I often see democracy described as an absolutely crap way to run a country, and the only thing positive you could say about it was that all the alternatives were worse.
Patriarchy, eg the way we used to run the world up until 1880 or so, could arguably be described the same way.
If you want to play devil’s advocate, you can make a case that wimminz are no worse than men when presented with an opportunity to exploit an unfair advantage, and all we are seeing now is da wimminz exploiting a whole slew of unfair advantages.
It is a sad fact of life that life is unfair, some people catch cancer at 16, some people catch a bullet, some are born the wrong colour for where they live, some are born with the wrong number of limbs or senses.
You can’t do anything about those so afflicted, but you can treat them with some compassion and humanity, and that is where it all falls down, because compassion and humanity are essentially charitable things, and when you legislate giving to a charity, it ceases to be a charity, it becomes taxation.
Chivalry, or other words to describe treating a wimminz with respect, opening doors, giving up seats, goes the same way, it is a charitable act given freely by those so inclined, but as soon as you legislate it, it becomes a tax, and it is no longer given freely by anyone, even those who would have given it freely in the past.
The recipients of charity might not have liked being the recipients of charity, “living on the parish” as it was known when my dad was a boy, before the welfare state and social security, was a thing of shame, nevertheless those who lived on the parish were grateful for what they were given, and there was a certain level of influence by the parish, if you were the modern “neighbour from hell” type, don’t expect more than stale bread in your weekly package.
The recipients of a “right” obtained by universal taxation are however quite a different breed, it is my fucking right, cunts, fucking give it to me NOW! ALL OF IT!
Now, let me tell you something you may not be consciously aware of.
You know those old sci-fi stories where they talked about robots making everything so nobody had to work, and they imagined everyone would lead a life of leisure.
Well, they are not sci-fi, thanks to industrialisation and technology, to all intents and purposes, nobody has to work, if you want to be fucking picky about it, maybe at most 2.5% of the population have to work.
For the first time in human history producing enough X for everyone is not a back breaking job that involves everyone, it isn’t even easy now, it is easier than that, it is trivial, so trivial that producing enough X for everyone is the last of the problems you face, the real stick is selling X, in a market flooded with similar things.
When I grew up, there was a fucking telephone, that is it, you could walk into ANY fucking house in the UK from Buckingham Palace on down, if they had a phone, they all had the SAME FUCKING PHONE.
Today, a list of telephones that you sit down and make with pen and paper, even if you manage somehow to do the research and list every single make and model and shape and colour and design and variety available, no mean task all by itself, said list is out of date the instant you finish it.
Telephones are just an example, you can say the exact same thing about anything and everything including tins of soup, trainers, cars, pencils and even fucking toilet roll for christ’s sake.
The other 97.5% of the population who don’t actually work, well, let them be hairdressers and sales advisers and computer programmers and HR types and real estate agents and clerks and shit, and give them money in exchange for this non-work, so they can choose between ( I just did this at Tesco website, search for “toilet roll”) ONE HUNDRED AND MOTHERFUCKING THIRTY MOTHERFUCKING SIX results / matches.
How many types of fucking soap powder does the planet fucking need, Tesco ALONE has more varieties of fucking soap powder than Heinz used to have as fucking product lines…
But far from the sci-fi dreams where this 97.5% of the population who don’t actually fucking work live carefree lives of leisure and pleasure, we all know is the reality is they would all be bored shitless, and within 12 months all of them would have become radicalised suicide bombers campaigning for the rights of rabbit droppings to remain undisturbed or some such crapola.
Hence, the pretend make work that they all do.
So, what price the economy, if 97.5% of the populace serve no purpose whatsoever other than being given some make believe make work to keep them out of trouble and make them think they have earned the money they splurge over choosing between which of 2,635 varieties of cup cake to eat with which of 385 varieties of coffee flavoured beverage?
If they stop “work”, it just means more idle hands for the devil, it doesn’t actually make the slightest bit of difference to how many different varieties of tampon the various manufacturers are able to produce.
Which goes some way to explaining something.
This… click it for the full size version
All that variety… not.. all those separate companies competing against one another…not… all that choice… not.
So here is a thought, as evil and crap for everyone except those who directly own and run those ten companies that own almost everyone one else in consumerland, what if like democracy and patriarchy, the only positive thing you can say about it is every possible alternative is worse, many of them much, much, worse…
If 97.5% of the population never having anything except a make believe fake job is crap, what if all the alternatives, including the sci-fi life of leisure, are worse, many of them much, much worse.
What if, everything about society and the economy and politics was fucking crap, but it just happened to be better than all the alternatives, so instead of leaving well enough alone all we have been doing if fucking with it in the name of equality or liberty or freedom or human rights, well, suddenly, not only is it all still crap, it is even more crap, so much so that increasing numbers of people start to question those alternatives, yeah, I know they are all worse than what we HAD, but in reality, how much worse are SOME of them, than what we have NOW?
What if, now things are going to hell in a handcart, the brakes, which were appeals made to my better nature, to my charity, no longer work, because the charity was taken away and replaced with a taxation, moreover, a taxation without representation, an unjust tax, one I DO NOT FUCKING LIKE…
What if, in an attempt to ensure that exactly the same number of raindrops of the same composition and the same size falling at the same speed and same temperature on everyone, equally, we end up destabilising the weather to such an extent that only the extremes are now possible, fimbulwinter, or 40 days and nights of rain, or a Bradbury drought?
I’ll tell you something else that has changed, DRAMATICALLY, since I was a child, no, not human nature, that is immutable, but human beliefs.
Never, in all my born days, have I met so many people who GENUINELY believe in all kinds of arcane, improbable, implausible, and down right impossible shit, but then I wasn’t around in the middle ages.
Combine this with the facts that;
- the last of those who saw first hand the effects of a real war on white man’s soil are now in their 90’s
- the last of those who saw first hand the effects of a major economic bubble and depression are all dead
- the last of those who saw first hand the final stages of the rollout / step change from one fundamental set of technologies and industry to the next are all dead
And it doesn’t look good, unless you find change “interesting”, and I use that word in the sense of the Chinese curse, may you live in interesting times.
How ever much rain is falling on us men as individuals and absent fathers and guys living alone etc etc etc, it may well be time to invoke chamberlain and peace in our time, and macmillan and you never had it so good.