As another year comes to a close, I think about how the world has ceased to be crazy since the pandemic started in 2020. Instead of surpassing the pandemic, it looks like we as a society are still reeling from it. In February, I wrote about how the golden standard of research, the systematic review of randomized controlled trials (RCT), showed that face masks are ineffective at spreading COVID transmission, including the N95 masks. That did not stop former CDC director Rochelle Walensky from clinging onto face masks at a congressional hearing, thereby showing us why we should not trust the CDC to give the American people health guidance. The Biden administration showed similar disregard for the science when it came to natural immunity. Meanwhile, the evidence for how awful and horrid lockdowns were continues to accumulate.
Dealing with a post-pandemic world had its effects in making the world topsy-turvy. One notable area was after Hamas attacked Israeli civilians on October 7. Here you have an anti-Semitic, homophobic terrorist organization with genocidal intent that carried out an actual pogrom. Hamas terrorists raped, kidnapped, tortured, murdered, and decapitated hundreds on that day. I came to a realization about Hamas. Even if Israel were to get rid of Hamas, Palestinian survey data still show that most Palestinians hate Jews and do not want a two-state solution. This undermines the narrative that Hamas is some minority, rogue party as opposed to being a reflection of the majority of Gazans.
Even before the Israeli Defense Forces began its ground attack on Gaza, there were many eager to blame Israel and have declared Hamas to be the good guys. I noticed that many on the Far Left in particular embraced anti-Semitism and Hamas. I had to ask myself why, which resulted in a three-part blog series (Part I, Part II, and Part III). I noticed the Far Left/woke doublespeak on Middle Eastern politics, especially with the word "genocide." Here is Israel, a country who is trying to minimize civilian casualties in a densely populated urban war zone, falsely accused of genocide. Meanwhile, the Far Left is content on ignoring the entity that has been calling for genocide and ethnic cleansing of Jews since its founding, i.e., Hamas.
The Israeli-Arab conflict is not the only instance in which the woke crowd plays fast and loose with the meaning of words. It goes beyond the Woke Left being incapable of distinguishing between correlation and causation, which helps explain why the Woke Left likes to view nearly everything as racist. As I pointed out in January, it is part of a greater strategy to render words meaningless all the while gaining power. This doublespeak exists when they call colorblindness racism. The phrase "gender-affirming care" comes under great scrutiny considering there is not evidence to show that it is truly affirming care.
Speaking of the LGBT community, I was flabbergasted as to how the Human Rights Campaign could declare a "state of emergency" for LGBT rights when 2023 was far from the worst year for LGBT rights in the United States. This is what happens when people declare everything a crisis to score political points.
This crisis mentality was clear with climate change. I reached the point where I had to write about how we should be skeptical of climate change fear-mongering. This was especially acute when the media was freaking out about heat waves this summer. I did something which very few, if any, climate change activists have done, which is ask what it would actually take to implement Net Zero. None of this stopped the Biden administration from trying to implement energy policy based on such hysteria, whether that was gas stove bans, stricter emission standards to encourage electric vehicle purchases, or rigorous water heater energy efficiency standards.
Other forms of craziness this year included bowlderizing Roald Dahl's texts, conservative moral panic on Drag Queen Story Hour, French citizens protesting an increase in the retirement age, the Supreme Court ruling affirmative action as unconstitutional, a TikToker's rant on time blindness showing a pervasive victimhood mentality in society, the U.S. credit rating being downgraded again because of Congress' fiscal irresponsibility, blasphemy laws in Denmark, the Federal Trade Commission going after Amazon (see Part I, Part II, and Part III), and woke K-12 educators removing honors classes and basic skills requirements to water down education.
As the previous paragraphs illustrate, I researched and analyzed a wide variety of issues this year. My takeaway from it is a greater disregard of freedom, words being rendered meaningless, and lowering standards to the point where mediocrity and people's feelings are more important than emotional resilience, work ethic, moral decency, or facts. As we put 2023 behind us, I hope that we can look forward to a better year than this one.
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