Pluralism Fails to Make Critical Distinctions. In his short story, ―A Progressive’s Regress, Bret McAtee tells an allegorical story about being confronted with “the ruling spirit of the age” (zeitgeist).
At breakfast, McAtee’s protagonist commented to the Judge (who served as a picture of how the zeitgeist legislates from the bench) how good the eggs were and the Judge would respond that “Poppy” was eating the menstruum of a verminous fowl, or Poppy would comment on how delicious his milk tasted and the judge said it was only the secretion of a cow and not different from any other emission such as urine. McAtee’s protagonist (Poppy) cries out, and we pick up the conversation,
Poppy: “Thank heaven! Now at last I know that you are talking nonsense.”
Judge: “What do you mean?” said the Judge, wheeling around upon him.”
Poppy: “You are trying to pretend that unlike things are like. You are trying to make us think that milk is the same sort of thing as sweat or dung.”
Judge: “And pray, what difference is there except by custom?”
Poppy: “Are you a liar or only a fool, that you see no difference between that which Nature casts out as refuse and that which she stores as food?”
At another point in the story the Judge discourses w/ Poppy on the nature of marriage after Poppy inadvertently makes mention of his longing for his wife, and we pick up the conversation,
Judge: “Why not take a prison wife, there are many children and men who would be happy to give you companionship.
Poppy: “That would be a perversion.”
Judge: “If you decide it is not a perversion why would it be a perversion? Why, I have ruled in such a way that marriage means whatever I choose it to mean. You will never leave here until you learn that just as milk might legitimately be considered cow urine and eggs are fowl menstruum so marriage might be considered whatever we name it to be.”
Poppy began to protest but the Judge viciously brought his gavel down across Poppy’s jaw. Teeth flew.
Judge: There now, we will have none of that arguing here.
The Judge turned to his jury members — a jury of Poppy’s peers — and in a catechitical fashion grilled them asking,
Judge: “Now tell me, members of the jury, what is argument.”
The members of the jury, responding as the moral zombies they had become through their judicial indoctrination, replied in unison,
Jury: “Argument is the attempted rationalization of the arguer’s subjective desires, this and nothing more.”
Judge: “What is the proper answer to an argument that doesn’t conform to Lord Zeitgeist?”
Jury: “The proper answer is, ‘you argue as you do because you are either a religious fundamentalist or a white racist, or a capitalist, or a lover of Western Christendom.'”
Judge: “Just so. Now, one more for today. How do you answer an argument turning on the belief that five plus five equals Ten?”
Jury: “The answer is, ‘you say that only because you are a mathematician. Were you a business owner making change from a ten while trying to cheat somebody you would say something else.'”
Poppy said he began to despair until Reason came riding up on a white horse, scooped him up, and saved him. ―You lie, Poppy said to the Judge; ―You lie. You fail to understand what God meant for nourishment and what God meant for garbage. Milk is the same as cow urine the same way that perversion is equal to Marriage. Meaning is not what you legislate no matter how many times you bang your gavel.
