Monday, December 28, 2020

Divided by Class and Brains

 

You know, just for emphasis: The portion of the population that is working class but which also has the brain structure that produces "conservatism" is a danger to us. They are a separate danger from the oligarchic capitalists but they also reinforce the danger from that class. The oligarchic capitalists use them for their own purposes. But even on their own they would present a danger to us.

You see, there is some truth to the arguments advanced by more cerebral leftist writers that it is counterproductive to write-off a large portion of possible allies as "deplorable" or "stupid." I've said this myself. Several times. A lot of support for conservative political parties arises out of ignorance. These people can be reached. Many ignorant conservative voters aren't inherently racist, mouth-breathing cretins. The people who voted twice for Obama and then voted for Trump did not see the skin colour of the candidates as particularly relevant. (One could argue - and many screeching, entitled Hillary Clinton supporters have done so - that genitalia was an issue in 2016. There is no doubt that sexism was a factor in Clinton's Electoral College loss. But more important was the disappointment with the Democrats among its traditional supporters beginning in 2010, and continuing on to 2016. When Hillary Clinton arrogantly campaigned on the same pro-Wall Street, pro-"Forever Wars" garbage that Obama had governed by, and ... and, well, when she just did everything that she did that discouraged Democrats from turning out on election day, that was the reason she lost.)

Anyhoooooooooo ... some people who vote for conservative parties can be reached. But the hardcore, ... forget about it. 

Let's look at the quote from John Stuart Mill from a couple of posts ago:

“I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it. Suppose any party, in addition to whatever share it may possess of the ability of the community, has nearly the whole of its stupidity, that party must, by the law of its constitution, be the stupidest party; and I do not see why honorable gentlemen should see that position at all offensive to them, for it ensures their being always an extremely powerful party. I know that I am liable to a retort, and an obvious one enough; and as I do not wish to allow any honorable gentleman the credit of making it, I make it myself. It may be said that if stupidity has a tendency to Conservatism, sciolism, or half-knowledge, has a tendency to Liberalism. Something might be said for that, but it is not at all so clear as the other. There is an uncertainty about sciolists; we cannot count upon them; and therefore they are a less dangerous class. But there is so much dense, solid force in sheer stupidity, that any body of able men with that force pressing behind them may ensure victory in many a struggle, and many a victory the Conservative party has gained through that power”

Let's go into it.

“I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative."

Okay? So, you can have an intelligent person with a larger amygdala (propensity to fight or flight over rational thinking) and a greater habit to focus on threats and to interpret things as threatening. This is the basic argument for conservatism; whereas liberals see most people as "improvable" and they see the possibility of progress if people are free to read, think, say, believe what they want to believe, the more articulate conservatives see collective humanity as dangerous, slaves to beastly appetites and urges. It is dangerous to underestimate the selfishness and stupidity of people. Therefore we need a system that regulates people's behaviour, especially with traditional moral codes, traditional religious beliefs, traditional authority. Traditions are important because obeying them is often second-nature and does not require omnipresent coercion. 

One can believe in this baser view of humanity and still be intelligent. However, as I argued in other posts, being stupid can, by itself, make the world seem threatening. You don't understand how things work. You feel lost. You can tell people are making fun of you or regarding you with contempt. You struggle to figure out how the world works, and, being stupid, you take your cues from the edifice of lies produced by self-serving elites. (You know: "Your country/culture is superior to others. You live in a free society. The police officer is your friend. God is real. The businesman gives you jobs. Professional wrestling is real. Immigrants are a threat.") These are the people who tend to vote for conservative parties.

Obviously, some stupid people are fearless, devil-may-care, air-heads. They laugh at their mistakes and the groans of their co-workers. They never stop trusting people. Why can't we all just get along? These types would be more likely to support non-conservative parties. If they vote at all. If they think about it at all. But most stupid people are going to feel threatened by a world they don't understand and most of them tend to vote right-wing.

"Suppose any party, in addition to whatever share it may possess of the ability of the community, has nearly the whole of its stupidity, that party must, by the law of its constitution, be the stupidest party; and I do not see why honorable gentlemen should see that position at all offensive to them, for it ensures their being always an extremely powerful party."😊🐱‍🚀

Okay? So, if your party attracts the bulk of the stupid people in the community, then it will be the party of the stupid people (as well as the party for its other members, who I'll get to). And this will be a good thing for that party so far as electoral contests go.

"I know that I am liable to a retort, and an obvious one enough; and as I do not wish to allow any honorable gentleman the credit of making it, I make it myself. It may be said that if stupidity has a tendency to Conservatism, sciolism, or half-knowledge, has a tendency to Liberalism. Something might be said for that, but it is not at all so clear as the other. There is an uncertainty about sciolists; we cannot count upon them; and therefore they are a less dangerous class."

By this, Mill is talking about people who think that they know what they're talking about when they often don't. "Half-knowledge," or superficial knowledge, about subjects that causes them to spew half-correct opinions that often come across as "stupid." But people who are, for the most part, tethered to the ground of reality in their day-to-day existences. Mill says that these people can't be depended on as much as stupid people can be, because they're independent thinkers who are equally, if not more capable of being right rather than wrong. And, as such, they are harder to manipulate against their own best interests.

"But there is so much dense, solid force in sheer stupidity, that any body of able men with that force pressing behind them may ensure victory in many a struggle, and many a victory the Conservative party has gained through that power”

That just about says it all, doesn't it? Stupidity doesn't seem to leave much room for doubt. Stupidity provides a force and conviction that non-conservative movements often don't seem to have. And, when intelligent people (either the genuine conservatives who, again, also see the world as threatening, or cynical, mercenary types for whom the lies of our culture benefit and who work to maintain adherence to those lies) organize stupid people into a political force, they find themselves with a loyal, fervid set of supporters.

Now, there's STUPID. From "stupefy" or "stupefication." To make someone unable to think properly or the state of being unable to think properly. I've been talking about that topic so far and how the state of being stupid can produce the larger amygdala (the brain being plastic and all) because it makes the world a more threatening place. Being stupid can make you conservative.

Then there's the larger amygdala, which, while not precluding the possibility of intelligence, by its nature, inteferes with rational thinking (at least to some degree).  So, again, this sort of person tends to see everything as a threat while also fixating on threats when they're not around. People like this also tend to like the status-quo. They see the potential dangers of social innovations. Even if they acknowledge problems with the status-quo they have developed a familiarity, a comfort with it. If they were intelligent then they might have even been able to navigate it to their own personal benefit. People like this are hostile to newcomers. They see differences as points of conflict, not growth. They believe that society is more dangerous than any empirical investigation would show it to be. Therefore they believe in strong police-states. (Even if they occasionally claim to be defenders of freedom. Think of cowardly imbecile stephen harper's simultaneous attempts to sabotage the Census out of privacy concerns while radically expanding the state's spying powers and the carceral state itself.)

So, of course there can be intelligent conservatives. And, from time to time, their caution, their respect for time-honoured traditions, etc., ... they can make a positive contribution to any political conversation. However, the next group that I want to deal with might be the most dangerous of all. (They might also be merely the stupid people I just got finished talking about.) These are the conservatives that show up on social media pontificating all sorts of bizarre, convoluted, moronic theories and arguments which utilize considerably more brain-power than you'd imagine a true dullard would be capable of, but which are (as stated) moronic. I dealt with two such individuals; one here, and the other one here. (The latter example, upon reflection, could be considered as being truly stupid, but the diversity and range of his ranting opens me up to the possibility that he might have more capabilities than your average mouth-breathing cretin.)

Anyhow, ... this is just an unpaid blogpost written in boredom and frustration. I'll type more at a later date.



Friday, December 25, 2020

Why is Jason Kenney Pretending that Coronavirus is Real?

 

Listen! COVID-19 is fake! It absolutely doesn't exist! It's just the ordinary flu! Or it's a virus that was concocted in China, by "the Globalists" to destroy Western Civilization, but is simultaneously no more deadly than the seasonal flu! (Or something.)

The point is that you either maintain that COVID-19 is nothing (like the anti-maskers) or you say that it's real, that it's highly contagious, and also MUCH more dangerous than the seasonal flu (like all the public health authorities in all the cities, provinces, states, nations and internationally are saying).

You either say it's all a hoax, or you admit that allowing it to spread unopposed through a country like Canada could lead to 100,000-300,000 deaths (with perhaps a million people surviving with long-term problems with their lungs and hearts), a totally overloaded healthcare system, a shattered economy and any other nasty consequences that you can think of. 

Alberta premier and life-long bachelor Jason Kenney appears to be trying to find a "middle-ground" between these two extremes. A "moderate" position which says that COVID-19 is no big deal but it IS overwhelming Alberta's healthcare system. Lot's of people are dying but Kenney points out that they had "co-morbidities" and therefore we can't blame COVID-19 for everything. It would be nice if everyone practiced basic intelligence and tried to not gather in large crowds, without masks, breathing and spitting all over each other when there's a respiratory virus going around. But mandating masks and lockdowns would violate human rights and Jason Kenney has always been a fanatical defender of individual freedom (aside from all those times when he runs roughshod over them).

What gives? 

COVID-19 has been very good for Jason Kenney. All the noise about the rapid spread of the virus and the pressures on the healthcare system have diverted attention from Kenney's agenda of being a stupid asshole. And, at heart, it's pretty clear that Jason Kenney doesn't really give a fuck if people are dying. Jason Kenney is a stupid, stupid man. He's fucked in the head. ALL of his policies are self-evidently destructive. But because he's a simpering moron, he never really processes it all. There are things he wants to do because long ago he decided (without much thought on the matter) that he wanted to do them. And he lives his whole stupid life that way. And, unfortunately, there are enough OTHER stupid fucks to pay his way and vote for him or cover-up for his frauds and disasters.

I was going to write something about Kenney's cynicism and how those anti-maskers genuinely believe the pandemic is a hoax whereas Kenney isn't so detached from reality as that but he needs to pander to those idiots. But as I got through this little post, the wretchedness of Kenney's whole career (indeed, the miserable shit's entire existence) began to weigh on me and I stopped caring about how capable Kenney might be of grasping the particular realities of COVID-19. He's a less-than-useless blight on the nation and that's about it.



Sunday, December 20, 2020

How to Stop Them?

 

It's 2020-12-17 at 7pm. I'm tired. I ordered a pizza online (I usually call. Like the old man that I am who wants for there to be jobs for people because you need an income to live in this culture.) And I've had good results from these new "auto-fill" things for your name, email, website that some bloggers have for comments. Once you enter the info, all the options show up and you just confirm if they're all right. So, I go to enter my address and phone number for the Contactless Delivery and all this okay-looking info pops up and I figured I must have ordered online before (it's possible). 

But the pizza's almost an hour coming and I go to my email account and see the confirmation email and look and notice that the address and phone number are completely fuckt-up. Like an AREA-CODE of "164."

So I call them up instead and get it all fixed and now I have another 45-minute wait and I've been hungry for a while. (The postal-code would have sent them to a private school a couple of blocks away from the street that I live on and a mile or two from my house.)

So, last time I wrote a blog-post called "How to Stop Them" but now I've put a question mark on the same title because maybe I don't know. Because I'm so tired. (Working some overtime this week.)

I don't know what to say that isn't what I haven't always been saying. There needs to be a recognition that the electoral politics crowd and the super-radicals have to acknowledge each other's importance. We have to realize that our political system is dominated by capitalism and that long-term exposure to it (as a social-democratic politician f'r instance) is damaging. A progressive politician has to establish a line for themselves that they will not cross as the pressure to compromise and conform begins to be applied. This should be communicated publicly so that people who might vote for that person can have some understanding of the degree to which that person will fight for them as a politician.

Then, when the pressures are building and the politician is considering erasing that line and drawing a new one a little farther out from their own sense of morality, the electorate can say: "We voted for the person who said they'll never do that. If you betray us you will be dead to us."

At the same time, the super-radicals have to learn that there's no way in hell that they'll change things with their tiny demonstration, or their massive one-day rallies, or their incoherent, childish calls for "revolution" or their masturbatory outbursts on social media. It doesn't appear that they'll have much effect peacefully or violently. Not without allies with power. And because our economy is dominated by capitalists, most of our power has to be found in politics. Direct action/extra-parliamentary actions/occupations/petitions/letter-writing campaigns/alternative media, etc., etc., they're important. And, furthermore, if the agents of the oligarchy believe they can break their own laws with impunity (including by breaking the lives of activists) we have to acknowledge the validity of violent responses. Oppressors tend not to be swayed by moral persuasion.

We have to learn to speak to ordinary people. We have to develop a clear strategy for what we want to achieve and how we CAN achieve it. Read my blog posts on "Workers as Citizens" for an illustration of this.



Friday, December 11, 2020

How to Stop Them

 

As "progressive" Canadians we're faced with many challenges. (For me, "progressives" range from centre-left Liberals to NDP'rs, to left-Greenies, to socialists, to communists, to anarchist-socialists.) We are living in a society we are opposed to. (In my opinion, left-Liberals are deluded about the nature of this society. They don't believe it is as nasty as it actually is and they labour in the mistaken belief that the shining Liberal Party can be made to understand how abhorrent the unfortunate aberrations from decency are and to do the right thing to rectify the situation.) This is a society that is centered around the capitalist profit-motive and not by any actual moral humanity. Other human beings, the environment, are all secondary to individual profit-maximization.

In this society there are two dominant contenders for power: Liberal (liberal) capitalists and conservatives. Generally speaking, liberal capitalists tend to dominate. Why? Because, for the most part, conservatism is about preserving the status-quo and it's usually the case that the status-quo leaves a lot of people unhappy. 

During the liberal-capitalist "golden-age" from 1945-1972 it was the case that conservatives had been forced by harsh experience and the sheer preponderance of evidence to moderate their views in order to accommodate the new social order and thereby became seen as far more reasonable and acceptable than they are now. That was the era when Eisenhower rejected the "stupid" conservatives who wanted to destroy unions and social security, when Nixon established the Environmental Protection Agency, and when Ontario Premier Bill Davis built TV-Ontario and the community college system.

But conservatism also contains the seeds for its eventual degeneration in its grassroots membership. This is something that I think about more and more lately. That self-identified conservatives have different mental wiring from liberals and socialists. For one (and nothing I'm about to say is meant to imply that conservatives can't be good people, especially once you've gained their trust) conservatives have been shown to fixate more on threats than other people. Secondly they have stronger "fight or flight" instincts that can sometimes impede rational thought. 

So, think about people who respond to changes as if they're inevitably threatening. People with a different skin colour/culture moving into the neighbourhood? They might be a threat! They might swamp our culture! Let's push them out! No? Okay! Let's move away from them to a place where more "old-stock" Canadians still dominate!

A progressive will see people living in poverty and think about how to help them. A conservative will respond by thinking that the poor are a dangerous rabble who are trying to rip them off. Social programs only serve to subsidize their bad decisions and their reproduction ("welfare moms").

Now, the following is NOT meant to imply that all conservatives are stupid. But if you think about it, stupid people will have a hard time understanding how the world works. They will also make a lot of mistakes and earn the contempt of many of those around them. If people are constantly sneering at you and you constantly feel lost and adrift, you will be insecure. You will see things as threatening. You will struggle to understand your society to try to fit in and you will feel elated when you do grasp things. You will be told that God the Father watches over the world where men are men and women are women and men earn the money and women are homemakers and baby makers and the police officer is your friend and the businessman gives you jobs and your country is a force for good in the world and etc.

People of normal intelligence absorb all of this and depending upon their mental capacities/frameworks they reject some or all of it, generally with a healthy dose of cynicism. But a conservative will cling to this in desperation and feel threatened by theories that challenge it. Because it is simply beyond them to incorporate critiques based on reality into this worldview. And so they reject these challenges and cling to their delusions.

Everything I'm saying now has already  been said by English liberal philosopher John Stuart Mill over a hundred years ago:

Mill was not, however, all pure reason and moral elevation. In reply to an attack made upon him by Sir John Pakington for calling the Conservative party “the stupid party,” Mill, admitting the phrase to occur in his Representative Government, went on to say, “I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it. Suppose any party, in addition to whatever share it may possess of the ability of the community, has nearly the whole of its stupidity, that party must, by the law of its constitution, be the stupidest party; and I do not see why honorable gentlemen should see that position at all offensive to them, for it ensures their being always an extremely powerful party. I know that I am liable to a retort, and an obvious one enough; and as I do not wish to allow any honorable gentleman the credit of making it, I make it myself. It may be said that if stupidity has a tendency to Conservatism, sciolism, or half-knowledge, has a tendency to Liberalism. Something might be said for that, but it is not at all so clear as the other. There is an uncertainty about sciolists; we cannot count upon them; and therefore they are a less dangerous class. But there is so much dense, solid force in sheer stupidity, that any body of able men with that force pressing behind them may ensure victory in many a struggle, and many a victory the Conservative party has gained through that power” [xxxiii/xxxiv].

Bibliography

Mill, John Stuart. The Philosophy of John Stuart Mill: Ethical, Political and Religious. Marshall Cohen, ed. New York: Modern Library, 1961.

So, what do we do about this? I guess I'll write more tomorrow. Because blogging is a career-killing waste of time.



Thursday, December 10, 2020

Scumbags Galore!

 


Well, gotta give that old Canuck Complacency points! We've all been so smug about not being the USA where Donald Trump created the worst national response to the COVID-19 virus [which isn't true btw. Boris Johnson's UK has a higher per capita infection AND death rate] that we turned our view away from what our own scumbag leaders are doing and now we find ourselves with soaring infection rates and an economy on the skids.

Doug Ford has decided to protect his buddies in the for-profit Long Term Care from the financial consequences of their greed. His party of vermin are pushing legislation preventing the families of loved ones who died in LTC facilities from COVID-19 infection. Under the legislation families have to prove "gross negligence" if their loved ones died in a long-term care facility from COVID-19.  Which is much more difficult to prove. But the statistics show that these greedy bloodsuckers presided over statistics like this:

Meanwhile, in the 28 nursing homes Chartwell owns or operates in Ontario, the COVID-19 infection rate has been 47 per cent higher and the fatality rate 68 per cent higher than the provincial average, according to the Star investigation.

I was going to write more but the effort needed to do a blog post seems like such a waste of time. 

So, just at random: Jason Kenney is also a scumbag.

So is the demented, disgusting Donald Trump. So are his whining, hypocritical, delusional, moronic groupies who are babbling about how the election was stolen from him while ignoring the documented fact that their repulsive hero was openly sabotaging the US Postal Service to suppress the Democratic vote. (Democrats might be brainwashed shills for corporate vermin like Joseph Biden and Nancy Pelosi, but on average they are more intelligent than Republican voters. Democrats recognize that COVID-19 actually exists and therefore preferred to vote by mail in 2020 whereas Republicans were far more willing to expose themselves to the virus by voting in-person so as to make sure that Black people could still be murdered by the police.)

Corporate Democrats trying to blame their disappointing election results on progressives. As if running a four-decade corporate tool and a right-wing cop and trashing progressive proposals at every opportunity and telling the oligarchy that "nothing will fundamentally change" and cheating Bernie Sanders again, ... as if none of that was powerful enough to combat the frenzied lies of Trumpians and corporate propaganda outlets that they were actually in thrall to "socialists" who want Medicare-For-All, a Green New Deal, and for the police to stop murdering Black people with impunity.

Corporations in Canada took the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy (CEWS) and still paid out dividends and bought their own stocks (to boost their share prices). Obviously greedy scum. But what of the imbeciles in the comments section mewling about how some people rely on dividend payments as their only source of income? What do they get out of such sickening behaviour? Who cares? Drag them behind a truck!

Well, there. I'm just a little overwhelmed from the insanity and gaslighting and hopelessness of the situation.