Wednesday, September 10, 2014

Red Herrings

I am endlessly fascinated by the paradoxes of modern leftist thought. On the one hand, they believe that racism and sexism and other social ills are widespread, cultural, systematic and pervasive. On the other hand, they also believe that they as individuals have nothing to do with the spread of these social ills.

The standard bearers of the left have set themselves up in opposition to capitalism, white privilege, and the patriarchy. They dedicate themselves to destroying these three things. Poverty exists because of capitalism. Racism exists because of white privilege. Violence against women exists because of the patriarchy. Remove capitalism, white privilege, and the patriarchy, and the social ills that they cause will disappear. To remove capitalism, white privilege, and the patriarchy, all that is necessary is to educate oneself about these issues, and you will undergo a magical transformation that will allow you to be less racist, less classist, and less misogynistic.

(By the way, this is what Justin Trudeau really means when he says, "the budget will balance itself" but we're not going to get into that today.)

Leftists will get really, really mad if you suggest to them that social ills are a difficult but necessary part of being human. They cannot accept that capitalism is a natural expression of humanity. Greed is not natural. Hate is not natural. Violence is not natural. These things are cultural, and are the result of noxious and nebulous invisible conspiracies perpetrated by the 1% and by corporations.  They can be overcome through education. They must be overcome by education, because if they can't, then the whole progressive enterprise is kind of doomed, and, ummmm....

If you are somehow still racist, classist, and misogynistic, it's because you're doing the educating thing the wrong way, or you are allowing something to interfere with your education. And that is why Olivia Chow's campaign for Mayor of Toronto is in big trouble. She has allowed the seductive promise of power to distract her. She was talking about populist issues that do not matter, like saying she'll respect tax dollars and pretend to be concerned about how public money is spent. Luckily, someone got to her just in the nick of time (of COURSE it had nothing to do with declining poll numbers....are you suggesting that St. Jack's life partner could ever be motivated by self-interest?!?!?! For shame!!!!!) and that's why she's doing stuff like tossing the War Room Boss under the bus, mentioning the word "progressive" in every other sentence, and calling for property tax hikes.

Another person who wasn't sufficiently educated was Andrea Horwath, as this brutal writeup from Martin Regg Cohn a few days ago shows. Not only did Andrea Horwath run a campaign that was "more centrist than the Liberals, out-Torying the Tories", she and her inner circle have apparently been doing things like "concentrating power in the leader's office". This has antagonized the poor, innocent union movement to such a degree that they are feeling "little more than contempt" for Andrea, and we've got at least one union boss calling her a "coward," and at a convention a few month down the road Andrea might be "educated" right out of the leader's office. Horrible! Can you imagine how triggering this all is? How did the NDP get so far away from the sacred path of destroying capitalism? It must be the patriarchy at work, influencing and corrupting all it touches!

Olivia Chow is, as I've said, no Andrea Horwath. She's come to her senses and is trying to rebuild. But, as many have asked.....is it going be enough? Not if the polls are any indication, at least right now.We might actually end up with John Tory, of all people, as Mayor of Toronto, because Olivia decided to play the power game.

Now this is very interesting. You would think Olivia realizing that she erred and changing course would get the masses - who, let's remember, are very concerned about income inequality and not at all about getting their own back, violently, from those who cross them- on her side again. See, it's about education. And when you're educating yourself, you have to make mistakes and apologize and learn from them. If we accused third graders of being "cowards" because they couldn't do their long division the right way, we'd be monsters. 

And we also know that the left is qualitatively different from the right (so they say) in that they don't do things like nurse grudges and tear people down just for the sake of tearing them down. That's the kind of mean-spirited behavior we can expect from conservatives. But what else can you call it when the left treats Olivia Chow and Andrea Horwath the same way? If I didn't know better, I'd say that the disgruntled left are just mad that they lost the provincial election and that they are losing this mayoral election.

They'll never admit that, though. They will hide their bitterness and greed and hateful feelings behind phrases like "conditions of injustice". They will continue to blame their losses on the machinations of the evil business elite for distracting people like Chow, Horwath and Mulcair from the true path that led guys like Bill de Blasio to victory in NYC.  Speaking of which, what is Bill de Blasio up to? Failing to keep his promise to fully end stop-and-frisking, I see? Well, I guess the left should be getting mad about that, except they must be distracted by big business again, or something.

Anyway, one thing we can all agree upon is that BS-ing yourself and others and saying things which you don't really believe is no way to win an election. Isn't it nice to find some common ground?

Tuesday, September 2, 2014

The War At Home

When I was in school not so long ago, studying something non-political so I could have a reasonably fulfilling job, a lot of my classmates didn't quite know what to make of my interest in the political world.

In my line of work, you try to avoid controversy. There are a lot of attempts to stay professional and above the fray. Some are successful at maintaining this professionalism. Most are not, but that's because they try and fail. And since everyone was trying so hard to pretend like they were professional robots and developing anxiety disorders in the process, there was little patience or understanding for people who actively sought out controversial stuff like politics.

So topics of discussion in school focused around stuff like TV shows, video games, sports teams, pumpkin spice lattes at Timmy's, and other stuff that was vanilla enough to be discussed without offending anybody. (In case you didn't know, pumpkin spiced lattes are now controversial, part of the anti-GMO agenda.)

Some of these people came from places that were torn apart by war. They may have lost family members in conflict and were no strangers to politics. Others were from small-town Ontario where there is little reason to love the government on a good day. But for some reason, they didn't bring their outside stuff into the classroom. And that was the way it was.

Then one day the Ontario government decided that the way everyone in my profession got paid was an affront to fairness. Until that day, we had been pretty confident that we were helping people, and that people trusted us in return. I of course knew that was nonsense, and that people viewed us as little more than pawns of massive corporations out to squeeze them for every dollar that they were worth, and that if things were really fair, we'd all be working for free. I knew that because I was a conservative, and I had pretty much always understood that life was an unending struggle for dominance, for the tiniest advantage over the next person. And for a short while there, they understood that, and life was good for me.

Then the government won the fight, as it always does, and my colleagues went right back to talking about the same stuff they'd always talked about.

I tell you this tale of woe because if it isn't your story, it soon will be. Soon, you too will be castigated by people for doing something you thought was perfectly natural and right, that you had always done and you will be made to change your behaviour. You can't stay on the sidelines. You can't claim neutrality. You are not safe.

This is the ultimate, undisguised agenda of the left. The total reconstruction of our society based on mass hashtag-shaming and picking fights over day-to-day issues until you can't even recognize the world around you anymore. This is the aim of the social justice warriors, of the unions, of the various forces which gain ground each and every day. And in a world where we're very, very concerned about rising income inequality, you- yes you, person reading this- are not going to avoid their scrutiny. Sooner or later, you will fall afoul of their agenda. You'll use an offensive word, or resist a change, or fail to speak out when your favourite actor or actress breaks a taboo.

Some people say, "Well, Mr. J., what's wrong with social justice? Why are you mocking people who want social justice? Isn't equality and fairness what we all want?" Sure. I couldn't possibly be against equality and fairness, because that would make me a monster. If it were just about equality and fairness, I would have nothing to write about. If it were about fairness and equality, the people pushing these agendas would have some defined point where things would finally be fair and equal.

Except....for some reason, the social justice goalposts keep moving. It's the craziest thing. When a milestone gets reached- like, say, having a Premier of Ontario who is a woman and who is married to another woman- you can't draw the conclusion that we have less sexism and/or homophobia in our province on the basis that such a thing was unthinkable just a decade ago.

You can't feel good about the direction in which society is heading, you can't praise advancements in equality and fairness, and you can't be optimistic about things getting better because- and here's the kicker- it is not about equality and fairness. It is about greed, selfishness, and endless, endless entitlements disguised as a drive for fairness and equality. How much can we squeeze from these rich people who don't like being called privileged?  What are other ways we can make people who have more than we do feel bad about themselves? Isn't it great that we can be as harassing and cruel as we wish to people we don't like and justify it because we've been oppressed for so long? 

We ask ourselves why Canadians are going overseas to join ISIS, as if this needs to be explained. They join ISIS because they want the power to retaliate against society because society hasn't given them what they want. I guess we should feel lucky that we have only have to deal with out-of-control unions, because at least the unions and the social justice warriors confine themselves to complaining about TV shows and video games and celebrities being offensive. You've got to go pretty far away from Canada to find oppression worth picking up a gun to fight against, I guess. Privilege really is terrible, isn't it?