A great deal of the Left’s grip on the culture is rooted in its collective ability to manipulate information in the form of official narratives in the news, history, or statistics. The contemporary political goal comes first, and the facts are backfilled, manipulated, and emphasized or deemphasized accordingly. In other words, much of the Left’s stock in trade is a form of propaganda.

Thus, whenever some plausible (which is really only to say, “marketable”) connection may be made, we hear much about white males and their “toxic” masculinity, even as their many achievements are neglected. Following the cues of popular culture, one would think this group is disproportionately criminal; just look at the cast of villains on “Law and Order,” the obsession with otherwise ordinary white male serial killers, and the umpteenth PBS special on Emmett Till.

We can see this curation of what is deemed relevant from an unfortunate, recent school shooting that occurred at Colorado’s STEM school. Far from this being a paroxysm of right wing-hatred, Christian militancy, or an incel uprising, the killers were a gay male and a transgender “female,” who masqueraded as a male at the tender age of 16. Apparently they were angry at the world—and particularly hostile to Christians—even though the star is rising for their identity groups.

The male shooter left a statement on social media: “You know what I hate? All these Christians who hate gays.” While these killers come from now-elevated social backgrounds—particularly the faddish transgenderism—these identities often are not freestanding choices, but symptoms of a broader disturbance of identity.

Because these killers were not “white racists” or “anti-bully” avengers, but rather two exemplars of the Left’s identity aristocracy, the story has not occasioned nearly as much discussion and soul searching as that of the Columbine killers, the California car spree killer, or the Parkland school shooter. These incidents became stories about “bullying,” “misogyny,” and “the need for gun control” respectively, amplified by incessant national media coverage.

Other incidents, such as the anti-white killings by Omar Thornton or the anti-Christian killings at the STEM school last week tend to fall into the memory hole, and key facts are often concealed in national reporting.

This is not random. This type of information casts doubt upon the leftist worldview and reinforces a more conservative one. Violent street crime is similarly little noticed or explored—and the fact of disproportionate minority involvement in such crimes is suppressed—for the same reasons. Small choices in language, including the nihilistic expression “robbery gone wrong,” allow the media to conceal the hatred and cruelty often present in ubiquitous street violence. Much of this culminates in a real “war on noticing things,” in the words of comedian Patton Oswalt.

The propaganda aimed at promoting transgenderism as a fashionable cause akin to the gay rights crusade of a decade ago depends, in part, upon widespread ignorance of the condition of those involved. A great many people who call themselves transgender actually have another, significant mental health disorder. One study noted that the “frequency of personality disorders was 81.4 percent. The most frequent personality disorder was narcissistic personality disorder (57.1 percent).” Other studies have found even higher rates of personality disorders among this population. Similarly, many of these individuals have high rates of drug abuse and suicidal ideation.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the mutilating surgery involved most often does not solve the true problem—a significant disturbance in the psyche—and there are often post-surgical regrets, which cannot be repaired after the irreversible physical changes and artificial hormonal load required for such a procedure.

Again, this should not be surprising. The source of human happiness is some correspondence between objective reality and one’s view of reality. Humility and gratitude are two sides of the same coin, involving a proper and proportional sense of oneself and the world around him. Psychological adjustment means adapting one’s sense of identity to one’s objective circumstances and finding some healthy means of coping and thriving.

Desiring to be another sex suggests a massive problem with one’s appraisal of reality, and mere surgery cannot repair whatever makes one desire to be something wholly different from what one already is.

One wonders if a movie like “Silence of the Lambs,” which explored this phenomenon, could ever be made today. Before transgenderism became fashionable, we knew that a great many serial killers—including the BTK killer and Canadian Colonel David Williams—had a deep desire for consuming and in a sense becoming their victims, even dressing in their female victim’s clothing. Cross-dressing and more extreme variations on that theme used to be widely seen as disturbing behavior, not merely an odd preference. That such rejections of less pressing social demands leads to gross deviations from universal rules condemning sadistic rape and murder, while not typical, is not terribly surprising.

Behaviors are connected. We are not islands unto ourselves, and part of the demands of morality is the proper treatment of others, in addition to conformity to other rules and social expectations, including those involving self-care and self-discipline. When one deviates from these things in matters related to the self, and desires in some sense to obliterate and replace oneself, a desire to obliterate the broader society which naturally limits the self and its appetites is but a short logical step away for some deeply disturbed people.

The degeneracy and freakish behaviors justified and promoted endlessly in the news, movies, and higher education are not mere anomalies or side issues for the Left. The Left is defined by its hostility to limits of all kinds, including the limits of traditional religion and traditional morality. Just as the Left has made a cult of transgenderism, it similarly has embraced and promoted violence to families, to the unborn, to children, to the elderly, to property, to nations, and to all that is good, decent, and beautiful.

The STEM School shooters announced their intention to “f**k society.” Their shooting undoubtedly made this intention plain. But conservatives used to realize that their disordered transgendered fetish is another way of expressing the same sentiment.

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