When I got close to photograph a partridge pea flower (Chamaecrista fasciculata) in Pflugerville on September 9th I found a small crab spider on it. That's hardly unusual in central Texas—and maybe everywhere—as you can confirm by scrolling down through the pictures in past posts.
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1984 comes to Los Angeles
In the mid-20th century the writer George Orwell, who had flirted with and ultimately renounced Communism, came to understand the way that despots work to redefine familiar words. As a classic example, in Orwell's cautionary novel 1984 a totalitarian regime asserts that
War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.
In our own times, activists who promote the commingled ideologies of "race" and "gender" and "social justice" that have come out of the Marxist tradition are similarly pushing to redefine traditional words. Among those words is "hate," a word that today's authoritarians use to label anything they disagree with. If you say that there are two and only two biological sexes, you're a hater. If you advocate using the scientific method to determine how the universe works, you're a hater. If you believe that people should be hired for a job or admitted to a college based on merit, you're a hater. If you say that a person should be treated as an individual rather than as a token of some privileged or oppressed group, you're a hater. If you proclaim that America is a land of opportunity, you're a hater.
Yesterday I learned about an organization in Los Angeles called LA vs Hate, which is funded in part by taxpayers. Here's what the organization's "About" page says:
LA vs Hate is a community-centered system designed to support all residents and communities targeted for hate acts of all kinds in Los Angeles County. Led by the LA County Commission on Human Relations, LA vs Hate partners with community partners from all five Board of Supervisors' Districts, representing a diverse coalition of voices committed to prevent and respond to hate.
The goals of the LA vs Hate System are:
Address the normalization of hate and inspire people to stand up to it
Build understanding about what constitutes a hate act and how to report it
Support individuals and communities as they heal from the trauma of hate
By tracking and reporting hate we can ensure that resources are allocated appropriately, that those targeted by hate receive the support they need, and that together, we can build respectful and resilient communities.
The organization's Report Hate page explains that an aggrieved person can dial 211 to report— confidentially and even anonymously, and in any of 180 languages!—an instance of "hate." Now, what could possibly go wrong with a tattle-tale system like that?
© 2023 Steven Schwartzman
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