Dangerously Stupid

 

So, recently I mentioned two right-wing ranters who I think are representative of the more mentally active of "conservatives." With all sorts of theories about all sorts of things.

Wrong about global warming. Wrong about terrorism. Wrong about social programs. Wrong about crime.

But notice the other constant besides being wrong: All of their delusions benefit the rich and the powerful: 

Their idiotic denial of anthropogenic global warming benefits the fossil fuels industry.

Their hysterical paranoia and racism about terrorism benefits fossil fuels (access to Mid-East oil), the military-industrial-complex (subsidies to capitalists as well as Thomas Friedman's "hidden fist" that defends Adam Smith's "invisible hand" of the world capitalist system) and the surveillance state (to "keep us safe"). 

Their ignorance and bigotry about social programs benefits the rich (low taxes), employers (who get desperate job applicants) and the prison-industrial-complex which became a major element of the US oligarchy in the last quarter of the 20th Century and which provides increasing numbers of slave labourers tor US corporations as well as neutering the rage of the most dispossesed portion of the working class.

Writing this it seems possible that these fools never have an original thought for themselves and that instead the ruling classes drop little clues into the culture for the fools to find and then they construct insane theories that inevitably benefit the rulers. Certainly the cretins writing the editorials in the Toronto Sun must know how much their drivel benefits their employers and their employers' friends. 

It's difficult to tell just where the cynicism starts and the stupidity begins. In this post I wrote about the vapidity and selfishness of the asshole CEO of McDonald's Canada as he stammers over his contradictory defence of his franchisees' use of underpaid foreign labour in Canada:

The mewling self-pity; the idiotic attempts at sarcasm, the gutless weasel words, ... the whole gamut of Betts's response to this scandal provides us with an excellent case-study of the sort of mentally challenged individuals for who our entire society is designed to serve. 

The point is that to be a high-powered executive/capitalist/oligarch you have to be a psychopath. Psychopaths tend not to be deep thinkers. (They might be clever and quick thinkers but there's a difference.) As well, there's the question of "talent," of "genius."  A talented musician, or painter, or film director, or entrepreneur, or computer programmer, can be a complete and total asshole with zero social skills as well as being a selfish prick. These are the sorts of people we lavish love and affection on. 

Basically, the whole edifice of our profit-driven society is based on a foundation of weak clay. Capitalist societies are based on sociopathic selfishness. As such, the "thinkers" (more like propagandists) who defend this system are going to be limited individuals themselves. So all the way down the line you'll find failure, especially at the end of the line where these right-wing troglodytes hang out. 

The long and the short of it is that while there is a class divide, between the workers and the oligarchs, there is also a mental divide. I grow tired of this mythology of "the People." I grow tired of the myth of "The People United Will Never Be Defeated." When I hear the mythology that we supposedly have more in common with a right-wing member of the working class than we have differences, I can only gasp at the audacity, the willing blindness, that goes into making such a statement. The idea that elites are dividing us, and setting us against each other, is, to put it bluntly, ridiculous. WE WERE ALREADY DIVIDED.

Not everyone who votes Conservative (or Republican, or whatever) is my natural enemy. Some people raised in a racist culture, but who are not mentally constituted to fear differences the way genuine conservatives do, can become enlightened by an anti-racist environment. Some people vote conservative out of ignorance. Access to information can help them. (This isn't meant to be condescending. It's a simple fact that if you look at the records of most "conservative" or right-wing governments, you will see that their policies injure or kill people the vast majority of the time.)

If these are the sick accomplishments of their leadership, people who can (sort of) put an entire book together (like stephen harper), it becomes easy to understand just why the brain products of defectives like Davis Aurini are so godawful. And he's an example of the dyed-in-the-wool right-winger that I'm talking about. I don't have more in common with him than I do differences. He's a racist. He's a white supremacist. He's a deluded, bigoted Christian supremacist. 

Check out this guy:

Timothy Juhlke works directly with students at St. Mary's Catholic Secondary School, while also frequently posting racist, anti-Muslim, antisemitic, anti-2SLGBTQ, and misogynistic content to Facebook under the name TJ Dread.

On more than one occasion, these posts carry a violent tone.

"Justin actually lost but cheated and imported terrorists to vote for him," Juhlke said about the 2019 federal election, referring to a conspiracy theory that the Liberal party has increased immigration in order to grow their voting base. 

On various occasions, he has also described Muslims as "cave people" and "Muzzies" and said that Muslims "should never be allowed in any western government anywhere in the first place."

...

""F#%k em (sic)," he responded. "I hate them for every single reason. They hate us, so why should I care? Scumbags."

On the topic of the Islamist extremist suicide bomb attack on an Ariana Grande concert in 2017, and Justin Trudeau's response, Juhlke posted a picture of a body hanging from a tree and the words, "In the past, if you got caught helping the enemy you were hung (sic) for treason. Why Should (sic) it be any different today?"

Its caption read, "For (Justin Trudeau), antifa, and all apologists."

In his next comment, he threatened, "Anyone defending these animals to me on here or in person ever again will be in the shock of their lives," and commented elsewhere on the post: "When I encounter apologists now they will just be put to sleep. Traitors."

...

Juhlke is also a staunch COVID-19 denier, referring to those who accept the scientific consensus on the virus as "absolutely vile creatures" who "would be the first ones goosestepping around Berlin and Moscow."

Juhlke's COVID-19 denial also includes expressing violent fantasies.

"Global reset talk. Not even hiding it," he wrote in the comments of a post about vaccines. "I plan on taking a few henchmen out if possible."

Juhlke has repeatedly promoted the idea that COVID-19 is part of a globalist plot, and explicitly identified "the authors of globalization (sic)" as "the unmentionable tribe," a common antisemitic stand-in for Jews.

In other posts, he's made comments about the "group that invented communism, all of the isms and the war of ideas to undermine us all," another antisemitic trope. 

This individual isn't a potential ally to me. He's not an innocent working class lamb steered down the wrong path by our oligarchic overlords. He's a deranged, racist, ranting, violent menace. (The article goes on to quote some of his unhinged threats of violence [from behind a pseudonym] to journalists that he doesn't like.)

And it's the part about COVID-19 denial that I'll conclude my little blog post with. COVID-19 denial and Global Warming denial. And Pro-War enthusiasm. And anti-socialism (including anti-welfare state) beliefs. And stupidly championing "free markets" and "deregulation" and attacks on unions. All beliefs that benefit oligarchs and impoverish the majority.

Every position these fuck-faces take is so bloody stupid and destructive. These idiots are NOT our potential brothers and sisters. They are a portion of the population afflicted with brains that make them paranoid, violent and dangerous. They are encouraged in their delusions by cynics and sociopaths from among the ruling classes (many of whom are deluded morons themselves). I don't know what to do about them really. There's too many of them to silence. But they are a danger to us. 

The one thing I do know is that during the post-1945 "golden age" of capitalism, they were rendered more docile by material prosperity. These people TOLERATED affirmative action programs and increased recognition for the human rights of traditionally oppressed peoples. But neo-liberalism (which they stupidly supported) has made their lives harsher and so they lash out. And here's what liberal propagandists like Montreal Simon, Driftglass, Lawyers/Guns/&Money fail to understand: Your policies make these people angry. Impoverishing them makes them angry. Simultaneously championing liberal social values while impoverishing these people makes them doubly angry. Conservative political movements make scapegoats out of oppressed groups and direct the rage of true-blue, mentally conservative maniacs against them.

Don't delude yourselves about the way that the policies of Obama, or Trudeau, or now Biden, are benefiting oligarchs while condemning the majority to desperation. They most certainly are. Among those people are dangerously stupid conservatives. Don't make them angry. You don't like them when they're angry.

I can't see the writing on this yet. I've no idea what it means.