Optimism is a bad solution

How I wish I had these levels of blind stupid optimism in my heart:

We’re winning: the good, decent, sensible, value-creating, hard-working, straight-talking, pub-bantering, piss-taking real people are on the verge of trouncing the politically correct, social-justice-worshipping, humourless, economy-draining, finger-wagging, parasitical nonentities who’ve been ruling the roost these last few years.

We’ve had enough of the Jolyon Maughams and the Gary Linekers and the John Bercows and the Mark Ovlands pratting around on top of our train carriages and preventing us from going where we want to go.

The Brexit train is about to leave the station. And it’ll take more than a bunch of posturing, prancing gimps to stop us.

These are the words of the man who brought us the “dogshit yoghurt fallacy“, now asking us to believe that cultural entropy can be reversed. That degeneration can be magically turned into renaissance in a way that has only ever been achieved before by bloody revolution or total war. That getting Brexit – actually or in name only – will unmix the dogshit from the yoghurt and, somehow, put all these people and their pet projects back in their box.

Perhaps he also imagines that by manhandling a couple of crusty dickheads at Canning Town we have somehow started to reduce the flow of money from our pockets to the green blob, the micromanagement of our daily lives will somehow be upended, all the slebs will suddenly stop lecturing us like a bunch of coked-up primary school ma’ams and Greta Thunberg will step on a landmine, with hilarious consequences.

At least Tim Newman is a bit more measured in his instinct that things are on the up:

Today’s incident [The Extinction Rebellion tube train kicking], coming off the back of the authorities’ decision to ban any more unauthorised Extinction Rebellion protests in London, might be a sign things are starting to turn. On top of that, it looks as though Boris might have reached a deal with the EU which can pass a parliamentary vote and see Britain leaving the EU at the end of the month as planned. While probably not perfect, it is better than May’s appalling Withdrawal Agreement and does actually represent Brexit in more than name only. That will leave an awful lot of Remain activists unemployed, and a fair few MPs staring down the barrel of a P45 cannon at the next election.

All in all, things are looking a little brighter after today, aren’t they?

It’s admirable and typically English to seek out the chink of light through the clouds. The Canning Town Twat-Kicking made me smile. But one swallow does not make a spring.

It might be a good way to have a happy Sunday but, in the long term, we don’t profit from kidding ourselves that it’ll all be okay, when an unemotional look at the situation would make it clear that we are now more than 50 years into the progressive project and its deeply entrenched beneficiaries are not about to change their tune on the back of a couple of isolated defeats.

The idea that if the global warming gravytrain is cancelled, its travellers will turn to productive activities that truly enrich humanity is absurd. Or that when Brexit is done, the defeated remainers will turn to upholding popular will and the greatest economic and societal good, reducing violent crime and social fragmentation by acting upon empirical evidence as it relates to uncomfortable questions of ethnicity, culture and religion, improving opportunities for all to live a fulfilling, rewarding and uncoerced life.

The Devil makes work for idle hands. Take away climate change and Brexit and it’ll be some other sort of futile ‘conservation’ or ‘improvement’ that they dedicate themselves to… whatever they choose, it’ll just be another pretext on which to demand we all ‘think of the children’, a different stick to beat us with and another lucrative bandwagon to board.

We can and do fight for ground inch by inch and yard by yard, and while we may have gained an inch at Canning Town, and a foot-pound of momentum from whatever Brexit turns out to be, it’s just the beginning of a long and gruelling fight-back.  One that most people don’t have the time, resources or tenacity for. Hell, most of the people who are old and wise enough to see it all for what it is will be dead before there’s the faintest hope of consigning the current hegemony to the landfill of stupid ideas and ruinous mass delusions.

And, as far as most people are concerned, there is still everything to gain from at least appearing to be onboard with the progressive theocracy, and everything to lose by disembarking. As long as there’s football/the royal family/X-Factor/Punch & Judy politics to confect a drama out of, most people won’t keep on making too much of a fuss.

I hestitate to draw parallels with Classical legends or Biblical struggles or the decline and fall of the Roman Empire and the onset of the Dark Ages, but you can if you like and I wouldn’t object. Each would illustrate some useful lessons that we should all pay heed to.

Those of us with the will and means to fight must not let fatigue lead us to complacency, even for a lazy Sunday.

Now, fingers crossed for ManU to trounce Liverpool, eh?

AJ

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