Most of us are mystified by the current course of events. There seem to be so many contradictions in politics and elsewhere. In fact, many contradictions seem to have become political even when they had nothing to do with politics in the first place. For example, the simple matter of deciding what sex you are has now been subdivided into a myriad of infinitely divisible parts of a continuous spectrum. Even LGBT (a subdivision almost completely unknown a decade or more ago) has now apparently become almost meaningless as intersectional factions subdivide into ever smaller multi and a-sexual amoeba, before they sink into the sludge at the bottom of the pond.
Leftist feminists, gays and atheists are now competing for the attention of Islamists – whose own philosophies are anathema to feminism, gays and atheism. The old certainties in British life – that the police were there to prevent crime as well as apprehend criminals – have been turned on their head. If you ring to report a crime, you are informed that they can spare no-one to investigate and would you like a crime number for your insurance claim? On the other hand, if you utter an insult to someone who belongs to a favoured group, then the police will come down hard upon you for alleged “Hate Crime”. Likewise, former soldiers are now being pursued through the courts for offences which contravened some terrorist’s human rights, whilst said terrorist is about kill the unfortunate soldier. These offences may have been committed 40 or 50 years ago, but there is no “crime” too old for some firms of lawyers to pursue – as long as the ex-soldier is still alive, they will go for him.
For most of us, these things are a growing manifestation of national insanity.
Imagine locking a Marxist-Leninist, a Socialist and a Post-Modernist into a room together for a week, with the instructions that they have to come up with at least one workable idea to relieve poverty and benefit society. As it happens, both the Marxist-Leninist and the Post-Modernist were educated at top universities. The Socialist was working class and not so well educated. After a week, you open the door and the Marxist-Leninist and the Post-Modernist walk out. “Where is the Socialist?” you ask. “Oh, he’s in there,” they say carelessly. You walk into the room and find the Socialist lying face down on the floor in a pool of blood and with a knife in his back. He is very dead.
“What happened to him?” you ask.
“Well he didn’t fit in very well. He was a bit thick and was ideologically unsound. For example, he wasn’t prepared to accept Marxist dialectic and the theory of surplus labour.” The Marxist-Leninist says this with some heat, by way of justification.
“But was it entirely necessary to murder him just because he didn’t fit into your doctrine?”
“Well the point is that he couldn’t get out in time because you locked the door.” says the Marxist-Leninist.
“So it was my fault you murdered him?”
“I’m afraid it was,” says the Post-Modernist smoothly. The Marxist-Leninist stands with his hands behind his back, looks at his feet and nods silently in agreement.
“So what is your idea for relieving poverty and benefiting society?’ you ask, slightly annoyed at the way events have turned out. None of this was supposed to happen. The Marxist-Leninist shuffles his feet slightly and looks embarrassed. “Well we haven’t actually sorted that out yet, but we have one or two ideas which need more work.” At this point, there is nothing for it but for you to haul the corpse of the Socialist out of the room and clean up. Meanwhile, the Marxist-Leninist and the Post-Modernist watch you impassively, without actually helping. Then you push them both back into the room and lock the door.
A week later, you open the door and this time only the Post-Modernist walks out. “Where’s the Marxist-Leninist?’ you demand. The Post-Modernist jerks his head over his shoulder to indicate the room, whilst cleaning what looks suspiciously like blood from his hands. Inside, the room is covered in blood and the tortured corpse of the Marxist-Leninist lies crumpled on the floor near the door. There are smears of blood on the inside of the door and the corpse has broken and torn fingernails which suggest that he was trying to lever the door open with his bare hands shortly before he died.
“I suppose it’s my fault again that you had to murder him?” you demand sarcastically as you walk out of the room and sit down at your desk. The Post-Modernist sits down, uninvited, in a chair opposite and carefully examines both sides of his hands before looking up and smiling at you condescendingly. He says: “You catch on so quickly,” before returning to inspecting his now immaculate hands.
“What was the problem this time?” you ask.
“Well you see the thing about Marxist-Leninism is that it is just so last century.” the Post-Modernist looks up from his hands and smiles at you as if he understands that these ideas can be a little difficult for the hard of thinking. Deciding to be generous with his time, he explains: “The Marxists and Leninists got it all so terribly wrong and wound up killing a lot of people. And, quite frankly, it just wasn’t very good PR – principally because we all found out about it after the Berlin Wall came down. There are mass graves all over Eastern Europe and Russia.”
“And what, precisely, does this have to do with a wasted fortnight and two murders?”
“Oh, I think ‘murdered’ is a very strong word to use in the circumstances.”
“What word would you use then?”
“How about ‘died in challenging circumstances’?” he suggested. “They were both very difficult people you know. Headstrong, volatile – that sort of thing. I was very lucky to get out intact.” You take a deep breath through gritted teeth and drum your fingers on the desk as you decide to let this pass for the moment.
“So what about your plan for the poor. Did you find time to consider that at all?” Your nostrils flare slightly as you struggle to contain your sarcasm.
“Oh, the poor….. yes….” Again, he looks at his fingernails and draws breath as if remembering something from his deep past. Then he looks up at you, his expression one of sympathy for a slow and recalcitrant child. “The poor are such a problem to us – almost insoluble – perhaps they will always be with us, as it is often said. But I think there is a perfectly straightforward solution to this.” You wait, pen poised upon paper to record the imminent flow of Post-Modernist wisdom. “We just let them starve to death.” He says this with the smallest of triumphant flourishes. You put the pen down, aghast. “But I thought you weren’t in favour of mass graves. You seem to think they are bad for your image.”
“Oh, indeed.” His smile is now broad and encouraging. He is rewarding you for paying attention. “Mass graves are, as you correctly remind me, so terribly inconvenient. The thing to do is to let it happen gradually.” He pauses, clasps his hands and lifts his eyes to the ceiling as if looking for divine inspiration. “You crank it up slowly so that they don’t notice. Interfere with the housing market; make second homes compulsory for everyone with a university degree, thus pushing up prices and out of reach for the lower classes. Lots of planning constraints so new build is incredibly expensive. The economy is always in recession, so wages never rise. Then you make energy incredibly expensive by subsidising windmills so that it costs more than people can afford to heat their houses.”
“I thought you wanted to starve them, rather than freeze them to death? Or are you going to induce rampant inflation to get empty supermarket shelves, like in Venezuela?” He leans forward, resting elbows on the desk, his hands clasped in front and head slightly on one side.
“No, no, no dear boy” he says patiently. ‘That is so unsubtle. That is Socialism, and we have already found ways of dealing with Socialism, haven’t we?” He smiles again, lips disappearing completely and a sinister hooding of his eyelids. “We keep plenty of food in the supermarkets, but at a very high price, so they can’t afford to buy it.”
“If that were to happen, there would be food riots and then the shelves would be emptied without being paid for.”
“It’s not a problem. We can arm the security guards and so on. But mostly, we will distract them with political virtue-signalling – you know the sort of thing: ‘We take x very seriously, and so that’s why we will be sending every household a picture of a fluffy kitten.’ Then there will be the endless intersectional disputes, statues of national heroes torn down in universities, police jumping on people for saying the wrong thing; feral youths running amuck with knives and scooters; prosecutions failing because the offenders belonging to favoured ethno-religious groups and so on. People who disagree or protest will have their children taken away and put into municipal care, where they will become the playthings of pædophiles.
“But that’s happening already.”
“Quite so. Aren’t we doing well? Just one or two extra little shoves in the right direction and the funerals will begin.”
“But again, these mass graves that will be the inevitable consequence….”
“Not at all, we just need to make municipal crematoria a little more efficient and the ashes can be used for making concrete.”
“Ashes….crematoria… you mean…?”
“Precisely.” He steeples his fingers and looks at you over the top of them with an affectionate beam. “We have learned so much from history.” he says softly. You sit back, appalled, and then gather your thoughts into a semblance of rationality.
“But all this…..chaos….people dying……families being broken up or people fighting with their own families….an end to all the beauty of our lives…. what is the point of all this?” You are in despair.
The Post-Modernist sits back in the chair, his finger tips tapping gently together as he gathered his thoughts and his patience, as if for a particularly slow student. “The point, dear boy, is that we will be in control.”