As discussed when last we chatted, per Jean Jacques Rousseau, the regressive Left has been dragging humanity back to an allegedly pristine state of nature to escape corrupting civilization. Integral to the Left’s aims is foisting upon us soon-to-be noble savages a civil religion, the tenets of which must be believed over and above any others. Moreover, these can never be contradicted. If a heretic disbelieves or denies the civil religion, he will be branded as such by whatever “ism” is convenient; and reeducated, imprisoned, and sometimes even tortured or even killed.
Of course, in America today, heretics to the civil religion are not yet imprisoned, tortured, or killed by the Left. Nevertheless, one of the most painful lessons of the 20th century is how the demonization and dehumanization of one’s real or imagined opponents can lead to horrors once thought unimaginable. And the danger escalates in proportion to how casually and cavalierly the would-be oppressors cast their epithets and calumnies upon their would-be victims.
This is not to say that all who employ such tactics hope to imprison or otherwise physically harm those they perceive as heretics to their imposed civil religion. No, the vast majority would settle for the heretics to be silenced, shunned, and unemployed. But that is precisely the first step leading to the ultimate abyss of totalitarianism.
Right now, one need only look at how the Left demands everyone grovel before the climate change cult. From the moment Al Gore said the “science is settled,” the Left would brook no opposition on their apocalyptic call to have the world’s government control the weather by controlling you.
Next, for those heretics still unconvinced or attempting to refute it, they were branded as “climate change deniers”—unreasonable, irrational, ignorant and/or self-interested people who were anti-science and didn’t give a rat’s ass about the planet or the people who live on it.
Now, in addition to sacred relics, the Left has added indulgences to their religion. Patagonia’s CEO, Rose Marcario, denounced the Trump tax cuts and claims to have donated all of her company’s “windfall” to climate change and environmental organizations. Forgiving environmental sins evidently has a simple matter of equation for capitalists and would-be climate change heretics.
Not content to virtue signal by sending “our urgent gift to the planet,” because “our home planet needs it more than we do,” Marcario drove her point home: “Far too many have suffered the consequences of global warming in recent months, and the political response has so far been woefully inadequate—and the denial is just evil.” Emphasis mine.
These are the sentiments of a CEO of a company that sells outdoor clothing to the general public. These remarks were drafted and posted to a public website for widespread consumption with no worries that branding people of different political views as “evil” might adversely affect sales and the company, let alone the civil discourse in the country.
But who knows? Perhaps some environmental activist will buy a superfluous set of mittens so they can boast they bought them from Patagonia, the scourge of the climate change heretics.
This is no isolated incident. It is an escalation, typifying the regressives’ disquieting certitude in their civil religion; and their puritanical zeal to impose it upon “evil” heretics.
By any means necessary?
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