S Snell
S Snell
Aug 8, 2017 · 2 min read

How interesting that the memo that started the fuss has been described in so many unflattering ways — screed, rant, manifesto, tirade, fulmination — to name just a few. So imagine the cognitive dissonance that befell me upon reading the actual memo and finding that it was, in fact, none of those things.

There is nothing even remotely inflammatory about it. It is carefully worded, fact-based, moderate in tone throughout. The guy bends over backwards not to give offense. Only in the bizarre and Orwellian parallel universe of Equalism could any of its statements be considered controversial.

By sharp contrast, where it isn’t a model of posturing and self-promotion, Zunger’s retort is a disingenuous smear. In the opening paragraph alone we have a prejudicial characterization (“manifesto,”) a putdown (“not someone senior,”) and a bold-faced lie (“[he says that] we should stop making it possible for women to be engineers[.]”)

That’s just for starters. What follows is jumble of doublespeak, jargon, misrepresentation, and raw one-upmanship. To be fair, though, the virtue points do pile up.

It’s 0verdone, though, as theater often is, and so eventually it dawns on you that the real purpose of the essay is to elevate the author with its conspicuous display of righteousness. Like a background hum, a subliminal message runs throughout: Look how enlightened I am! Now follow/praise/like/hire me.

Just a side note, Yonatan. If you want to be taken seriously as a social critic, you need to tone down the first-person angle. There is an awful lot of “me” showing in your writing. I know it’s a millennial thing, but it wears real, thin real quick for most folks.

This, in a nutshell, is the central thesis of the original memo: Males and females are different; pretending otherwise is a mistake.

To which the only logical response is: Well, duh.

And even though this thesis jibes with every day experience in a thousand different ways, even though it is backed up by petabytes of data, even though it has been acknowledged if not celebrated by every culture throughout human history, even though it is objectively applicable to every other member of class mammalia, even though it is the essence of common sense, somehow this eminently reasonable observation triggers the morally correct classes to dissolve into spluttering fits of inchoate rage. And in drearily predictable fashion, the response to the apostasy is to crank up the Outrage Machine and expose, marginalize, and ultimately crush the heretic. How very tolerant. Show trials, anyone?

Sixty-five years ago, much of humanity was under the thumb of Stalin and his acolytes, who managed to create a society so harshly, intolerably orthodox that merely to survive in it required endless, extraordinary vigilance.

But totalitarian societies are not built overnight. They emerge by degrees, one click of the screw at a time. With frightening speed we are fashioning such a society. And if he who coined the term “politically correct,” were around today I suspect that he would feel right at home in this brave new world of ours.

    S Snell

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    S Snell