The Slippery Slope is Not a Fallacy

It is frequently (on a side note, the reason I use the word “frequently” so damn much is because I have no fucking clue how “often” is supposed to be pronounced) said that the slippery slope is a logical fallacy. It’s not, but perhaps if you want to avoid having that argument, you could use the phrase “dangerous precedent” instead. For the rest of you…

An accusation of “that’s the logical fallacy of the slippery slope,” much like the use of the non-sequitur, is an intellectual cop-out, in this case one that’s meant to denigrate a person’s argument as “conspiratorial,” or some other pejorative for ease of dismissal. There are two big slippery slopes that western civilisation is already falling down, creating a massive divide in society, but you were a tinfoil hat-wearer if you saw this coming a quarter-century ago. One of these slippery slopes goes “left,” the other goes “right,” both are descents into utter madness, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the same players are responsible for both, because that’s how subversion works.

First off, I’m under no illusion that I’m going to change the mind of any radical leftists or religious fundamentalists with my arguments. Such people are either already lost (useful idiots) or part of the problem (propagandists). This is not for them, nor for their narrow-minded antagonists. So, to all the culture warriors, whether you are atheist activists or conservative crusaders, fuck off, because I hate all of you. This is for the people who are already on board with what I’ve been saying all this time, “horseshoe theory is real,” and reject the stupid left-right paradigm. So, with that out of the way, as is my custom, I shall bash the left first, and then take turns, because I am an egalitarian; I hate everyone equally.

One argument I have heard against gay marriage is that it is “a slippery slope to beastiality.” Supposedly, the first time that this argument was made was during the Satanic Panic, which was a moral panic by Evangelical Christians during the 1980s in the United States, but that’s hardly important. At the time, the pearl-clutching preachers who were uttering that message were laughed at. Well, the radical left has pushed for more and more “deviance,” to appropriate conservative rhetoric, and while they haven’t tried advocating for beastiality as of this writing, they have begun trying to destigmatise noncery (paedophilia), and while even the majority of pink-haired progressive freaks aren’t on board with MAPs (“minor-attracted persons”), it is an inescapable fact that the radical left that is trying to normalise such behaviour; religious fundamentalists may engage in noncery at a higher rate, but they at least try to hide it, because they aren’t stupid enough to think that it’s defensible.

As classical religions are in a general state of decline worldwide and being supplanted by secular ideologies (not reason) and new-age spooky woo, the legacy churches in western nations are lashing out at their increasing irrelevance, weaponising religious freedom in a last-ditch effort to regain their hegemon. Andrew Seidel wrote a book about this decades-long crusade, which I only recently heard about and have not yet read. As insufferable as religious pearl-clutchers can be, leftist pearl-clutchers are just as bad, fearmongering that “first they came for your abortion rights, next they’ll come for marriage equality, and eventually they’ll bring back segregation.” There is similar fearmongering in Russia right now, with anyone even remotely liberal worried that the Russian government will not stop with banning woke propaganda, but will attempt to criminalise homosexuality itself. Anton Krasovskii is a particularly interesting individual to pay attention to, since he came out as gay on national television back in 2013 (quite a scandal in Russia at the time), and was once one of Vladimir Putin’s staunchest adversaries, but has since become one of Putin’s most vocal supporters and vitriolic propagandists – he apparently has an obsession with drowning people he doesn’t like. Whether it is out a total lack of scruples (quite plausible), blackmail (equally plausible), or pure shock value (it’s Anton Krasovskii, so you tell me) I cannot say, nor does it matter. Returning to the United States, I must note that for legal purposes, the overturning of Roe vs. Wade was a good idea (and I suggest reading Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s arguments lambasting the original 1973 ruling if you want to know why), I’m hardly blind to the fact that some legislators are now pushing for a federal abortion ban, rather than just leaving the issue up to the states, as it should be. The leftist fearmongering is thus not entirely unfounded – though I should point out that, when it comes to segregation, that’s actually projection, because leftists are trying to bring it back.

Before I go back to bashing the right, I’d like to rant about something that both sides are guilty of: cancel culture. I’m old enough to remember when Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone first appeared in bookstores all over the US, and the Evangelical Jesus-freaks lost their shit. However, that was nothing more than the last gasp of the Satanic Panic that had effectively died around the same time that to Soviet Union did, and I was blissfully unaware of both, lying in a hospital bascinet somewhere in Saint Petersburg. In those days, Evangelical Christians were much more popular and enjoyed much more institutional power, thus they used censorship to remove ideas that ran counter to their doctrine. At the time, leftists were the thick-skinned free speech warriors, and conservatives were the pearl-clutchers with sticks up their arses. Around 2010, however, the trend started to reverse, and by 2014, it was obvious that the left had become the pro-censorship crowd, and so-called “liberals” became the pearl-clutchers, demanding that books be banned and speech be curtailed because their skin had become so thin. This has nothing to do with principles, because freedom of expression is not a “left” or “right” issue, it is purely an issue of power. Freedom of expression is the freedom to be irreverent, hence:

In many cases, these two are actually the same person – let that sink in.

There is a quote commonly attributed to Abraham Lincoln that goes “nearly all men can withstand adversity; for a true test of a man’s character, give him power.” This adage has been proven true time and time again. Freedom of expression is inconvenient to those in power, and since people are subject to the biases of their own upbringing, those who grew up under the boot-heel of religious fundamentalism insist that “freedom” is a left-wing thing, and oppression is a right-wing thing. Meanwhile, those who grew up under the boot-heel of authoritarian socialism will say the exact opposite. People need to get over themselves. Cancel culture is neither left nor right. Cancel culture is purely a Machiavellian tool by which those in power keep their power. I’m not a leftist anymore, but I keep finding myself citing old-school leftists when it comes to this subject, for example:

If you do not believe in freedom of expression for ideas that you despise, then you do not believe in it at all. – Noam Chomsky

Luckily, now that the “right” no longer has a firm grasp on power, the younger rightists also have some decent takes, for example:

It is possible to believe that someone is wrong and yet still find them fascinating. It is possible to disagree with someone’s ideas and yet still believe that the ideas are worth listening to. – Matt Walsh

Every time the so-called politcial pendulum (I hate that analogy) swings back to the other side, the new ruling party becomes more censorious than the last. Both sides keep trying to force their ideology down everyone’s throat and make more laws that control what we are allowed to say. If you look throughout history, there is a trend of greater and greater censorship as time progresses, with only occasional reprieves. Blasphemy laws and “hate speech” laws are the means by which this censorship worsens. Such laws protect no-one but the establishment, so anyone defending censorship is either a useful idiot or a paid shill (propagandist), and to pass even a single such law in a country that has none sets a dangerous precedent by which any speech may be criminalised. Every English-speaking country except the United States has laws to restrict speech, and scores of people have been arrested under such laws for the most innocuous of comments with greater frequency over the past ten years. If you don’t believe me, then where the hell have you been for all that time, in a fucking tomb?! Censorship in the Anglosphere has gotten so out-of-hand that Stalin would be proud; Putin would blush, were he capable. You Russophobes ought to be more scared of your own governments than of mine.

Now then, back to bashing the right. As Feodosii (Theodosius) Dobzhanskii once said, “nothing in biology makes sense except in light of Evolution.” This is relevant because the “far right” is staunchly opposed to the teaching of the Theory of Evolution, and many fundamentalist parents, be they Christian or Muslim, advise each other not to expose their children to any of the Earth and life sciences, lest they be exposed to the “forbidden knowledge” that will inevitably lead them down a slippery slope that will end with them losing their religious faith altogether. This is not a fallacy, this actually happens. Dobzhanskii, like most Christians, saw no conflict between Christian doctrine and the Theory of Evolution, but the “far right” doesn’t represent the majority – as I mentioned, these are “fundamentalists,” i.e. those who believe in a literal interpretation of scripture. They, of course, are the only ones who are at risk of losing their faith by learning science. The “pipeline” towards atheism is real only in the case of religious extremism. The irony, as I have seen, is that the rise of fundamentalism in classical religions is leading to higher instances of militant atheism as a direct response. Militant atheists who originally came from fundamentalist backgrounds reject everything that religious fundamentalists stand for, including the handful of things that the latter are actually right about – such as the definition of the word “woman.” Here, have another meme:

Two examples of this compulsive contrarianism are Jimmy Snow and Owen Morgan, who are a former Mormon and Jehovah’s Witness respectively, and both are now vitriolic woketards. Woke culture didn’t make them that way – religious fundamentalism did. In other words, those two were always insane, they simply traded one type of insanity for its bizarro version. Snow, in particular, has said on numerous occasions that he was a horrible person before he left Mormonism. Sure… I would say that Snow, much like the family that he allegedly disowned, is still a horrible person, he just thinks he’s better because he’s traded one ideology for its supposed opposite. Reality denial comes from having a personality disorder, and personality disorders know no ideological bounds.

Speaking of pipelines, there are multiple “pipelines to the far-right” in the far-left worldview. Studying history is one, because leftist ideology has a track record of failure, and the farther left it is, the more people have been killed by it. Learning new skills is another, because leftists despise “rugged individualism” above all else. Gardening, homesteading, DIY anything, really, is a path away from authoritarian collectivism, certainly, and the far-left feels compelled to scare people by spewing hyperbolic rhetorical diarrhea such as “homesteaders are fascists” or something like that, never mind that fascism is just as anti-kulak as communism. Much of the criticism is just cherry-picked instances of abusive families in remote rural areas. Remember, the far-left is anti-family as well as anti-property, they see the family as an inherently abusive power structure, and they use their own abusive upbringing, be it real, perceived, or utterly fabricated, as an argument against the concept of family in general. I have my own issues with the traditional conservative idea of family, and I’ll definitely slaughter that sacred cow in some other article. Once again, the real problem is with personality disorders; when bad people embrace good ideas, they do not become better people, they give those ideas a bad name.

Right, enough equal-opportunity ideology-bashing for one day. Na shledanou!