Degeneracy
Degeneracy is defined as “having lost the physical, mental, or moral qualities considered normal and desirable; showing evidence of decline.” In recent years, I’ve seen it used in YouTube comments, by vloggers, on /pol/ and beyond. I’ve seen it used sarcastically as a joke by memers and lefttubers. It’s most often used in reference to deviant sexual behavior but also used to refer to drug use, gluttony and other quasi biblical sins. Searches for the term “degenerate” have been trending upwards since about 2013 (according to Google trends) and saw a peak in April 2016. Unsurprisingly, in the same time period, searches for ‘transgender’ have followed a similar trend.
Degenerate functions as a surrogate term for each bigots individual target group. With it, bigots can discuss their discrimination, without mentioning a specific target. Because of this, they can agree on their disgust rather than disagree on their target. The blanket term creates one unified evil group. Were they to dig into the weeds, they might find disagreements.
Accusations of degeneracy are almost always rooted in homophobia, transphobia, slutphobia or some other form of bigotry. It may be used to refer to unhealthy, unfit NEETS (Not in education, employment or training), alcoholics or other doomer types. The bigot believes everyone should share in their disgust for their target. They fail to recognize that functioning compassion and empathy prevent others from reaching their level of disgust. The natural reactions to degeneracy are compassion at best, pity or indifference at worst.
There’s an internal contradiction to reacting in disgust to perceived degeneracy. Were it genuinely perceived to be degeneracy, for instance if someone’s knee bone was disintegrating, even were it their fault (due to athletic or vocational use), a normal person would not react in disgust or anger. If bigots truly believed their targets were degenerates, they would feel bad for them. They don’t feel bad for them, they hate them. Their heart rate accelerates when they think about them. When they say degenerate, they mean freak and they’re the same old voice that has existed throughout the ages that hates what is different.
Some of these bigots feel like they “tried” acceptance to no avail and have since abandoned it. To some extent, they might have. The world seemed to be very liberal post-Bush until Trump. Bush was such an embarrassment that no one was proud to rep the GOP, even if they weren’t a big fan of Obama. That is not to say bigotry disappeared. If anything it was swept under the rug.
Previously homophobic people were convinced to accept LGBT+ during this period, and they feel like they betrayed themselves by doing so. They were convinced by media at it’s most effective, which is when it conveys the message that you’re immature and kind of a pussy if you’re anti-LGBT. This messaging is distinct from the more recent movement towards ‘death to homophobes’ type rhetoric, which encourages resistance. It’s almost as if SJW’s and virtue signaling have made homophobia cool again (for bigots.) Whereas back in the late noughties it was just straight up immature to be homophobic.
These are the people most easily influenced by the crowd. They began to doubt their bigotry in ’08 when they saw this widespread popular culture acceptance of LGBT+, and over time support became over saturated and represented in media and the bigots began to have doubts. Then, the populists, nationalists and Trump exploded and vindicated their repressed beliefs. Woke corporate advertising was the tipping point. Even leftists hate woke liberal twitter, imagine how bigots feel about it.
Moral or intellectual degeneration is occurring. The left and the right have both degenerated since 08. The left was winning, they just did too much and pushed everyone too far. That’s not to say they went objectively too far, but that they went too far to maintain their authority. The Right was a lot more progressive or, in another word, centrist in ’08. To a ’19 conservative, an ’08 republican is a “conservicuck.” Liberals were more centrist in ’08. To a ’19 liberal, an ’08 democrat is basically a republican. The modern left post-ironically jokes that Obama is a republican. The poles were supposed to switch in 2012, I guess it affected everyone's political compasses.
Bigots move the goalposts. The following applies to any bigot, but I’ll use the term homophobe now for the sake of convenience. The homophobe will initially counter accusations of homophobia. When proven to be homophobic (by the accusers standards or by mutual standards) they will switch the argument from denial to justification. That is, rather than maintaining “I’m not homophobic!” they will switch to “ alright I guess I’m homophobic but only because it’s wrong to be gay.” There may be steps in between this, such as disputes as to what qualifies as homophobia, and it may never reach the justification stage. The initial denial phase is both unconscious confirmation that they know there is evil behind homophobia and a conscious decision to avoid confrontation.
That is all for now.
