On its face, this is more of a curiosity than a problem. So what if we are always a little wrong about how the world actually is. Should we not just accept that and move on?

Indeed, we should, and I sincerely wish that we would. Unfortunately, as I wrote in the introduction to this piece, people often react to the insufficiency of categorization not by accepting our subjective nature, but by attempting to make descriptive categories into normative claims. It’s not about whether a hotdog is really a sandwich, it’s about how claiming a hotdog is a sandwich makes us feel — how it appeals to our deep desire to maintain tidy groupings.

Once taken outside of the hypothetical or irrelevant, this becomes a genuine social problem. The struggle of nonbinary and queer people illustrates this; to conservatives, the objective existence of nonbinary anatomies, identities, and sexualities is irrelevant. Rather than adjusting their description of the world to be more inclusive, conservatives attempt to normatively enforce their flawed categories on a messy world.

Extended outwards, this is a compelling, though limited, avenue of describing fascism. It is the effort to enforce a vision of artificial and flawed hierarchies upon the world, and is fundamentally opposed to any effort to empirically describe the world as it is. What conservatives conserve are primitive understandings of natural and sociological relations at the expense of nuance, new information, and very often, basic empathy.

Admittedly, the debate on whether a hotdog is a sandwich is not nearly as dire — however it does point to a conflict which is both very real and potentially threatening. Unless we can move beyond the desire to force our categories on the world, and unless we can move towards a more empirical and inquisitive analytical frame, we will always find ourselves unprepared to accept the new realities which progress will inevitably uncover.

Hotdogs are sandwiches. Cereal is a soup. And fascism is very, very bad.

If you enjoy my work, please consider following me on Twitter or donating to my Patreon. I could not do this without your support.