Perverted Times

Patients are running the madhouse

In mock horror, we all have teased one another with, “You pervert!” But today, the perversion of time-honored “norms” is wrecking us as a functioning society.

“Oh, really? What is ‘normal?’” you ask. Following are just two examples of time-honored standards that once shaped people, especially the young, into valued members of a family, a school, a community. These standards used to be “normal” benchmarks in development of good citizens.

MERIT—The honored idea of earning recognition for accomplishments has been perverted by the assertion that everyone deserves equal recognition, whether or not it is merited. We started down this slope by handing out trophies for merely participating in an activity. Now we handicap frontrunners by limiting who can enter a competition or otherwise tweak rules so a favored group prevails or at least is competitive. Perversity in competition.

In schools, testing has been massaged—or eliminated—to ensure there aren’t hurt feelings, a perverse weakening of learning. An exception is a report showing Mississippi schools are rebounding against other states in test scores on reading. How? A decade ago, the state began to send literacy coaches to low-performing schools, screen students for reading problems and—astonishingly—hold back third-graders unable to read at grade level. Old school expectations still working.

In literary circles, authors who are young, white and male are quietly being shunted aside. No white male millennials appeared in the New York Times “Notable Fiction” list for 2021 and ‘22, just one each year in 2023 and ‘24. None were in the 2024 year-end best fiction lists of Vanity Fair or The Atlantic. In 2022, Joyce Carol Oates lamented: “A friend who is a literary agent told me that he cannot even get editors to read first novels by young, white male writers, no matter how good.” Perversity in the arts.

ACCOUNTABILITY—The old standard was that a person was held accountable for what he did or didn’t do. It was called learning from mistakes. Now we see activists in the streets destroying property and people, and students violating common sense free speech and public assembly rules on campus—all without answering for it. High-profile murderers are excused, lionized and defended by sympathizing fans. Public agencies in Washington foster and execute schemes to take down a sitting chief executive or prevent the election of one and never are called to task for their corrupt behavior.

Perhaps the most brazen current example is a television media person who steadfastly denied President Biden was out of it and not running things and now promotes a book telling how media steadfastly denied the former president was out of it and not running things. The entire episode is perverse.

When ludicrous public policies and attitudes that weaken society become the norm, we have reached a cultural level best described as perverse. The real perverts are those who excuse the behavior, facilitate it, or refuse to acknowledge it. They upend sense and reverse progress. The word for it is perversion.