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Prestwood’s Laws and Corollaries: (in no particular order)
1. The Law of Fallibility of Perfection: Any attempt to perfect a system (such as a criminal justice system or an army or a factory, etc.) to the point where it makes no errors will result in making the system so complex and cumbersome as to render it incapable of performing its intended tasks.
2. The Law of Negative Experience Extrapolation: Any negative experience with a clearly recognizable member of another group -- or ‘tribe’ -- tends to be automatically and unconsciously extrapolated on to that entire tribe. This is an eons-old biological defense mechanism and the root of all prejudices towards other ‘tribes’ -- and the reason why it is extremely difficult to eradicate prejudice between groups. A child bitten by a chow isn't simply afraid of chows; rather, he is afraid of dogs.
3. Corollary to the Law of Negative Experience Extrapolation: The greater the perceived differences between tribes (i.e., language, dress, physical characteristics, customs, etc.,) the more the negative extrapolation is manifested. Thus, the more a tribe accents its differences, the more fertile the soil for hostility from other tribes.
4. The Law of Activist Accentuation: Group or race activists will attempt to maximize differences between their group and other groups and minimize similarities. They will tend to dehumanize competing groups, and explain their own group’s shortcomings as being the result of machinations by the competing groups.
5. Corollary 1 to the Law of Activist Accentuation: The more a tribe dislikes another tribe, the greater their susceptibility to obviously dishonest propaganda against that tribe.
6. Corollary 2: A person tilted in a certain political direction will tend to see propaganda tilted in that same direction as being true. Conversely, propaganda tilted in the opposite direction will appear double-bogus.
7. The Law of Activist Avoidance of Victory: Activists heavily invested in a cause will tend to minimize or deny progress in the achievement of their goal, despite any and all evidence to the contrary.
7-A The Law of Activist Victory Double-downing: Any success the activist has in advancing his agenda will result in a doubling of his demands.
8. The Law of Activist Exaggeration: Activists heavily invested in a cause, such as sexual assault or child abuse, will seek to expand the definitions of said assault/abuse as widely as possible, thereby enabling them to statistically prove that -- rather than improving -- things are getting worse. Thus such once common practices as a parent spanking their child, or a man making unwanted advances to a woman, become matters of concern for law enforcement.
9. The Law of Boundary-Generated Excellence: The power of excellence is achieved by the exertion of great force within a relatively rigid set of boundaries. In the fine arts, during the 20th century, most aesthetic boundaries were scrapped, resulting in an avalanche of bullshit masquerading as art.
10. Corollary to The law of Boundary-Generated Excellence: Artistic originality within boundaries is infinitely more difficult to achieve than originality without boundaries.
11. The Law of Race Card Certainty: In any set of circumstances where blacks or Hispanics are negatively impacted, racism will be charged – regardless of any facts, logic, or common sense that may contradict that charge.
12. The Law of Fine Art Popularity Backlash: Any artist who becomes popular with the masses tends to lose the support of the critic elites. .
13. Corollary to The Law of Fine Art Popularity Backlash: Because post-modern critic elites must define themselves by their superior sensibilities, they are led to champion art which the public cannot appreciate or understand. Thus, much trash is allowed to pose as art.
14. The Law of Entrenched Denial of Contrary Thought: A person heavily invested in a belief system will go to great lengths to avoid encountering any information that might threaten or in any way undermine the credibility of that system.
15. The Law of Popularity = Excellence: Any mass-marketed product in the popular arts which is hugely successful will – at least temporarily -- be considered to have achieved artistic excellence.
16. The Law of Entertainment/Technology Tradeoff: Each forward step in entertainment technology tends to be countered by a step backward in the inspired creativity underpinning the work -- i.e. the better the movie’s special effects, the less its producers are concerned with a superior story.
17. The Law Of Chops Tradeoff: The more the singer or musician is inclined to demonstrate their technical prowess, the less they tend to value the actual substance of the music.
18. The Law of Writer vs. Performer Tradeoff: In writer-performer collaborative mediums, such as films and songs, the more the performers are involved in the creation of the work, the more likely it is that the work will be compromised.
19. The Law of Double-Standard Decline: Any systematic attempt to help a group which involves holding members of that group to lower standards of societal norms will result in decline rather than improvement.
20. The Law of Revolutionary Retrogradation: Upon succeeding in a revolution, the revolution's leaders will quickly fall into the previous regime’s exact same excesses. For complex reasons unique to its birth, the American Revolution is a rare exception.
21. The Law of Entertainment Market Analysis Contradiction: In the popular arts, the more market analysis a movie studio or record label or book publisher does, the worse the product.
22. The Law of Politically Correct Artistic Blindness: The greater the artist’s desire to be politically correct, the less the artist listens to his intuitive voice regarding what is true about human nature, rendering the artist aesthetically blind; i.e. the more “agenda” is inserted into a work, the more the work is compromised.
23. The Law of Murderous Procedure v. Common Sense: In a criminal case involving a felon who is unquestionably guilty of murder, and who is demonstrably highly likely to commit more murders, safety of the public must trump any procedural error that would release the murderer to kill again.
24. The Law of Television Validation: Any extensive television coverage of unusual behavior -- ranging from, say, body piercing to polygamy to violent protesting to mass murder -- has the unintended consequence of validating and normalizing that behavior. For example, the more cable TV airs documentaries on gangs and gang culture, the more gangs are validated as a "life-style" choice, and the less they are stigmatized.
25. The Law of Death Penalty Deterrence Time Lapse: The deterrence effect of the death penalty is directly proportional to the average lapsed time between the crime and the execution.
26. The Law of Female Sexual Advertisement and Male Objectification: the more normalized it becomes for females to dress and behave provocatively, and to advertise -- consciously or unconsciously -- an openness to casual, emotionless sex, the more normalized is their sexual objectification by males. The more normalized male sexual objectification of females becomes, the higher the incidence of domestic violence, sexual harassment, and sexual assault.
27. The Law of Automatic Hate Cards: Any person or group that disagrees -- regardless of how respectfully or thoughtfully -- with any Identity Politics dogma will automatically be labeled a "hater".
28. The Law of Sex Versus Romance: The more sexualized a culture becomes, the less traditional romance is valued.
29. The Law of Identity Politics Teeter-Tottering Inertia: Activists' efforts to elevate Group A to the level of Group B will not cease if and when A = B. Rather, A's effort's inertial momentum will continue past the balance point and result in the lowering of Group B. The real goal of identity politics activists is not equality of their group to others, but superiority of their group to others.
30. The Law of Left-Injected Race-Card Poison: The more the Left brands whites as being innately racist, the more blacks hate whites and regard them as "the enemy".
31. The Law of Harvey Weinstein Predation Payoff Ratio: For every ambitious actress who is put in the position of being asked to trade sex for Hollywood gold, there is another ambitious actress eager to trade sex for Hollywood gold. This is the flip-side of Hollywood's "casting-couch" culture, which feminists don't care to mention, preferring to portray all aspiring actresses as helpless victims.
32. The Law of Witness v. Participant: No amount of viewing a game from the stands can begin to approach the realities of actually being on the field in the game. It is the night & day difference between watching porn and having sex with another real-live human being.