hysteria. To echo John McCrarey, I'm glad to be outside of America right now; while I think I'm eventually going to end up back in the States near the end of my life, I'll wait for a later decade to go back, thanks. Anyway, it's amusing to watch more mainstream people finally catch up to Styx's prognostications. Cute, pixie-ish Ashe Schow has finally caught up regarding the "moral panic" thing: she's just written an article titled "5 Signs You’re In The Midst Of A Moral Panic." Here are her five signs:

1. Due Process Goes Out The Window

Due process has become "dude process," i.e., run the dude through a meat grinder.

2. “Believe The Victim”

As Schow writes:

This may be the biggest tell of a moral panic. An accusation, we’re told, is sufficient enough. With due process being considered anathema to victims, accusations are all the evidence needed.

3. Misleading And Faulty Statistics

Lies, damned lies...

Saying wild-eyed things like "1 in 5 college women have experienced on-campus sexual harassment or assault," a bullshit figure if ever there was one, merely contributes to the frenetic, enstupidated atmosphere.

4. Evidence, Schmevidence

Schow says:

As due process goes out the window, so does the need for evidence. During these times of mass hysteria, things that would otherwise be considered evidence that a crime was not committed or that an accuser is lying in any other situation are dismissed as evidence of the crime itself.

The Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Drumhead" is relevant here.

5. Pseudo-Scientific Theories About Memory Reign Supreme

I hadn't thought about this one. But:

The science of memories always pops up during moral panics. During the Satanic Panic, child psychologists claimed children who didn’t remember the sexual abuse were repressing those memories. The psychologists simply needed to coax those memories out, but in the process they actually implanted false memories into the children by inadvertently bullying them into making outrageous claims.

In the Ingram case in Washington, even Paul Ingram was made to believe he was repressing memories — both of the abuse he committed and childhood abuse committed against him.

On college campuses, therapists, friends, and school administrators help corrupt accuser’s memories (which are often foggy due to alcohol) by telling them that a drunken hook-up was actually sexual assault. Once the idea is implanted, an accuser fills in the gaps in their memory with the idea that they must have been sexually assaulted, and interpret consensual acts in that way.

We also now see trauma “experts” insisting that everything is evidence of trauma and making claims that contradict other claims. We’re told that trauma makes memories more vivid, or that it can block out certain memories. We’re told that the closer to an event, the better someone remembers, while also being told that memories become clearer long after an event occurred.

In reality, none of this can be used to guarantee whether an accuser is being truthful or making a 100% accurate claim.

We are indeed in the grip of a moral panic. I have no idea when it will end, but I won't feel comfortable back in the States until people pull their self-righteous heads out of their asses and calm the fuck down.

While we're on the topic of self-righteousness: "Thou hypocrite, first cast the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast the mote out of thy brother's eye." If you're a man who has hurt women in the past through verbal abuse, through physical abuse, through cheating on your spouse, through abandoning your family, or through whatever way in which you've hurt women, I don't want to hear a single goddamn word out of your sanctimonious yap since you're in no moral position to make declarations about what's good or not good for women. I refuse to be lectured to by such people.

ADDENDUM: Styx has read the article, and he weighs in: