You Can Hang Your Hat on It

It seems that Enema U is not the only university run by lemmings who regularly manufacture mountains of fear from molehills of facts.  The President of the University of Delaware has declared a campus emergency—someone left rope nooses hanging from trees. 

(What is the proper plural collective noun for a noose?  Nooses sounds absurd.  Say it out loud and you'll see what I mean.  It is absolutely impossible to say 'nooses' ten times as fast as you can.)

"We will not tolerate this hate crime!" thundered President Taggert.  "We must all stand together against intolerance."

This statement was probably the very first clue that something was wrong.  First, when someone says, "We should all stand together," you should immediately sit down firmly on your wallet.  A contrarian by nature, I firmly believe the wisdom of the masses is a pernicious falsehood on a scale that would intimidate organized religion.  If the collective opinions of the great unwashed were valid, then the finest newspaper in the world would be National Enquirer, the finest beer would be Bud Light, and Congress would deserve to be reelected.

Always run in the opposite direction of the crowd:  If nothing else, you will avoid traffic jams.

Second, can we all just back off a little on the "hate speech"/"hate crime" labels?  There is no right to be protected from being offended—even deeply offended.  Inoffensive speech does not need protection.  You can go to the most regulated and controlled areas of the world—even San Francisco—and praise the local governmental leaders and no one will bother you.  If you do not protect offensive speech—even hateful speech—you are not protecting any speech at all.

The campus hate crime was discovered just hours after a university sponsored protest by the Black Lives Matter group had ended on campus.  This led several students to speculate on the school's website that the nooses (nuces?) were an obvious reference to Southern Jim Crow laws and KKK lynchings.

Sure enough, shortly after President Taggert went on television denouncing the hate crime,  and shortly after the campus police announced they were launching an investigation (this probably meant questioning every student from Mississippi), it was determined that the nooses (Neesi?  Noosi?) were actually the remains of paper lanterns that had gotten a little wet in the rain.  To be fair, it was a hate-filled rain that came up from the south.  And the paper lanterns were made in Southern China.

Why had so many people looked at the remains of wet paper lanterns and leaped to the wild conclusion about racial hate crimes?

This kind of reminds me of the Great Satanic Site in New Mexico.  This is not something tourists will find on the map, even though it is still there. 

It was 1990, and a utility worker stumbled across a large geometric pattern of old tires, laid out in the desert scrub.  The design, almost 500 feet on each side, included three hexagrams, each with a seven tire dot in the center.  The three hexagrams were connected by five lines of tires—altogether, the design used over 450 tires!

A local police officer, who lectured to area high schools about the seductive dangers of Satanism, warned that the area was obviously in use by local practitioners of witchcraft.  "I'd stay away from the area if any people are around," he said to reporters.  "They'll hurt you."

The Associated Press interviewed several experts.  An expert on symbolism agreed that the symbol was connected to witchcraft, and added that it was obviously connected to a moon cult.  A promoter of psychic affairs testified that the steel-belted desert pattern was "a powerful and spiritual symbol."

By this point, TireHenge had been on the front pages of the local papers for almost a week and featured such details as aerial photographs—and the rather grisly discovery of mounds of chicken bones:  the obvious result of ritualistic sacrifices!

Just as the site was becoming the subject of sermons by local pastors, a large number of rather sheepish men—most of them very prominent in civic and social affairs—stepped forward and admitted responsibility for the design.  The design was the layout for a three-way soccer match.  (This is in NO WAY connected to what I wrote about two weeks ago!)

The first game was—I swear!  I'm not making this up!—the Albuquerque Police Department, the Fire Department, and the Parks Department.  The mayor was one of the players.

When asked why it took them so long to come forward, one of the players said, "From what was being printed, we didn't recognize ourselves."

This is exactly the point:  Any act, speech, or behavior can be labeled as evil, deviant, or hate-filled by someone else—someone who is looking for evil in it.  If we allow those in power to label our actions, then it won't take long for the politically incorrect speech—the uncomfortable speech—to equal a "hate crime".  Label something as hate, racism, or prejudice and even those involved won't recognize themselves.

Oh, yes!—and those chicken bones?  They came from that well-known practitioner of the Dark Arts—Colonel Sanders.