Jack Dorsey: Twitter Chicken

So when I read this headline today:

I was thinking satirical Christian site Babylonbee.   Sure sounds like that sort of thing.

Sadly not.  You couldn’t make this stuff up.  You don’t have to make this stuff up. Cos truth is stranger, more cringingly and disturbingly so, than fiction.  Or satire.

This is from BusinessInsider Australia; an organ of all things stoic, strait-laced and businessy.  The late, lamented Australian political cartoonist Bill Leak said shortly before his death that his job was getting harder and harder because what he once was able to presented daily in images as fantastical nonsense, was now becoming everyday reality.

The article goes on to say this:

What a jerk, Jack! You ate a Chick-fil-A, and then had the temerity to write about it on Twitter?

Don’t think I’m feeling any outrage here.  My first reaction was a short laugh, then a slightly longer “face-palm” groan.

But Jack, don’t you know that the new Sexularism has a new set of food laws that are all Old Testamenty and smitey?  Don’t you know Jack that if you break the laws of the new Sexularism you will be smitten mightily and will bring down the wrath of the sexual gods upon your head?

Which of course is what happened.  Jack was shamed by the twitterati like this:

Of course it’s all about pride.  Pride and shame.  And you can see why the gay community took the word “pride” and utilised it for their good, given the shaming they were so often subjected to.

But now that they’ve wrested that shame weapon from their opponents hands, they’re using it with glee.  Even among their own! Jack was shamed and shamed mightily for his sins, further proof, if it were needed, that you ought to be careful what you create, because sometimes it can turn on you and in this name and shame culture it most certainly will.

Jack repented of course, the only way Jack – or anyone can these days – by cringingly acknowledging his sin publicly on social media and promising never to think for himself again, or even choose what he wants to eat again, or at least not before he has taken the social temperature:

Cringe. Hand-wring. Virtue-signal.

Jack has to be careful because if he does it again he could be barred from Twitter.  Oh wait, he runs Twitter?  Doesn’t matter.  The activist crowd has proven that no-one is above their self-appointed food laws, of clean and unclean, of shame and honour.

I can just see Jack Dorsey this morning, trying to get some pride back after that basting. There he is, standing in his well appointing bathroom, staring into his expensive gold rimmed bathroom mirror and saying to himself in 280 characters or less “I am not a cultural coward.  I am not a cultural coward.”

But of course Jack, you are, even if you are a well-paid cultural coward.

But you’re not a coward for no good reason.  The average kid on Facebook who even suggests they hold an orthodox view on marriage will find their friendship list dwindle quickly, though not after a savaging on their home page.  Actually the average kid on Facebook will self-censor before it even gets to that.  Which is exactly what the activists want.  Law never wants a heart change.  Just as long as you comply.

The new Sexularism promises a world of joy and freedom, but it’s gonna have to jettison a lot of bodies (and a lot of chicken meals) to get there.  A graceless future awaits.

Jesus, in Mark 7, jettisons the food laws in favour of grace, without at any stage watering down what the Bible says about sexuality. The Sexular Culture jettisons grace in favour of newly introduced food laws and their sexuality department will police it in a way that would have made the Pharisee proud, or the Iranian Revolutionary Guard for that matter.

Food laws were a shadow of the clean/unclean reality of sin.  And with new sinners and new transgressions to prosecute in this new Sexularism,  it’s going to be cold, clear and bright legalism all the way down.

Don’t for a minute believe that we’re headed towards the beautiful rainbow future where we all get along.  We’re headed towards a future in which everyone, including the overlords of the social media world that has promulgated the sexual revolution everywhere and to everyone, will have their heads chopped off by the same guillotine if they transgress.

The church got the shame stuff wrong often.  Still does.  But that was in spite of Jesus, not because of him.

But the the handbrake of Jesus calling his people constantly out of legalism is what Sexularism lacks. It’s virtuous pedal to the legalistic metal all the way.  And with only a brick wall of a shockingly divided culture in front of us, the car crash is going to get nasty, real nasty.

The article goes on:

Cos there’s only one side of the sexuality debate that major companies are allowed to throw money at, right?  Brand image is pointed in one direction only.

It’s about time an acting school with some cultural insight and bravery put on performances of The Crucible or The Handmaid’s Tale that created a setting in which the church was not the antagonist trying to shut everything down and control it, but the LGBT activist culture was.   Because that’s clearly where the culture is headed.

But I have three thoughts on that.  First, I suspect it’s too soon for that, and that there is still plenty of retributive justice to hand out by the culture war winners on this one.

Second, I suspect no drama school has the cultural insight or bravery to do that. They’re still content with producing the acting equivalent of shooting fish in a barrel, the easy target that will get a few guffaws.

And third I suspect that even if they did that, then ironic life would imitate dramatic art.  The activists would lynch them for doing so, and that play would be shut down faster than Jack Dorsey’s Twitter account should be step out of line again.

No one wants to play chicken these days.  The road rules are just too dangerous.