Functional Bigotry

Elitist hypocrisy harms those they claim to care about

"I have always thought the actions of men the best interpreters of their thoughts."

-John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

From time immemorial, humanity has been obsessed with words, and rightfully so because words nearly always come before the use of violence. However, words are not actions (despite what some people would have you believe); actions are more indicative of people's true beliefs. We all inherently know this; however, since words are more easily transmissible, we rely on people's words as a proxy for their actions…no matter how poor a proxy it may be. And with a nearly infinite increase in the volume of words we imbibe each day, merging words with deeds presents an ever increasing challenge.

Unfortunately we now entire societies run by people who count on us not being able to connect the two, and not being able to identify them for the hypocrites they are. No place is this better represented than in the class of woke elite claiming to represent the down-trodden, unrepresented masses; whether those people are of a certain race, sex, sexual identity, immigration status, or any new category, they will create this week. This class of people represents not just the biggest hypocrites in the world but the most consequential.

These people are guilty of what I call "Functional Bigotry." Functional Bigotry is to claim to help a targeted segment of people while putting in place policies that are detrimental to the same group. Fucntional Bigotry differs from plain, old poor policy because it targets a specific group of people, as all bigotted people do.

 Europe's energy policy is an excellent example of this Functional Bigotry. The Center for Global Development (GCD) is a think-tank focused on various initiatives from health policy to education and humanitarian policy. The GCD's board is staffed with assorted supposed luminaries like former CEOs, financial capital firm leaders, heads of charities, and government policy analysts…all led by the Chairman of the Board, Larry Summers. The GCD's mission seems to be an admirable one:

We work to reduce global poverty and improve lives through innovative economic research that drives better policy and practice by the world's top decision makers. We strive for excellence and intellectual rigor and believe global prosperity starts with smart policy based on evidence. Our work is nonpartisan and our recommendations are not influenced by our funders. We are willing to challenge powerful institutions and the status quo for better development practices.

In 2019, the GCD produced a report called "Building an EU-Africa Partnership of Equals: A Roadmap for the New European Leadership." They explain that Africa's "…strong economic growth reported earlier this decade has failed to translate into quality jobs, less inequality, and higher well-being in most sub-Saharan African countries." Further, this has adverse effects on Europe due to the mass migration of immigrants to EU countries. Ip so facto, the GCD is here to help Africa become more prosperous. One of the proposals is to help improve investment projects which are "chronically under-financed by European development finance institutions and private investors because of real or perceived low risk-adjusted returns," however, there is a catch.

“The fundamental challenge at the heart of achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030 is finance." Note the operative word "sustainable," which is code for renewables. Even though Africa sits on massive energy deposits which could energize the content considerably more rapidly and more cost effectively (which would seem critical because of the previously noted lack of investment), the GCD will force renewables down their throat.

What makes this an example of Functional Bigotry is this article from The Financial Post:

Note that there is no country in Africa where more than approximately 70% of the population has access to electricity, with the majority being far less.

The Post goes on to explain that Nigeria has 3% of the world's gas but access to none. The energy extracted is sent to Europe. Additionally, the EU has recently reclassified natural gas as green energy, which means that additional funding can go to projects to get more of Africa's energy to their shores. As Vijaya Ramachandran of the think-tank Breakthrough Institute said, it's "green colonialism" where "rich countries exploit poorer nations' resources while essentially denying them similar access in the name of climate action."

According to the WHO, in 2020, five million children under five years old died from treatable causes, with over 50% of those within the first 28 days of life. The leading causes of death include preterm birth complications, birth asphyxia/trauma, pneumonia, diarrhea, and malaria. Can you imagine living in a country where diarrhea is a significant cause of infant mortality and giving two shits about where your energy comes from? And if you don't think the lack of energy and childhood mortality are interconnected, I don't know what to tell you. What would you care about more: your child dying of pneumonia, or the oceans maybe be rising three feet in 100 years?

Please tell me the GCD, EU, or any other organization pushing these policies down Africa's throat gives cares about them whatsoever. Of course, they don't. This is Functional Bigotry posed as an energy policy.

Moving across the Atlantic, let's go to the US, where we are dealing with our next great pandemic…Monkeypox.

It goes without saying that on the grievance totem pole, people identifying as LGBT++++++ is near to top. Due to this place in modern western society, it has become a cottage industry to point out all the ways the left wing in the US has bent over backward, not just to accept LGBT people but to normalize every aspect of the culture to nearly every age group in the US. Chris Rufo of the Manhatten Institute and Twitter-er Libs of Tictok are two of the high-profile people who have exposed this level of "acceptance ."

Therefore, it is strange how the various liberal administrations (at the federal and state levels) around the US have handled the messaging and subsequent roll-out of Monkeypox and its vaccine.

Outside of Africa, the first reported case of the disease was found in the UK in early May, with over 300 cases found by June 8th. According to a survey outlined in this UK government briefing, a survey of the early patients showed that 151 out of 152 men surveyed reported being either gay or having "same-sex contact." However, it took the World Health Organization's (WHO) monkeypox lead, Rosamund Lewis, until July 27th to admit that "about 99% of cases are among men, and at least 95% of those patients are men who have sex with men" and that gay and bisexual men should limit their sexual partners.

And how about this paragraph from an aol.com article:

The truth is that monkeypox, which is in the same virus family as smallpox and shares similar symptoms, appears to be spread through direct physical contact with someone with monkeypox symptoms — rashes, scabs, body fluids or items that have come into contact with those things, respiratory secretions from prolonged contact (especially kissing) and from a mother to her fetus.

Really? I haven't heard about the mass spreading of monkeypox through <checks notes> kissing events.

On a local level, San Francisco has the annual Up Your Alley event (cough, cough), which, according to The Mercury News, is "a live-out-loud leather and fetish festival that's been a favorite among LGBTQ communities in the Bay Area since the 1980s." However, according to Joe Hawkins, director of the Oakland LGBTQ Community Center, "if people are not educated, and they don't know the risk, of course, it's a very, very high-risk possibility to be a spreader." However later in the article they explain:

But his organization has also made a point not to dissuade people from attending the party, Hawkins said.

“You can tell people ‘Do not do this,’ and I just think that here in this country, people have a problem with that,” he said.

As an aside - ARE YOU %$!#$ KIDDING ME?!?!?! I'm old enough to remember when nearly all Liberals were insistent on telling people precisely what to do, regardless of what anyone thought. Imagine, if you will, the situation above and replace "monkeypox" with "covid" and "Up Your Alley" with "Trump rally" do you think for a second that the San Francisco officials would hesitate to shut it down? Of course not, because we saw it happen.

Back to the point - why do many Liberals insist on obscuring the facts and refuse to take the same actions they were so willing to take during covid? Who are they helping? Certainly not the class of gay men, of whom, they claim to care so much.

They are supposedly concerned about a "stigma" surrounding gay men. That is fine; no one wants people thinking all gay men are super-spreaders of Moneypox, which is certainly not the case. But who does obscuring the facts help? And by hiding the ball on this, won't more people overall, and gay men specifically, be afflicted with the disease?

Don’t you want as many people as possible to avoid this?

This is a perfect case of Functional Bigotry in a public health care setting.

There is a voluminous number of other examples of Functional Bigotry I could point to:

• Indian people through an increase in malaria deaths due to DDT bans.

• Black people by trying to outlaw Juul vapes which will increase smoking among a population that has above-average rates of smoking.

• Muslims in China through corporations that, despite having ESG initiatives, continue to do business in the country which is committing genocide against the Uyghur Muslim population.

• And the most grievous, in my opinion, is the demonization of GMO products which have saved millions of lives throughout the developing world.

If we take Locke's sage advice and interpret people's thoughts through their actions, I don't see how anyone can come to another conclusion than that these "do-gooders" don't truly care about those whom they claim to. Instead, their motivating goal is power, and if supporting the rights and lives of those people helps that end, all the better. If not, screw them. Words are indeed cheap and it is long past time to hold the hypocrites' feet to the fire.