During the Great Depression, the Empire State Building was built, from the beginning of foundation excavation to official opening, in 410 days (less than 14 months). After the destruction of the World Trade Center in New York on September 11, 2001, design and construction of its replacement, the new One World Trade Center was completed on November 3, 2014, 4801 days (160 months) later.
In the 1960s, from U.S. president Kennedy's proposal of a manned lunar mission to the landing of Apollo 11 on the Moon, 2978 days (almost 100 months) elapsed. In January, 2004, U.S. president Bush announced the "Vision for Space Exploration", aimed at a human return to the lunar surface by 2020. After a comical series of studies, revisions, cancellations, de-scopings, redesigns, schedule slips, and cost overruns, its successor now plans to launch a lunar flyby mission (not even a lunar orbit like Apollo 8) in June 2022, 224 months later. A lunar landing is planned for no sooner than 2028, almost 300 months after the "vision", and almost nobody believes that date (the landing craft design has not yet begun, and there is no funding for it in the budget).
Wherever you look: junk science, universities corrupted with bogus "studies" departments, politicians peddling discredited nostrums a moment's critical thinking reveals to be folly, an economy built upon an ever-increasing tower of debt that nobody really believes is ever going to be paid off, and the dearth of major, genuine innovations (as opposed to incremental refinement of existing technologies, as has driven the computing, communications, and information technology industries) in every field: science, technology, public policy, and the arts, it often seems like the world is getting dumber. What if it really is?
That is the thesis explored by this insightful book, which is packed with enough "hate facts" to detonate the head of any bien pensant academic or politician. I define a "hate fact" as something which is indisputably true, well-documented by evidence in the literature, which has not been contradicted, but the citation of which is considered "hateful" and can unleash outrage mobs upon anyone so foolish as to utter the fact in public and be a career-limiting move for those employed in Social Justice Warrior-converged organisations. (An example of a hate fact, unrelated to the topic of this book, is the FBI violent crime statistics broken down by the race of the criminal and victim. Nobody disputes the accuracy of this information or the methodology by which it is collected, but woe betide anyone so foolish as to cite the data or draw the obvious conclusions from it.)This is the essence of the so-called red-pill. What is an SJW-converged organization? Almost all of Western Civilization these days. It's almost impossible to find an organization that doesn't believe in the wishful thinking, magical logical that informs social justice. But if you believe in things that are demonstrably and undeniably true, but against the current culture of "it's not polite to point that out, or even acknowledge that you see that—in fact, it's required that you vigorously deny it and virtue signal to everyone around you that you don't believe in what is true if it ever comes up" then you are red-pilled. And your acceptance of these socially unacceptable truths mark you as someone who believes in "hate facts." You'll be lied about and slandered by people who are either too dishonest to acknowledge the truth, or too stupid to recognize the truth.
As the review points out, there's literally nobody who doesn't acknowledge that different dog breeds have different capabilities, traits and characteristics—while still acknowledging that they are equally dogs. But suggest that different human populations also have different capabilities, traits and characteristics, and that's a hate fact. You'll probably be told something about equality—which is not a Christian teaching (parable of the talents) an guilt-tripped and shamed into pretending that you don't notice these differences. And yet they exist nonetheless. It doesn't have any impact on God's love for all of this children, nor should it on yours. But it does have a tremendous impact, if you think through the implications of it, for your expectation that different population groups are likely to live together in harmony in the same geographic space, rather than needing to be kept separate for the benefit of both. Again, nobody suggests that some other family in our ward should be free to move into my house just because if I don't give them free rein, then I'm a "familyist."
Another major one is fundamental differences between men and women. Lots of people, including people in the Church, have been agitating to pretend that there is no fundamental difference and that women should be free to act like fake Men as much as they want to (curiously, this always seems to be a one-way street, based on the observably false idea of "male privilege")
Anyway, as I've said before, although Nephi says the wicked take the truth to be hard, in my experience everyone takes the truth to be hard, especially if they've been indoctrinated in the idea that it's simply not acceptable to acknowledge certain truths. It becomes even worse if you build up some aspect of your identity or your conception of the world and how it is supposed to work based on something that is provably false, because then it becomes emotionally very difficult to step away from the falsehood and acknowledge the truth.
But shouldn't it be our role and expectation that we seek truth about everything and from anywhere? We're not limited to only doctrinal truths, nor are we only to accept that truth is available in the scriptures and General Conference. We can learn much that is true about the world and our place in it from other sources, and the Lord has always told us to seek truth from the best books and from wise people in the world, utilizing the Spirit to discern truth from error.
And that's the real crux of "hate facts"—not whether or not they are true, because the would be "hate gossip" if they were not. But how to interpret those facts, and what does knowing them do to your behavior? And that's also where we need the guidance of the Spirit the most, because there is lots of opportunity to slip into error in interpretation of "hate facts" into our daily life.
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