Wednesday, May 1, 2013

Manufacturing Dissent

Thomas Mulcair's ravings about a 30-year old conspiracy by the Supreme Court to screw Quebec have been getting a lot of column inches recently. For some reason, it's news that a member of the NDP suspects that powerful people are secretly plotting to harm those who can't defend themselves.

The prevailing explanation is that Mulcair is Quebec-pandering in an attempt to outflank Trudeau, and there's more than likely some truth to that. I don't know how this is being received in Quebec, so I don't know if there's some kind of method to Mulcair's madness. All I know is that far-left socialists like Mulcair are extremely rageful about any number of conspiracies, past and present.

Most NDP activists are incredibly chipper, relentlessly upbeat, and friendly people who genuinely love others, but harbour this deep seated fury which they unleash the moment they see something that for them represents oppression or inequality. Jack Layton was like this, smiling and yelling at the same time.

 
You will bump into these bespectacled, geeky women with wide smiles who loathe Stephen Harper and the 1% with every facet of their beings, so much so that their entire essence vibrates when they are standing next to you, yet will remain incredibly perky throughout, and proudly tell you stories about how they crush oppression beneath their heels. These women believe, for example, that they are embedded in a culture that causes them to hate their own bodies, to buy things they don't want, and to conform to images dreamed up by advertisers backed by shadowy corporations. If you let them, they will rant at length about the insensate evil that drives this whole process and how it operates just below the level of human consciousness, and how your arguments about the marketplace of ideas and how we're smart enough to decide what to buy and what not to buy were planted into your head by the corporations to make it easier for them to operate undisturbed. Without meaning to, they will communicate the message, "You're a sheeple who doesn't have my exquisitely developed understanding of how the world works."

So, yeah. Of course the Supreme Court is perpetrating a conspiracy on the virtuous poor. Everyone is a victim of a conspiracy by the powerful. And if you don't agree, guess what- you're a part of the conspiracy, wittingly or unwittingly.

These are people who will, without hesitation, say that the CBC is immoderately right wing because it allows Don Cherry and Kevin O'Leary to have a platform to express their ideas. Just chew on that for a moment.

Now the great thing about seeing the world this way- as a series of interlocking corporate conspiracies that make zillions of dollars but operate just out of sight- is that it makes self improvement or self actualization almost completely impossible, and thus frees you of any kind of real responsibilities. You can't love yourself or drag yourself out of poverty or change the way things are because reality is set up to crush you from the get go. If you are flat broke, it's the fault of the corporations making you buy stuff you don't want. Just feeling good about yourself is a titanic achievement. You absolutely cannot talk about freedom because the corporations have enslaved you by controlling your emotions. (Oh, and btw, medical conditions like depression are absolutely invented wholesale by drug companies to sell pills that don't work. People lived for thousands of years eating plants without ever having to worry about depression, etc. etc.)

Reality isn't supposed to be this way though. It's only this way because rich people run things and game the system to their benefit and prevent any real change from happening.  Reality, as it originally was, is basically "Imagine" by John Lennon until evil corporations ruined it. Your own natural self is pure and has everything it needs already. Rich people who want to steal your money (and yeah, of course all monetary transactions are theft, the same way that in a casino, it's set up so the house always wins in the long run) make up problems with the help of advertisers and then market the solution. And you thought Inside Jobs were just for 9/11 truthers!

Even better is that when you are super mad about corporations, you can't be mad about governments, except for those that are tainted by corporations, of course. Stephen Harper's government is all about corporations and wealthy people, so it's corrupt and he should be charged with treason. The farther away from a conservative government you get, the more noble and pure that government becomes. Liberal governments like Kathleen Wynne's government are also corrupt, yes, but they are less dependent on corporations, so they are just better. Do not question (as much) the motives of the comparatively less conservative government! Just don't!

Hey, what if governments sold themselves as the answers to problems they created and NOOOOOOO SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP

If you put someone who believes the above in power, that would be, um, pretty freakin' dangerous. But notice how in all the negative media coverage Mulcair is getting, there is nothing about how his nutty leftism is a driving force behind his comments, whereas whenever a conservative says something stupid, it's all about the dangers of right wing extremism and bigotry run amok.

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