As I've been removing ableist slurs – stupid, idiot, moron – from my vocabulary, I've been realizing how much more difficult it's become for me to demean other people.

And then I'm like

Oh

That's the point.

— Leah (@9BillionTigers) October 2, 2019

Removing any force and substance from language helps no one. Some people and ideas deserve to be demeaned. It’s the only thing that combats them. Anyway, the euphemism treadmill guarantees other “slurs” will soon take the place of the ones stricken from the record.

The problem with the left — one of them, anyway — is that they don’t know how to fight, and will gladly take the punches with no desire to strike back at all. It’s sad and pathetic and fucking stupid.

The left’s list of forbidden words is typical of the left’s approach to anything: ban something, call it a day. Great.

I want a feature-length magazine article on the behind-the-scenes PR campaign that's been generating all the 'hey guys you should eat insects' headlines across many different outlets.

— Jonah Bennett 🌐 (@BennettJonah) September 29, 2019

Me too. That’s been so ubiquitous lately that it has to be some PR push — but in the service of what? I can understand the drive for plant-based poison food. Those items are actually widely available on the market and can be bought in many places today.

But the insect propaganda has fascinated me lately because I can’t tell where it’s being pushed from and why it’s so pervasive.

My best guess so far is that it’s to offer a false dichotomy between the desired choice of people eating plant-based poison food (fake burgers and the like) or the insect alternative, which no one will choose. It’s a method of getting people to make the choice you want them to make to avoid the “progressives” forcing a truly worse choice, which is slurping insect slurry out of glass bottles in your pod.

I am all for radically changing our society to fight climate change. It’s likely necessary to stave off near-extinction or actual extirpation of humanity. And it’s just a good idea in general. However, I am staunchly and 100% opposed to the progressive “utopia” of living like medieval peasants and all the moralistic and preening performative barmy puritanical fantasias of our sorry fucking excuse for a left.

These two tweets got me thinking about it again:

We can and do so much better than the progressive abstinent false utopia of slurping algae and bugs out of glass bottles while living in 90 square foot pods with a single LED. That will not win the future and no humans will choose to live like that without eco-fascism and then the revolution and giga-deaths that will follow.

To build an alternative to endless extraction and the torching of the planet, real progressives must come up with a superior alternative that inspires hope and human flourishing, not a grim slog through gray days of consuming the bug slurry and wondering when death most welcome will finally come.