As IF Times

In the classic administration of a totalitarian regime, there wasn’t any doubt about what was expected of the poor citizens. Toe the line, do what those in charge tell you and don’t complain. Disobedience would expose you to dire consequences including persecution, imprisonment or permanent disappearance.

Typically, some guy, (and it’s always a comical figure) invariably dressed in military garb, issues and pronounces arbitrary edicts which are then carried out by the executive arms of the regime. Naturally, the media is on side as they convince the thankful citizens of their good fortune to live under such wise and benign rule. As long as the populace believes they are happy, they have no reason to question that things could be better.

By sheer might of their police and military resources, it was fairly easy for these regimes to keep the masses in line in those days. Sure there were the occasional complainers and ‘intellectuals’ who spoke out, but they were marginalized by ridicule, kicked out of the country, or just sent to the state re-education centre to be convinced of the error of their opinions. Usually, these people were poets or writers, not real taxpayers anyway. With the increase of access to news and information, the suppression of reality was harder to maintain by these totalitarian regimes. Once they were able to see on TV that their neighbours in the next country over were wearing clothes that were not just shades of grey or green, the jig was up. It dawned upon them that hoarding toilet paper was not what people did in other countries. With the onset of the Internet, well, fugghedaboutit! It was pretty easy to see that khaki was not the new black.

Information, or more correctly, access to unfiltered information was a great liberator. If your guy in the peaked cap and sunglasses was telling you a whopper, you could easily google it, check it out and accuse him of having his pants on fire.

Truly strange then, are the events which are unfolding in the ‘Western’ world. Unarguably, we are the luckiest people on the earth, with access to most of the planet’s wealth, resources and technology. More importantly, we have unfettered access to information, education and to the free exchange of opinions and ideas.

At least in theory.

Notionally, in a ‘free’ society, you can do whatever you want. What we see happening today is the creeping tyranny of correctness. The difficulty is, there is not always the comical figure in the peaked cap that is the source of oppression. The sources are much more varied, but their methods are identical. If you do not agree with their point of view, you are a neanderthal/ignorant/hateful/irresponsible and of course, evil cretin.

Rather than engaging in civilized discussions of the merits or detriments of a given issue like an intellectual ping pong match, modern zealots now engage in hardball, over the top and in your face methods to draw attention to their just cause. Many years ago, the early green movement loved to create huge spectacles of their protests. Over time, chaining people to trees, attacking ships on the high seas, painting seals etc, actually got too expensive and recruiting zealots wasn’t always easy during the ski season.

The modern way to inflict opinions seem to revolve around a couple of popular techniques. Nudity is big. PETA is known for their attention getting campaigns of parading nude women (and it’s always women)to promote their agenda. Luckily for us, they haven’t convinced most of the women of THE VIEW to their cause. As recently as today, in our town, a small but vocal group of women wearing only underwear were protesting that we weren’t doing enough about, you guessed it, global warming. The irony of assembling inside a nice warm foyer while it was minus 2 degrees outside and snowing was apparently lost on them. How parading around around half naked would incite men to reduce global warming was befuddling to me. Heck if this is the kind of hardball protests we can expect, I think we should take our sweet time thinking of a solution.

Beyond the prurient amusement of these protests, the sadness of these events lie in the reality that someone or some group has convinced these young gals of the nobility/urgency of their actions. But whether boys or girls, youth is very impressionable during their school years. If the school tells ’em it’s so, well it must be so. In the case of global warming at least, it’s a stretch to believe that 18 to 22 year olds have discovered through rigorous scientific review that an imminent cataclysm facing mankind happens to be looming during their school years. Maybe they’re just more mature than I was at that age.

More likely, this notion was fed to them by a less than scrupulous education community who have fallen victim to group think. I wrote earlier of free unfiltered information and liberty. Sadly, kids are getting information, but it’s not unfiltered. The visibility of these kinds of public displays, reinforced by a compliant media, convince the average schlub that the issue must be a pressing one and that ‘everyone’ is onside. To question the veracity of these claims would make you an intellectual and social leper.

And that is the second part of the coercion. Media. The popular media must present as fact, the one sided view of a discussion. They take advantage of our proclivity to get our information in quick soundbites rather than thoughtful deliberation and study. Sadly many in our culture are convinced that the opinions of people who can sing or act for a living are those worth paying attention to. Come on! These people were a hit song removed from being your waiter at Dennys! Would you listen to them for their opinions on science? They believe that lawyers and politicians somehow have discovered the science that indisputably points to man made climate change.

We get coerced to the accepted view; makes it all the easier to convince us to fund the urgent cause. We do what they want. The goofball isn’t wearing a peaked cap and sunglasses this time, but someone’s pants are on fire.

link Book Review: Last Exit to Utopia – WSJ.com#mod=todays_us_opinion

Not really an ‘as if’ article, but interesting from the perspective of it’s validity. It’s always been a puzzle to me that there is such a contingent of people willing to embrace the characters who represent the views of totalitarian regimes. There are idiots who wear Che shirts and Fidel hats etc etc which can only be explained away by either ignorance or willful stupidity. At this time, I’ve yet to see any great Mao fan clubs but I suspect that’s only because he didn’t sport a beard.

This is akin to turkeys embracing ax manufacturers and wearing Kitchen Aid T shirts. It must be hard wired into humans to need to be told what to do and it’s corollary, the need to tell people what to do. There must be some basic primal urge that compels people to willingly fall in line with whatever preposterous personality manages to capture the limelight.

How can this be? What is the point of education when you can’t even convince people that mass murderers are not a sympathetic lot? Anyone who has been to university is familiar with the now classic psychology studies by Philip Zimbardo in which people are asked to dial up varying levels of pain on another subject only because someone ‘in authority’ told them to. Amazingly, he found that the majority of subjects did what they were told.

The flip side of this phenomenon is ‘Stockholm Syndrome’ as in the case of Patti Hearst in which victims (originally) eventually became sympathetic to their captors.

What does this have anything to do with anything? Well this is the long winded way of pointing out the absurdities of events in the news. For those of you paying attention, there are rabid debates going on now regarding issues such as delivery of health care, of the effects of climate change, of news bias and so on.

Pay attention to some of the champions of the various issues. They are mad. And I don’t mean mad as in the ‘you sat on my glasses’ mad, I mean insane. Somehow though, they develop a following.

Exhibit A: ‘Filmmaker’ Michael Moore espouses the virtues of Cuba’s health care system in a recent film, waxing on how efficient it is. Do thinking people actually believe this? In a country where your status is measured by the volume of beans in the pantry, does he really believe that health care is efficient and plentiful?

Exhibit B: Nobel laureate Al Gore, inventor of the Internet has been pushing his vision of apocalypse to an ever swelling audience. His view of science has been pushed by politicians no more able to differentiate between a test tube and and a pie chart but will collectively decide for their constituents how to piss away billions and billions (i’ve lost track of how many) of dollars in saving the planet. And people believe them. Like the turkeys above, they put on their Kitchen Aid t-shirts.

You would be wrong to think I blame Al Gore. I resent him because I didn’t think of this first and made all the money he’s making. No, I blame the machinery behind this growing and now more apparent fraud. Anyone who’s ever seen this guy on TV knows that he has no more intelligence than a 7 iron. If he came to your door selling snake oil, you’d be yelling over your shoulder, ‘Honey, let Rover off the leash’. You’ve never seen this guy debate his issues in any meaningful way. Typically, an over the top presentation is made, supported with wild statistics and projections and the gullible audience laps it up and carries him out on their shoulders. Free t-shirts at the door.

It’s all comical except the tragic parts. Firstly, the elected representatives make their constituents spend THEIR money in support of this farcical vision. The other sad part is that entire industries are being created to capitalize on this quixotic pursuit and as part of their drive, they support the gospel through earnest pleadings in the media. It’s for the children. Meanwhile, as per a previous posting, we can see that global warming can be fixed by handing out a few hundred million condoms and judicious use of the words, ‘not tonight dear’.