The Costs of Telling the Truth
February 15, 2012
AT VFR, there’s an excellent discussion of the professional and social costs of speaking honestly about race. One commenter, who writes under the pseudonym Nemo Quivedit, describes the personal hell he experienced after posting some relatively innocuous statements on Facebook about black crime and family dysfunction. His business in the entertainment industry was shunned and he lost many longtime friends. Eventually, however, he found new friends and better business opportunities. He writes:
Now that I can See, I can perceive the Enemy as he is: the First Revolutionary. Instead of fighting against his Revolution openly, where his minions can train every weapon on me and mine, I now fight a guerrilla war. I have become an anonymous counter-revolutionary, striking him from behind dozens of Internet pseudonyms and with weapons he can neither defend against nor adopt.
I am happy now. I am also a great deal more free. I learned a lot from my own lynching — namely, that fighting the Enemy on his terms is a recipe for suicide.
I learned one more lesson as well: to stay the hell off Facebook.
If you choose to publish this message, please do not reveal my name, initials, or e-mail address, as I do not wish to expose my family to any further torment from our open-minded, accepting, diversity-loving countrymen.
— Comments —
Diana writes:
I’m amazed that anyone is surprised that we do not live in a free society, especially with respect to things like black crime and dysfunction, feminism, and gay rights.
Of the three, I believe that items number one and three are the most risky to be honest about, especially at work. You can joke about gender differences because underneath it all, everyone knows that they exist. But – you just do not, at work, mention racial differences, and never, ever speak honestly about homosexuals. You’ll destroy your position in respectable society.
I happened to be watching The Charlie Rose Show a few nights ago, after the California decision legalizing gay marriage. David Boies, the chief defense lawyer, was the guest. He said that the purpose of the “gay rights” movement was to make discrimination against gays as disrespectable as discrimination against blacks. Wasn’t he right? Aren’t they a raging success?
Of course, part of being an adult has always been to learn discretion, but now, the price of the ticket to respectable society is to maintain that there is no difference between homosexuality and heterosexuality.
Sarah Nelson writes:
Open upfront comments or discussions about racial behavioral/cultural differences are a social litmus test and will expose you and your family to (at the very least) disapproval. More extreme punishments for daring to say anything other than what the party approves of includes loss of employment, friends, threats of violence toward you and your children, etc. I suggest that the out-of-proportion negative responses Nemo Quivedit received was multiplied and out of proportion precisely because it was Facebook.
The use of “social media” unfortunately brings out some of the worst characteristics of people. The entire concept is to immediately broadcast relationship status, interactions with your family, and conversations with your friends. For those of us over 30, this used to be called gossiping and was discouraged. Social media encourages voyeurism and provides a subtle way for women to “one up” and feel superior to each other with their endless posts/updates and pictures of their home and children (aren’t they so cute/perfect/accomplished?). Social media is “synced” to all our Internet activity. Facebook is the darling of our consumer culture because it allows instant and conspicuous displays of cultural, intellectual, and material consumption. Instant updates of what music we listen to, what articles we read and what we just purchased through a sponsored link are the latest version of keeping up with the Joneses. This used to be called pride and envy. It even makes friendship competitive! How many “friends” or “links” you have and how many “groups” you are a part of is prominently displayed for everyone to see and be oh-so- impressed. This derisively used to be called a popularity contest and was seen as shallow and generally the pursuit of adolescents. Most interestingly social media encourages conformity, to avoid being judged as “other.”
So when any comment carries even a whiff of “other” it is linked, shared, ridiculed, and then denounced in true social media Maoist fashion. This proves the loyalty of those denouncing the “other” to the party. I am not the first to say this – it creates an echo chamber.
Nemo Quivedit’s story inspires fear, but it should also inspire resolve…and if nothing else it should inspire you to stay off of Facebook.
I don’t work outside the home so I am able to express my opinions (another benefit of being a full time wife and mother). You can use my name. In the event my Husband’s employer has nothing better to concern himself with than blog comments submitted by his employee’s spouse then we have much larger problems to address.
Alissa writes:
I disagree with Diana on item two, feminism, not being risky to tell the truth about. All of them (racial, gender and sexuality) are quite risky to talk about. With the advent of transgenderism, gender differences are going to be brushed away even more and one won’t be able to talk about simple gender truths. The ideal of autonomy will be trumpeted even more loudly. Feminism has been a strong force in steering society towards civilizational ruin. A few even speculate that this phenomenon was the start of the modern era. The daughter of the patriarch rebelling against her own father and family. I believe it was first institutionalized disbelief in God and widespread skepticism that lead to the modern era but the rebellious daughter explanation isn’t without merit. Of course we also have our rebellious sons.
Diana writes:
I was referring specifically to work situations. Perhaps Alissa’s experience in the workplace has been different from mine.
Let’s clear something up at the outset. No one is free to speak one’s mind about anything and everything in the workplace. Everyone (including the boss) is subject to some form of censorship. Then there are many different environments, from artsy-entertainment to the trading floor mosh pit, which have distinctly different political colorations.
I’ve worked in them all and I have found that after a certain “getting to know you process,” you can be surprisingly honest about gender differences. I mean, you don’t run around waving the anti-feminist flag, but you can drop a hint or two, and then joke about it. Most people know that the “no difference between the sexes” philosophy is total junk.
Of course I know what Alissa is talking about. I’ve inadvertently stepped on many a left-wing toe by stating my belief in the innateness of sex differences. But for every one of those incidents, I’ve heard refreshing dissent right in the workplace, such as the middle-aged female executive who, upon hearing a younger woman whine about the
difficulties of being a “working mom,” turned to me and said, “Why doesn’t she just stay home and take care of her kids?” And people always joke about “too much estrogen” or PMS, and the like.
Forget about anything like that happening with respect to race, or gays. No one would ever say that So-And-So is a bad temperedincompetent who was promoted because of race. No one could possibly get away with saying that So-And-So got his job because his “boyfriend” got it for him (I have seen this same-sex nepotism, and it has a horrible effect on the workplace.)
Also, apart from the workplace, think of the difference between what happened to Lawrence Summers and James Watson. Summers, President of Harvard, mused about the lack of women in the upper reaches of science and he was pilloried, yes, but after he was canned from Harvard (for messing up the endowment, ironically), he got a job in the Obama Administration. He’s still a respected economist. James Watson, Nobel Laureate, discoverer of the double helix, mused about racial differences. He was fired and banished from polite society. It’s as if he were a counterrevolutionary in Stalin’s Russia. Pretty soon the same will pertain for homosexuality. Anyone who considers “gays” to be inferior to heterosexuals will be considered sick, and an enemy of society.
Jesse Powell writes:
After reading the first part of Vaclav Havel’s essay “The Power of the Powerless” (recommended by D. Edwards at VFR), I was surprised and impressed with how closely Havel’s description of life in Czechoslovakia under Soviet domination matched my experience of life in America under feminist domination. I particularly like Havel’s concept of “living within the truth” as opposed to “living within the lie.” This website in large measure is a kind of communal effort to “live within the truth” in defiance against the endless social pressure to “live within the lie.”
“The Costs of Telling the Truth” however often go beyond mere social disapproval and into the more concrete world of people’s livelihoods. People’s livelihoods, their jobs, then affect not only an individual’s own comfort and security but that of the family that relies upon him as well. Still, it should be remembered that holding and expressing unpopular views is not against the law for Americans and that the Internet is not being censored and that those hosting controversial websites are not punished through legal means. We should bear in mind that many have had it much harder in their efforts to reform their societies.
Havel’s essay has many interesting insights. The quotes below focus on the role of ideology, appearance versus reality, and the value of “living within the truth”:
“Ideology, in creating a bridge of excuses between the system and the individual, spans the abyss between the aims of the system and the aims of life. It pretends that the requirements of the system derive from the requirements of life. It is a world of appearances trying to pass for reality.”
“Individuals need not believe all these mystifications, but they must behave as though they did, or they must at least tolerate them in silence, or get along well with those who work with them. For this reason, however, they must live within a lie. They need not accept the lie. It is enough for them to have accepted their life with it and in it. For by this very fact, individuals confirm the system, fulfill the system, make the system, are the system.”
“[A]s long as appearance is not confronted with reality, it does not seem to be appearance. As long as living a lie is not confronted with living the truth, the perspective needed to expose its mendacity is lacking. As soon as the alternative appears, however, it threatens the very existence of appearance and living a lie in terms of what they are, both their essence and their all-inclusiveness.”
“Individuals can be alienated from themselves only because there is something in them to alienate. The terrain of this violation is their authentic existence. Living the truth is thus woven directly into the texture of living a lie. It is the repressed alternative, the authentic aim to which living a lie is an inauthentic response. Only against this background does living a lie make any sense: it exists because of that background. In its excusatory, chimerical rootedness in the human order, it is a response to nothing other than the human predisposition to truth. Under the orderly surface of the life of lies, therefore, there slumbers the hidden sphere of life in its real aims, of its hidden openness to truth. The singular, explosive, incalculable political power of living within the truth resides in the fact that living openly within the truth has an ally, invisible to be sure, but omnipresent: this hidden sphere. It is from this sphere that life lived openly in the truth grows; it is to this sphere that it speaks, and in it that it finds understanding. This is where the potential for communication exists. But this place is hidden and therefore, from the perspective of power, very dangerous.”
Alissa writes in response to Diana:
Diana wrote: I was referring specifically to work situations. Perhaps Alissa’s experience in the workplace has been different from mine.
Apologies Diana for my misunderstanding. I’m still a young woman and, while nearing the end of adolescence, haven’t work a day in my life (e.g. workplace). I was discussing the risks of telling the truth on a general level (e.g. in any public place).
Diana wrote (her comment came in before the above comment from Alissa):
Let me stress that my difference with Alissa is merely one of degree, and a fraction of a degree at that. I was only referring to what one says between friends at work. While it may be possible to get away with some gender difference banter, when it comes to racial differences, never ever breathe a word or you will suffer.
When it comes to speech regarding important societal policies, Alissa is totally right. If a politician were to say, “I believe that men and women are biologically different, and this difference is reflected in labor market outcomes,” or, “The innate biological differences between men and women render women unfit for combat-related roles in the military (or fire departments),” he would be ridiculed within an inch of his life.
Commonsense, truthful observations about innate gender differences with respect to life-affecting social policies are verboten, and consign one to the margins of society. So, even if I disagree with Alissa about the latitude afforded someone with the right style in the workplace, I agree that feminist orthodoxy has created Stalinist conditions in society as a whole.
