Friday 20 September 2019

Oops he did it again

So, Justin Trudeau, as a much younger man, blacked up and had a ball. And the media is whipped into a frenzy of condemnation and righteous fury at his ‘racism’. I’m sorry, I thought imitation was the sincerest form of flattery. As for racism, where was the implication that the person or race imitated was being denigrated? He looked like he’d gone to a great deal of effort, almost as if in homage. And even if he had gone all Bongo-Bongo about it, where’s the harm? Seriously, where is it? (And don't give me all that whiny guff about the oppressive history of blackface; try going as Michael Jackson without... oh, wait.)

There are armies of people now whose entire purpose in life is to detract from the simple pursuit of life itself, of just getting on with it. Widget-making factories make much more expensive widgets because they have to cover the salaries of the non-producers. HR, whose role seems pure to frustrate the normal interaction of personnel. PR whose outcomes are often at odds with their stated intent. And where does one begin when it comes to the worship of diversity, inclusion and all the various ‘isms’ to which a modern western company is beholden?

Meanwhile, we import our widgets – superior quality, lower price – from companies who operate in countries where what you think about your neighbour is far less important than whether or not you can make a decent widget for a fair price. Similarly the UK Supreme Court (its own name an unnecessary import from the colonies) is currently engaged in the hugely expensive business of deciding whether a perfectly legal thing is legal, or whether they can set yet another precedent which further removes the judiciary from its more honourable purpose of locking up bad guys.

It is as if the civilised world, having effectively solved most of the problems of humanity, is afraid of running out and is now desperately trying to manufacture new problems to solve. We have enough wealth and a general desire to be more equitable that we should be able to function as a truly aspirant society. In this I have some sympathy for the socialists. We should be able to distribute far more equitably than we do, but we have yet to develop a simple mechanism by which this can be achieved. And having decided long ago to adopt complicated problem-solving mechanisms where the bleeding obvious would suffice, there is skin in the game for the various wastrels who absorb much of our excess cash.

Thus those with what is now called a social conscience, having made it to a place of financial security and the reassuring calm of the chattering classes, seek to ameliorate the agony of their own success by demanding that others – rarely themselves – contribute more, speak more kindly and generally behave as they themselves believe they do. I say ‘believe they do’ because it is remarkable the intemperance of language with which they refer to those they most despise; people just like themselves who are still working their way up.

Just harem a good time...

Competitive white guilt is like one huge practical joke; it is a kick-me notice pinned onto everybody who dares to aspire to anything and used to denigrate any success as entirely due to some bizarre notion of unearned white privilege. And it is nigh-on impossible to avoid, so, we must forgive poor Justin his decades-old faux pas this once. And the other time. Oh and whenever he has innocently and accidentally blacked up for shits and giggles on other occasions. What can I say; we are human, we are fallible. That’s ‘peoplekind’ for you.

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