Every writer has unused snippets which are not so much rejects, as things that just never found their natural niche. Tonight’s post has less of a narrative argument than usual. We’re two sentences in: the first one explains the second one.
The French National Assembly is in the process of wasting valuable legislative time at the moment. That’s not unusual, but this particular outburst of pointless hot air is beyond belief: for French MPs want to criminalise the act of taking the mickey out of a person’s accent.
Leaving aside the ridiculous difficulty in ever proving “stigmatisation par l’accent” (more work for lawyers, kerr-ching) the idea is further evidence of the contemporary State’s idiocy in believing that legislation will solve every problem. In truth, new laws to “protect” minorities don’t solve the problem – and in most cases simply create new ones.
There is a fundamental and tricky issue to be faced here, so not surprisingly, the political Paris-based class of pigeons nesting in the ivory tower want a virtue-signalling law to which they can point at the next election.
The issue is this: the character-forming ability of the individual citizen to deal with bullying bigotry, and whether or not that person is armed with the tactical ways to deal with his or her tormentors.
I do not judge people who don’t have that ability naturally, because the lack of it is either familial or genetic, and not their fault. But I think genuinely committed and eclectic teachers are the people who should help the victim, not the State.
When I first came to London to work in 1971, I was one of a tiny intake of lower class executives at J Walter Thompson – an élite ad agency of whom it was often said, “It’s a good place to send your son if you can afford to do so”. Being blessed with a good brain and quick wit, I was able to put most of the chinless wah-wahs in their place relatively easily. Lucky me.
But I had more than that: I had a well-brought-up mother who told me “Class is about knowing how to behave, not what accent you have”.
Most mums and dads don’t do that any more, and teachers care only about force-feeding their pupils with virtue signals and The Right Answers in exams. Small wonder, therefore, that do-gooder pols feel they have the right to take the place of more natural life-lesson defences for the average maturing citizen.
The era we are going through right now is what it is because of the preponderence of blinkered lawyers in our legislatures, and the growing New World Order view that every human being should turn to the State for help.
It has already arrived at tiers. It can only end in tears. We should not need half-baked generalists who read Classics to tell us what to do in a crisis, because they are clueless about what to do….their lives having been largely crisis-free.
All our kids need is better parenting and a more anthropologically imaginative education system.
I wonder how many of you have noticed that, of the seven so-called vaccines against Covid19 on offer, five are in fact DNA messenger systems: total unknowns when it comes to medium-term consequences ranging from birth defects to sperm counts and a hundred other factors.
I wonder how many of you have noticed that a broad spectrum of US, European and Asian analysts have now conclusively shown (based on data series, not models) that Lockdown has no discernible effect whatsoever on Covid19 deaths per million.
I wonder how many of you have noticed that American seasonal death data numbers show no additional deaths in the 75+ age demographic compared to averages going back to 2006 – and fewer medical pathogen deaths than normal among the 40-60 age groups.
I wonder how many of you have noticed that there has been a pan-global Pharma, political and media attempt the create the World’s Only Pandemic in History that didn’t involve funeral directors in any overtime.
I wonder how many of you have noticed that not enough people so far have noticed any of this, and whether you wonder if this has anything to do with their addiction to five seasons of The Royals, and eight seasons of Game of Thrones.
Under the March 2020 CARES Act, the US Congress earmarked $454 billion of stimulus money to be distributed by the Treasury to the Federal Reserve to be used for emergency lending programs to save businesses and jobs during the pandemic and keep creditflowing to the U.S. economy.
But since last June, Wall Street On Parade has been reporting that $340 billion of the $454 billion is unaccounted for. The site notes that 98,000 businesses had permanently closed in the U.S. while this money, intended for economic relief, went missing.
Most people around the world assume that an organisation called the Federal Reserve must (“the clue’s in the name”) be an arm of the US Government.
It is not. The Fed Reserve steals from the taxpayer and gives to the bankers. The Federal Reserve Banks are not a part of the federal government, although they exist because of an act of Congress. Their purpose is to serve the public, and they are in theory answerable to the Congress.
In practice, they answer to nobody.
You may have missed this Slog satire on the nature of the US Federal Reserve
The Slog 