Put cunning but mediocre politicians and corporacratic ideologues on the same team against the Citizen’s XI, and free thought has no chance.
I went to a lecture the other day on the subject of what we expat Brits have to do in order to keep our residency here in France legal. About fifty or sixty of us were present, and both the speakers were English – one a woman (short, dumpy, officious) the other a bloke (balding, bearded and fluffy). They’d clearly been chosen to hand down Tablets from the Mount on the basis of being rabidly pro-EU.
“We’re just here to give you the objective facts about what you need to do,” the woman lied.
“And to reassure you that the French government has only your best interests at heart, and will not make things difficult,” her straight man added with equally insouciant mendacity.
At every stage in the information-giving process, Mrs Dumpy (“I’m widowed,” she mentioned, mysteriously) told her audience none of this should be necessary, and if people over here had been given the vote, Remain would’ve won; the British would not be as nice to the French in the UK; the chaos at the Channel would be horrendous if no trade deal was achieved….and on and on. In short, all the Campbell-spin drivel we’d been force-fed since 2016.
Tiring of this, I put my hand up.
“Switzerland is not in the EU,” I pointed out, “and there is no problem at all in crossing that border….so why will there be chaos at Dover?”
“Because the Swiss have a trade agreement with the EU,” she simpered through a glare.
“No they don’t,” I countered.
“I’m sorry,” she added, “We’re not here to discuss Switzerland”.
“What will the Dover chaos be caused by?” I asked.
“I’m sorry, ” she repeated, “I can’t hear you”.
Now in truth, Mrs Dumpy was a microcosm of one of today’s biggest State <> Citizen problem: a person of no talent behind the scoreboard who thinks she should be at the wicket and telling the umpire where to stick his lbw decision. (Apart from anything else, her girth would’ve ensured she was lbw while taking a stance at Square Leg and Pavilion, but that’s neither here nor there).
It was the “I can’t hear you” that really got to me. It gave me the overwhelming urge to kick her.
But being a pacifist, I didn’t.
This is why I find it far easier to get on with fridges than with bureaucrats. For while fridges variously gurgle, witter and vibrate in an oddly noisy and onanistic manner, we have all (have we not?) felt the intense satisfaction of one swift kick returning it to blissful and long overdue silence.
Many are the Candy, Zanussi and Electrolux white boxes I have brought to heel via this simple maneouvre. Sadly, it doesn’t work when it comes to the uppity functionaire with unwarranted superiority issues. They just give you that rictus smile, and “I’m sorry, I can’t hear you”.
“That’s odd,” one always wants to say, “I can hear you only too well”.
It’s merely their version of the Michel Barnier approach, which is to project their behaviour, insanity and wrongfulness onto you.
“Ze clork eez teeking,” said Barnier throughout 2017, as if it might not be ticking for him.
“We avv at ever’ stairje of zese negoshiashuns dern our best tuer speed thangs alerng,” he added in 2018, while forgetting that the EU had dug its heels in on an Ulster/Eire non-border it had never heard of before Brexit.
The thing with these people is, they want it both ways: they’re either unremittingly disengaged apparatchiks who want to meddle in politics….or political losers who just can’t see why they should have to go through the demeaning process of getting themselves elected by knuckle-draggers they despise.
Few politicians on Planet Earth encapsulate that latter outlook better than Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton. Her version of “I can’t hear you” is a dangerously adapted form of Stalinism that asserts, “If you oppose my opinions, given that I speak only absolute Truth, you must by definition be spreading anti-social disinformation, and thus silenced”.
She wants us all to be fridges she can kick. Hence her recent foray onto Twitter declaring that you can have her democracy or wicked social media lies about her, but you can’t have both.
Because you see, it’s not that Hillary’s an insufferable Ivy League supremacist pillock or anything. No, it’s the glass ceiling. It’s the Trump lies. It’s the Russian plot to defeat freedom of speech. It’s fucking men and their preference for sexy interns over Good Persons like her.
The era of ideologues who stick fingers in their ears is over. The era of ideologues who will smash your fingers, rip out your tongue and put out your eyes is coming towards fruition.
Much of this dastardly evolution will be carried out by the millions who hide from the media, and do the bidding of megalomaniacs – the seven per cent of coat-tail hangers.
But the narrative will be dictated by the three per cent of Gigarich who engage with the media….and use them to sell totalitarian dictatorship (thinly disguised as virtue) to apathetic electorates.
The Slog 