Theodore Dalrymple:

If we try to look on this episode with the eye of a future social historian, on the assumption (by no means certain) that western societies will someday come to their senses and that their social historians will be at least moderately sensible, what will we hypothesise? How to explain that societies that prided themselves on having overthrown superstition and on basing themselves to an unprecedented extent upon scientific enquiry, and that had a higher percentage of educated people than ever before in human history, nevertheless believed in the grossest absurdities? What could have possessed them?

I’m not much for prognostication. I’m content to just marvel at the absurd spectacle of daily events without trying to show how clever I am by guessing how it’s all going to turn out. However, I have been convinced for a while that the trans-cult is destined to fade into ignominy, and that once it does, all the invertebrate progressives who supported it are going to slink away and pretend they never had nothin’ to do with it, no sir. Now, as whistleblowers are followed by attorneys general, and even the Paper of Record begins tentatively pushing back against the pressure of activists, I feel even more confident in my opinion that the modern-day glass delusion is on its way out. What could have possessed them? Well, there are many circumstantial factors that could be cited — activists desperate for a new civil rights crusade, an individualist tendency in liberalism taken to its extreme, social contagion spread by new social media technologies — but, remember, it was only forty or so years ago that people convinced themselves that daycare centers were hotbeds of sexual abuse and Satanic rituals, and none of those factors played a role then. The question assumes that these episodes are the deviations requiring explanation. What if lunacy and irrationality are actually the default setting, and “normality” is the aberration that requires explanation?