Still less than 200 years ago a war was fought over ideologies which allowed for or didn’t allow for slavery in the United States. Men and women were chained and beaten and forced to work in subhuman conditions without any rights to property. Families were torn apart and people were bought and sold like animals. The struggle to free these people was arguably more valorous than the war fought for American Independence from the British – a simple matter of property and taxation.

The Jewish Holocaust of the 20th century was a similarly insidious and despicable occurrence. Although it was not a primary cause of World War II, the post-hoc analysis of the conflict has added it to the numerous justifications that the Allied Powers had for imposing strict measures on Germany. The holocaust resonates through German culture today. The suffering of the Jewish people was as severe as could be imagined and on a scale that is nearly impossible to conceive. This was an evil unlike any that the world has ever seen.

The infringement of the human rights of minority groups today pales in comparison with these two historic tragedies. Although homosexuals are still subject to prejudice and exclusion on the basis of their sexuality, they are not, in most parts of the world, stripped of property and life. They are not herded into transport and taken away from their homes to be either the property of another human or worse to be exterminated entirely for no other reason than their sexuality.

Black men and women today are still subject to biases and prejudices. They are incarcerated at a higher rate per capita and are killed by law enforcement at a higher rate per capita. They are more likely to live in poverty than white citizens and the roots of this run deep into the past along family lines as well as in the general rules that are set against them. This seems fairly inarguable.

They are not, however, chained, whipped, nor beaten. They have the right to property and can vote. They can hold any job – up to and including President of the United States of America. But the plight of the modern African American is compared to and inexorably linked to the plight of the slave – as if the two were one and the same.

The comparison of racial bias and prejudice today to slavery or to the holocaust are miscarriages of logic and reason. To the unthinking person they may seem excessive or hyperbolic, but the thinking person these comparisons should be an insult to reason and an insult to those who suffered under these institutions. Not just an insult, in fact, but a deliberate and malicious attempt to minimize their suffering by comparing as equals those who suffer, in comparison, much less.

When we see images full of white and black people together, or watch the video of the little black boy and white boy hugging, it seems to stand in stark contrast to our reality. We are told that we are in a racial war. The same goes for straights and LGBTQ+ people, to the point where being cis-gender, cis-sexuality is an odd thing and something to be embarrassed or ashamed of.

In reality, however, we do not live in a world of racial strife or strife over sexuality. We live in a world where all of these people have roughly equal rights and opportunities. Where those rights are different, we are working hard to equalize them, but this does not rise to the level of war and certainly does not compare to the fight over slavery. When we say that the rights of LGBTQ+ are infringed, it does not mean that they are being walked into gas chambers to be summarily executed. It means that they have slightly fewer opportunities.

The fight to bend your mind into believing that we are in some sort of ideological war is intended to cause you to question your reality. It goes beyond your mind into the metamind which shapes all of consciousness. You are just one node in it, a blinking light, a diode, a binary figure that contributes to it. Guard yourself against distortions or reality and see that you don’t contribute to a disturbance of the Reality Machina.

There is no more argument on the basis of fact. It seems that people believe that the predominant ethics of today are based on accepted rational belief. If that were so, however, we would be able to reach a consensus through argument. This isn’t the case. In fact, arguing with anyone over a belief they hold tends to lead to anger and an end to civil discourse.

Why is it that we can’t come to agreement anymore? Quite simply, it is because our belief systems are no longer rooted in truth or fact. If you follow the basis for modern ethics back to their roots, you reach hazy area where emotional pleas substitute for actual basic principles.

Take, for example, the commonly held notion that people should not be subjected to evaluation based upon the color of their skin. Ask yourself why this is? Most people are going to say that it isn’t fair and that we come to incorrect conclusions about people by making hasty judgements based on appearance. Is it not also true, however, that people who looks similar often – not always – but often have similar characteristics, mannerisms, and beliefs? This isn’t an appeal to racism, however it is an appeal to base our ethics and beliefs on fact, not on cloudy, whimsical notions that are based on our cultural inheritance of judeo-christianity and Hollywood non-sense.

Take this a step further into the meta. Most likely you have a reaction to the above paragraph. At the very least it is unease – something has been said that is problematic. Someone could get in trouble for suggesting it. Nearly as likely is that you have rejected it outright as a heresy to modern thought. It could not possibly be true that different races of human are actually different. The idea is disquieting and uncomfortable and you are already charging yourself up to deny any facts that might be presented.

Instead, consider the wikipedia article on the subject:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence

Note that the central tenet is that there are racial differences in intelligence by the definition we give it. Although that fact is presented clearly, most of the article goes on to discuss why it might not REALLY be true. One section says, “It’s not genetic, it’s due to environmental and developmental causes”.

In the end, the concept of racial disparities becomes not simply a curiosity, but a call for rearrangement of the social power structure. If a disadvantaged group can never overcome their suppression and perform as well as the higher socioeconomic status group, then an external force must intervene to allow the disadvantaged group the ability to become more powerful. Resistance by the incumbent group results in derision and shame. But in the end, what happens when there is a new incumbent? Will they share power? Or will there simply be a new king of the hill?

The end game here is unclear and how the ultimate good will be served is not clear either. This is because there is no fundamental principle being exercised. It’s simply a matter of appeal to emotion – that the little man be allowed to win and that the strong man is inherently bad because of his strength. It’s a Hollywood plot being applied to our entire social structure without true cause or basic ethic to fall back on. The problem with Hollywood plots is that they are made to make us feel good about the end. The people who met each other 90 minutes ago on the screen get married and it feels like magic. But once the curtain goes down, life goes on for the rest of us.

All that is to say that postmodernist thought is entirely about an appeal to emotion. There is a sense of fairness that is a matter of cultural inheritance, not a reasoned approach from first principles. This meandering, non epistemological morass of head-nodding forced agreement means that argumentation against it is impossible. Because if you don’t accept the postmodernist belief system at face value, then its adherents only have emotion as response – because that’s all they had to begin with.