The behaviour of our left wing friends has been genuinely shocking these last few weeks. You’re left wondering how seemingly rational people can become so blinded by their own doctrine that they defy all logic.
Who could have predicted all this victim blaming, racism and sexism? I’d been fooled into expecting better after all the years of ethical exhibitionism from the likes of the BBC, The Guardian and everyone else who compares you to Hitler whenever you disagree with them. The behaviour of some members of the High Dudgeon community has, sadly, brought them all into disrepute. It’s difficult to believe anything they say now. Which is a shame, as some of them are probably quite decent.
What can we do though? As a recent article by Jane Kelly showed, it’s impossible to reason with them. Despite all evidence to the contrary, nothing can shake their devotion to the one true version of events. They believe in a divine trinity of ideas: the personal is political; primitive logic explains everything (all non-believers are ‘Hitler’); and an absence of personal responsibility (arising from the belief that everything is the fault of the Daily Mail). In summary, they believe in ego, ergo and furlough.
Under the circumstances, it’s folly for us to expect these poor creatures to adapt to our modern ways. We should be ashamed of our arrogance! They are not from a culture where one has to constantly make buying and selling decisions. They don’t think that a human being is a work in progress who has to constantly adapt and evolve and learn from his/her mistakes. They believe in a sort of social creationism, where each of them has emerged from the womb as a perfect liberal, destined to be pure in thought and deed, throughout their life, whatever their actions.
Theirs is a flat earth with very narrow horizons. I’ve met socialists who believe that if they cross the waters of the Thames, they will plunge into the abyss! Others, while admitting that South London exists, loathe its inhabitants on the basis that these South London people – whom they’ve never met – are likely to be small minded and prejudiced. As with many faiths, the contradictions among the Socialist Creationists are limitless. But they cling to their arcane primitive beliefs as the modern world becomes ever more complex.
Given their narrow horizons and introspection, it’s small wonder they think their actions have no consequence on anyone else. Instead, they like to blame their lack of credibility on pollsters, the Daily Mail, Peter Hitchens, Donald Trump – anyone but themselves.
Don’t judge them. Our own belief systems were this primitive once. Look at the Crusades. OK, that was a few centuries ago, but try and empathise please.
We are asking a lot of the Social Creationists, by expecting them to embrace equality, consistency and a diversity of ideas. If we are to coax them out of their comfort zone of single issue posturing, instant judgements and Hitler comparisons, we need to make it attractive for them to widen their perspective. Come on, think how they must feel. Imagine how terrifying it must be to embrace the idea that you can’t blame everything on the Daily Mail.
I mean, would it kill any of you if we made them feel more at home, by using a format they trust? For that reason, I propose a series of workshops to help bring our left wing friends into the modern world. They love workshops. And pamphlets. They believe workshops can change the world, so why don’t we go along with that?
The idea of workshops and leaflets might sound patronising to you and me, but left wing people love to keep to their traditions. Granted, few of them have ever been anywhere near a lathe or an assembly line, but they feel the word Workshop makes them seem salty, with a ‘down to earth’ sense of humour and realistic world view. As part of this pretence, many left wing people like to adopt mockney accents and dress up in donkey jackets and shout slogans about ‘posh people’. Even if, by day, they’re a solicitor.
I know what you’re wondering: who would we invite to these workshops, what courses could we run, and how would we run them?
Funding, like that for all workshops, would come from the taxpayer. According to IT experts who specialise in supplying local councils, the rule of thumb is to charge six times as much as you’d charge the private sector. (IT companies took the NHS for at least £10 billion for a system that never worked properly).
The target market for these workshops is endless. I’m sure you can think of newspapers or broadcasting companies where editorial or recruitment decisions are seemingly made on the basis of class, race or sex. By the same token, the Swedish and German police forces could be a target for these courses. Both seem to have made some rather inequitable decisions, influenced in one way or the other by racism.
The final question is; how should we run these workshops? Like all training courses, they should be designed to run forever. The last thing you want to do is cure the patient, or you’re killing your own revenue stream. So you want to string out the training. Get them talking all day but not actually achieving anything. Here’s a tactic. Ask an open-ended question such as: “OK James, Penny, Medhi. I want you to tell me a little bit about yourself.” They’ll still be going at the end of the day and there won’t have been any progress.
