What Does the Left have left?

 Censorship is a double edged blade, with one of the side being serrated; the side that is serrated is applied to the speaker, while the smooth side is applied to listeners.  The way that censorship harms a society is that it stifles the intentions of both the speaker and the listener; many people seem to have forgotten that when a man’s tongue is cut out only message the world gets is that someone else is afraid of that man voicing his ideas.  Yet ideas don’t die, only the people who express them.

 For quite some time now politics has divided into four quadrants: on the vertical divide there the labels like Left and Right, while the horizontal divide there says Liberal at the bottom and Authoritarian at the top.  This is typically called The Political Compass and testing to see where you land is readily available on the public Internet.  If you the decide to take part in these sorts of tests, find three to five different sites as some will lean in one political direction while other sites will slant in the other.

 Dear reader, if you happen to be a progressive or happen to stumble across one, there is one question and one question only; that needs to be asked, which is ‘if and when you stop progressing, please describe the world that you will have built for me?’  This is the question, especially under scrutiny, that no one seems to be able to answer; probably be-cause they never really thought it through.

 Currently, a problem in many social conversations is that few people can define the Left and the Right with any certainty and so new words needed to be introduced into the lexicon to describe people outside of those two systems; one of those words is ‘woke’  and the other is ‘progressive’.  The second word, in the previous sentence is a good sounding word seeing as everyone wants to move forward, and yet this author is seeing only regression for the last decade plus, for there has been a plethora of unrest at the civilian level.  The first word was co-opted from a smaller portion of society and got perverted on its way to ubiquity within society; ‘woke’ means ‘to see’ or ‘to know’; yet what the subject matter for the seeing and knowing is now being prescribed, almost as if it was orthodoxy.

  The Enlightenment, circa the 18^th century, strove to chase away superstition and faith in favour of reason and it advocated for liberty, tolerance, fraternity, national rule by the people, a separation of church and as one might guess ‘progress’.  The problem that is now coming to light is that for some, mostly the selfish, there are certain perspectives where the those values are not to be held in equal balance for all; typical this is framed in the ‘rules for thee, but not for me’ sentence.  How this usually works is that one person demands their liberty, all the while demanding tolerance from others; for the idea of ‘fraternity’ seems to have been disposed of along with the contents of the chamber pot from last night.

 Once one accepts the idea of an apex predator within an ecosystem, the existence of an apex group member within said predatory group must be obvious; according to Darwin, all life is hierarchal.  Excluding humans, the rest of nature typically ignores the principle of might makes right, as the rest of nature knows not what is right or what is wrong.  The ideas of right and wrong are human values and even then there is no global consensus on this matter; the lion has no sympathy for the gazelle’s fate and the gazelle has no empathy for the hunger of the lion; for these are typically human traits and even then, these are not applicable to all humans.

  There are two main factors at play that have brought down the good intentions of The Enlightenment; those are Time and us Humans.  When given enough time many a human can and will solve a given problem and typically that problem can be stated as such: ‘I want a better life tomorrow than I have today, and then I want my children to have an even better life than what my tomorrow is going.’  This is a noble cause so long as one maintains a state of mind in which The Enlightenment is holistically considered.  Once any of the six pillars of said Enlightenment are forgotten, ignored, or stripped away, a new era must begin; to paraphrase Yoda from the Star Wars movies – “Begun, the “ME” Wars have.”

 The acts undertaken in WW2 wrought a plethora of damage around the globe, this is a fact.  Yet the most significant outcome of WW2 was the phrase ‘never again’.  The problem with the word ‘never’ is that it represents a very long time.  For us humans it typically lasts as long as living memory, which is typically three to four generations.  However yet as mentioned earlier people die, but when it comes to ideas, not so much.  We know this because some ideas no matter how good or bad always seem return. 

 The ‘never again’ mantra gave life to the UN, the EU and eventually the bureaucratically established ‘Deep State’ in many so called other ‘free countries’.  Seemingly, persons are being placed into positions of power where they can impact member countries, yet those persons are being moved ever more distant from the people.  Please understand that those in the UN are appointed and yet they are allowed to, or are trying to, set policies for the member states and beyond.  Perhaps paintings of the royals of old can be held up as a mirror to those presently seeking power while skirting the electoral process; though upon consideration, a picture of Dorian Grey may be more appropriate when one contemplates the sheer number of skeletons some of these power seekers have inside and outside of  their closets.

 There seems to be a metaphorical scent in the air and some people are starting to notice it is turning foul.  The saying ‘a house divided can not stand’ can be applied to nations as well, and there seems to be efforts towards dividing nations from the inside by stacking the political deck while pulling a slight of hand towards emptying the pot. Many people have heard the leader of the World Economic Forum proclaimed that people would have to adjust their lives to the ‘the new normal’; though it is becoming ever clearer that this phrase has expanded beyond Klaus Shwab’s intent towards taking over the world.

 In bygone days wars were fought over resources, first it was food, land, and slaves, then it became coal for heat and steal, with the last big ruckus and to a certain point still is on-going over oil and its variances.  Seemingly, the new landscape that has opened up for raping and pillaging are the narrative and the opinion.  The old saying ‘facts don’t care about your feelings’ has been renovated to the point where now many people’s feelings no longer care about the facts.  For these feelings-first people, there is also a ‘new normal’, for now the masses are ever increasingly shifting towards the social media platforms in their pursuit for the facts as an alternative to what appears to be some sort of orthodoxy centered entirely on faith, a faith which presents itself at a level similar to any fundamental religion.

 The use of the word faith above may be misplaced because with the religious faiths there is simply trust in what is true; where as these feelings-first people actually obfuscate existing facts be it by omission or by redirection; though those efforts seem to be failing due to the overwhelming nature of there attempts.  A prime example of this that is fooling no-one is the reporting on crime, which then gets coupled with the lack of reporting detail in the old style media.

 Please consider why many a media report on crime where the alleged perpetrator is described as “The police are seeking a tall man last seen in a dark jacket, black jeans, and a beard.”  This description is missing the obvious element of skin colour that should have been obvious when the beard was noted, thus leaving the reader with only assumption.  This situation is exasperated by the fact that if the perpetrator is white then typically is when skin colour is noted.  Much like any judge, the Main Stream Media should only address the facts while ignoring personal feelings, and personal political positioning.

 It used to be that both sides of the political divide within many a country could agree on what plagued most of said country’s citizens, with the only argument up for debate being which path is the best path towards a solution; this has been regulated to the dustbin of history as now even the problems can hardly ever be agreed upon regardless of the scale in which the discussions occur; be it at the local, the state, or national levels.  Terms such as ‘irregular immigration’ and ‘no person is illegal’ are forms of linguistic redirection in that these terms fail to admit the one simple fact; the law had been broken the moment the illegal migrant stepped one foot over the boarder. 

 The saying, ‘don’t bury you head in the sand’ got expanded to ‘when you bury your head in the sand you end up leaving your ass in the air.’  This has become a problem for the feelings-first people who obfuscate facts because, because while narrative can change opinion, the truth will remain, because the facts will not go away. 

What is called the political Left, has for the most part been running the West for just about forty years and frankly the West has changed and not for the better.  Over the last forty years the political elites have drifted away from the common people and when any politician tries to return to appealing to the common people, they are called ‘populist’ at best, or ‘far-right’ which is becoming evermore typical.  The use of the term ‘far-right’ as a pejorative is the indicator of the political leaning of those who use it.

 Now that the narrative has been set, it has to be asked, how are things going after the last few decades of the tutelage under the Left?  Here is a headline like list of some of current situations:

• Woman banned from gym, after complaining about being shown a penis in female change room.
• 28 year old man commits suicide after learning he will never be able to breastfeed the baby he wanted yet can’t have.
• Scandal erupts in England over Grooming Gang cover up, raped girls ignored.
• Pride parade held hostage by Hamas supporters by using a human road block.
• Climate Change Girl supports rocket strikes on Israeli citizens.
• Toronto Police refuse to enforce Obstructing Traffic Laws on people engaged in prayer. (Toronto Municipal Code 950 Section 950-300B)
• Since May 2021 at least 33 Canadian churches have burned to the ground.
• Young men being forced out of dating scene as #MeToo has been weaponized by women; are the men acting in an involuntarily or voluntarily way?
• Social media platform Rumble leaves France after threats of fines for not removing certain posts.
• China’s TikTok blocks Western content toward controlling their social narrative.
• Tim Hortons under fire for hiring only foreign students after government provides subsidies.
• Bill C-63, the Online Harm Act, draws criticism as it lacks any definition of what is harmful.

  Back in the 1970’s there was a popular statuette representing ‘See no evil, Say no evil, and Hear no evil’.  Unfortunately there wasn’t a forth monkey expressing ‘Do no evil’, though what that one would look like is beyond the scope of this writing.  While evil is understood to be wickedness and immorality, the chance for subjective analysis of what is wicked or immoral always exists, and many people will, if not almost must, leverage that to their advantage.  For Leftist, the three original monkeys are the archetype of their perfect world; unfortunately they can’t seem to incorporate the forth, consider the historical death counts in communist countries.

  The stated goal of the socialist and communist ideologies is to balance a society by eliminating greed, which has about the same percentage of success as cancelling human lust. 

 In a debate, Jordan B Peterson put forth the question ‘how do we know when the left has gone too far?’  The answer to Dr. Peterson’s question seems quite simple, when they don’t say anything about their evils, when they don’t want you to see their evils, and when they don’t want to anyone to hear about their evils.  In other words, when they achieve enough power to control the narrative rather than letting society decide what should or should not be spoken; for whoever controls the public discourse controls the social mindset, and by doing so, they are ignoring any understanding of the banality of evil, just like every other tyrant.

 "Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket." 

- Eric Hoffer, The Temper of Our Time -

On Sustainability

  Sustainability seems to be a key buzzword within Western nomenclature these days and for quite a few months now, if one wishes to look back.  Sustainability is the measure of how well some action can be maintained or the avoidance towards depletion; and is a darling word for those on the political Left.  The term ‘sustainable’ is often thrown around in regards to the environment, the Beznau nuclear power plant in Switzerland has been up and running for about 40 years and is planned for retirement in or around 2040 providing an expected uptime of half a century give or take a little.

  There is a point to be made that the environment is not the only thing of value worthy of being sustained.  Before some random reader starts the ad hominem attacks of ‘this guy is far-right’, please note that Ontario Canada has 36 Conservation Authorities that if one plans to camp there, one must make a reservation online and while there is no cost, there are rules about litter and fire.  So, put your tray in the upright position and buckle your safety belt as we are now going to get started.

  There was a time when facts didn’t care about your feelings or anyone else’s feelings for that matter.  A truth was derived from facts, with the base facts being observable to all and anything beyond that requires the use of other words; words such as: allegation, claim, assertion, assumption, theory, and hypothesis.  There is another form of truth based only on logic, something which most people understand as mathematics; math works due to everyone agreeing on the symbols and the operational rules.

  Some see the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (b. June 1712) in aiding and abetting the birth of the Enlightenment. Rousseau can also be credited, in part for the slogan used in French Revolution, Rousseau’s version was ‘Equality, Freedom, and Sovereignty’; yet the French revolutionaries chanted the words ‘Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité’, a phrase that translates to ‘Liberty, Equality, Brotherhood’.  Some of those influenced by Rousseau were Emmanuel Kant, Adam Smith, and probably even Karl Marx.

  Much like the results in the children’s game of ‘telephone’, the messaging of Jean-Jacques Rousseau along with other members of the Enlightenment have been morphed into a new something.  For even the French knew, back in their chopping off heads days, that a country must have a familial feeling within the citizenry.  This game of ‘telephone’ via history has resulted in at least one of the key words been transmogrified, as the word ‘equality’ has been replaced by ‘equity’.  There is one word out of the three mentioned by Rousseau and the French, along with other people throughout time that has seemingly been out-right dropped; the French word Fraternitè and the word Sovereignty seemingly all but evaporated from around much of the first world.  Rousseau spoke of ‘freedom’ and the French spoke of ‘liberty’, though it seems that these two words were intended to be for the group not just for a single person.  John Locke (b. 1632) is quoted as saying ‘my right to swing my arm ends at your nose’ or something like that; with Locke, the idea of freedom was a thing, though at that time, that freedom came with guardrails towards keeping some level of civility between the civilians.

 Jesus Christ was for the most part of more than two-thousand years the moral foundation of what is commonly known as the Western World.  With the teachings of Christ being the common starting point for what is considered to be ‘civil’ within the Western world, the resultant culture drove the politics, which in turn drove the laws.  This author makes no claim to any scholarship on the Bible, that being said, the main messages of Christ that are provided are: ‘be kind when you can’, ‘pursue love over hate’, and ‘do unto others as you would have them do unto you’; all three of which can be pseudo-summarized in the simple phrase – ‘Treat thy neighbour as yourself’.  That statement states ‘as you’ not ‘less-then you’ nor ‘more-then you’ showing that this simple message from Christ seems to have become lost on many a politician.

  Interestingly enough, when one looks at the political on goings in much of the Western World, one might notice that the politics is moving towards, what those of the political Left like to call, the Far-Right; yet it is rather the political Left that is backtracking on their policies and moving rightward as it seems that is going to be the only way they will be to retain any semblance of power.  Thankfully, the political Left has protected their democracy so that far-right has not as of yet been able to destroy it; this is a truism, because the peoples of many countries in the Western are now voting more towards the previously named Far-Right as the political Left have now started to adopt the positions of their political rivals.

  The sarcastic point made above can be obviously noted in places like Germany, where the AFD party has won elections in a couple of provinces, in Sweden where a politically right party won the national vote, in Canada the ‘far-right’ Conservative party is ahead in almost every poll, the Italian people elected Maloni who declared a state of emergency over illegal migration, Poland and Hungary proceeded Germany in closing their boarders to the global ‘refugee seekers’ and were called Far-Right for doing so.  Now, will it be Germany’s turn to be called out as Far-Right for taking the same actions as the countries previously mentioned, which stepped up first on securing their boarders against invasion?

  The ideas the noble savage and magic soil, seem to be deas of overt wishful thinking; these two propositions will be addressed individually.  Starting with the savage, this too comes from Rousseau under his belief that civilization is a corrupting force and that the further man moves away from nature, the less civil they will be.  Magic soil is the idea that once someone steps into a country they auto-magically becomes a member of that country’s culture; of course this didn’t work out very well when the NAZIS entered Poland, Finland, Belgium, and France, or when the Russia army entered Poland, Finland, Belarus, Romania, the Ukraine, and what once was Yugoslavia; we can see this as these listed countries returned to their own flags so quickly.

  Vilipend (from Latin), ‘To speak of disparaging or contemptuously, to deprecate’, this word was found in a dictionary from 1931 in search of the historic definition of the word ‘vilify’, and turns out the two words are effectively one and the same with the difference being that ‘vilify’ includes the words that are written.

  It does seem there has been a campaign of vilification against ‘Gingers’, which would be the redhead characters.  Walt Disney changed the main character Ariel, a ginger, in the film The Little Mermaid (2023) was replaced by actress Halle Bailey who is described as African-American.  Marvel Studios had Idris Elba play the ginger god Heimdall, he who guards Asgard, in their movie Thor (2011); there are other examples, though there is no need to belabour the point.  The public messaging from these entertainment giants was that they were making these changes for the sake of inclusion, yet, is it really “inclusion” when a choice is made in favour of one demographic at the exclusion of another; this, along with other discriminations will be noticed by some and railed against by others.

  There are two basic political thoughts on history and how history is represented within the zeitgeist of a culture. One side wants to preserve their history, while the other wants it forgotten; the reader can decide which side is which.  This can be seen in the abundantly used phrase by Kamala Harris, “We can see what is possible, unburdened by what has been” as this phrase echoes similar words by Marx and the actions of China’s Mao and Cambodia’s Pol Pot; with the destruction of the past, one can make a new clean foot-print for what is to come, only after the old worldview has been washed away as there will be no-one left to defend it. A problem with this line of thinking is that as people get older they get entrenched in a way of thinking that tends to defy change.

  Historically, regardless of culture or country, social change has happened quickly or slowly. The quick method is typically based on war or revolution, while the slower type of change typically comes through shifts in both cultural and law.  The 300 Spartans were able to hold the Hot-Gates at Thermopylae until betrayed by another Spartan, the city of Troy stood strong until the Greeks fooled the Trojans into bring them inside the walls.  In days long past most countries with strong fortifications were undefeated until someone inside the gates opened one.   In more recent days, many cultures and countries are typically defended social commonality and a lot of kinetic weapons.

  Xenophilia seems to have become the order of the day for many Western governments, as any person who objected to the high levels of migration both legal and illegal was called a xenophobe or a racist; though never a possessor of Cultural-Philia.  To a space alien, this might come across as ether stupidity or apathy on the part of the managing class, something which could cause many a citizen to wonder what is the endgame of the over-lord class; thus creating the feeling that public-service has morphed into self-service.  It is strongly recommended that the reader look at the historical situations where the ruling class has become distant from the commons; the phrase ‘let them eat cake’ might just comes to mind.

  Going back to our friendly space-alien, he’s named Grok by the way.  After accessing Musk’s Starlink system, he at first sight began feeling that many of the countries should be placed on suicide watch, while other countries and cultures seem to be eating right and going to gym; because Grok was starting to notice that what some of the beings complain about local acts, were unwilling to criticize similar acts happening further abroad.  For example, Grok was happy to learn that the largest political force in human history sought to end the act of slavery globally.  Then things started to change in Grok’s assessment as he did more research.

  Grok continued his research on the history of slavery on the little planet he was looking at. After doing some quick math in his head, Grok figured that 7 rotats ago, a rotat being what we would call a year, in Libya one being could buy another for around 800 units in the planets most common currency, and yet within just 5 rotats that price dropped to 300 currency units due to free market capitalism; slavery was returning.  It must be obvious to the reader that the use of the term ‘free market’ was sarcasm.

  With a small sigh, Grok continued his research moving on to the next ‘hot topic’ based on this planet’s interconnected networks.  Both of Grok’s hearts drop as he learned more about what these beings were calling ‘Climate Change’ with a feeling of exasperation, boarder lining on anger.  Upon reading more, Grok began to understand that these beings have been terraforming their planet by covering parts of it with nonporous materials and try to hold back water, without expecting any of changes to the environment around them.

  Grok expressed his disappoint in the form a sigh; he understood that these beings are still not maturing; he entered his notes into his logbook, sent off his notes to The Alpha.  Then before moving on to his next assignment, he topped up the power of the beacon, to ensure the greater good.

DANGER

They are not ready yet

  

'We can ignore reality, but we cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality.'

- Ayn Rand. 

 

  

Authors Note:

Grok was borrowed Robert A. Heinlein’s book ‘Stranger in a Strange Land’ (1961) where the word means - to understand so thoroughly that the observer becomes a part of the observed.