A Call to Arms Against the Wilfully Ignorant

I Googled "white people" and this was way too close to the top.

This is not exactly a political rant. I'm much too angry for that.

              Politics will be referenced, oh yes, but after the good people of Canada sent the despicable Stephen Harper packing last October, I swore off political blogs for a year. The enemy was vanquished.

              No, this is a blog about our world, and politicians often reflect our world’s sentiments. And so what I'm trying to say is those sentiments are effed up.

              So, it’s with Harper I’d like to begin. When our great country fired that very worst of prime ministers—and so decisively, mind—why, I was quite proud of us. He’d done a lot of damage to our nation, our institutions, our morals, our identity, and some we may never undo. But worst of all and most of all he built a case for fear-mongering, marginalising, and whatever the gerund is for creating enemies. “If you’re not with me you’re against me.” One thing the dude understood is if you say things simply you need not trouble yourself with facts.

              And yet I fear that after ten years of saying it, I discovered that he wasn’t completely the disease. He was a very grievous symptom. Worse, this disease was not and is not confined to Canada, in truth its rot is much worse in the USA and the UK; indeed, there it may prove fatal.

              And I’m not speaking about Donald Trump or Boris Johnson, about Kevin O’Leary or Jason Kenney, about Brad Wall or the entire Wild Rose Party. I’m talking about their people, those who prop them up. I’m talking about those who believe what they say, who say that the inanity and hate they spew reflects their own values.

              Values?!

              The phenomenon that is Donald Trump is of course a joke. It’s been a joke since he ran and lost in the primaries in 2012, and it’s been a joke every step of the way this time. But as the world watches in disbelief that hilarity is twisting itself into fear as a scenario The Simpsons couldn’t have dreamed up unfolds, as he gets closer and closer to his goal. The joke isn’t funny anymore. As it stands of this writing, the worst this man could do is come in second for the most powerful office in the world.

              Donald Geedee Trump. A brash, loud, uninformed, poorly-spoken, racist, sexist, possibly unbalanced, orange twit who speaks in broad generalisations and chest-thumping nothings based on hazy understanding of the world and at the very best half-truths could be riding this wave of stupid to the oval office or second place. Only he could make a Clinton look appealing.

              Now consider Brexit. A continental shift so major that only a properly idiotic moniker can sum up how stupid it is. In the hopes of uniting a divided party, David Cameron invites the entire country to sound off on national policy and because in England the very thinnest of margins is apparently binding. The results are catastrophic, as "staying in the EU" turns into "keeping 'em refugees out," costing the man his career and leaving the door open for another badly-coiffed yell-talker to spew idiocy to the people in the form of the moronic Boris Johnson. (Wait, what? He's not? Why? Because he's not racist enough?! Lord . . .)

              Ah, but if you’re still with me you’ll recall I said that this was not about politics.

              And it’s not. I use these two examples because they’re the best and biggest, the loudest and the scariest, but there are thousands of others I could apply. The root issue is the same. They’re both born of the same problem: scared old white people. Many of them dumb. The rest trying really hard to pretend to be.

              Bernie Sanders’ staying power in the democratic primaries came from his appeal to America’s youth. That’s a demograph that rarely counts for much in US politics, so it was invigorating, and if his disillusioned supporters reluctantly follow him to Hillary’s banner, they could be Trump’s third greatest weakness after Hispanics and women whose husbands let them out of the kitchen.

              Brexit was a vote of old Brits versus young Brits, with just enough ignorant in the middle voting Leave to swing it, some to their immediate regret as they saw their protests become policy. Oops.

              Stupid, scared white people. Or perhaps it’s scared stupid white people. Whichever, let’s be clear that when you peel off the rhetoric, when you remove all of what these issues don’t share, the commonalities are fantastically simple: fear of change, fear of difference.

              They’re people who don’t like that the world has moved on and isn’t the one they lived in when young. People who don’t mind new white neighbours but despise Nigerians or Syrians or Hispanic or Filipino moving to this (any) country to do the jobs they refuse to but depend on. They’re angry and hateful because it’s not 1975 anymore.

              I’ve said this before on this page, but the greatest threat this generation isn’t ISIS or terrorism, it isn’t dependence on technology or even global warming. It’s wilful ignorance, because with ignorance comes a worsening of all of the above.

              People—and typically it’s older, blue-collar, and oh-so white people—want the right to form and spout opinions that are dependent on decades’ old ideologies and be able to do so without bothering themselves with, y’know, facts.

              People of any faith still pick and choose what aspects of their religion allow them to strategically hate and judge. Any excuse is found to ignore altogether the basic things a god or prophet was telling you. Never let your religion get in the way of your right to be a dumb-ass bigot.

              Owning weaponry is propped up as a right by twits who can say with a straight face that having more guns doesn’t mean more shooting. That’s the actual math. In fact, those with the truly pronounced brows would see us arm everyone because they say that leads to fewer shootings. Do me a favour and pick the first two people you see. Now imagine them armed with a mechanism that’s sole purpose is to kill. And you have one too. So does the bag-boy who crushed your bread. And the guy in the Audi who cut you off yesterday. And your ex. All armed.

              Add to that the three dumbest people you know. What could go wrong.

              Hay-zoose, how long until we’re re-writing textbooks?

              And this sentiment from the old and stupid is being passed to their young, who are encouraged to think what their elders think—that is, to not think at all—to have their biases and prejudices inherited, to blame phantom enemies for change seen as ruin, to steer clear of anything that might mean evolution in a society.

              Trump says he will make America “great again.” Whatever that means. The Brexit Leave-ers say “Now we have our country back.” Whatever that means. Anti-Arab sentiment is rolling over the EU and North America. Anti-Hispanics in the US. Anti-LGBTQ in the church. Nations being defined as races and cultures rather than geographical lines bearing diverse peoples.

              Nationalism, hatred, fear. Scapegoats. Simplified answers to complex questions. Ludicrous propaganda taken at face value. An economy and a world unwilling to diversify, its people unwilling to embrace change.

              Jesus, it’s 1939.

              It’s time to stop pulling punches. The wilfully stupid are mad as hell and acting on their half-baked understandings of how the world works. Intelligent and educated (or at least informed) people find themselves asking how can what we’re seeing be happening. How do you stand up to this wave of crushing dumb when your only weapons are knowledge and facts, and when those you’d seek to educate are standing with their eyes closed and ear plugs in, holding up signs of hatred with the wrong pronouns?

              It’s become foolish not to be a fool.