Now this probably sounds a little arrogant, but I’m an adult…
I know, I know, telling the world that one is an adult is little suspect after Abbott’s election where we were told the adults were back in charge. I mean, adults don’t go around telling you that they’re adults, do they? It’s like saying, “I’m very sophisticated.” The fact that you say it, sort of undercuts the whole idea…
Anyway, I happened to suggest to someone that Brexit reminded me of a teenager announcing their intention to move out of home. You know the sort of thing: “Mum, Dad, I’m sick of you telling me what to do and now I’ve got a job at Hungry Jack’s, you want me to pay for my own video games, so screw you, I’m moving out.” However, when the parents tell the child that they intend to change the locks, the adolescent announces that they want more time to negotiate such things as use of the washing machine, television, fridge and computer, whereupon the parents say that using such things will be fine, occasionally, so long as one gets permission and enters by knocking and…
Ok, the analogy now makes even more sense with the decision to install Boris as PM…
I could go on and talk about Brexit for ages but I’ll only offend the English. Let’s face it, the English are a population who’ve been invading other countries for centuries. The idea that they want to retreat and just be their own little island – (ok, they’re sort of happy to include Wales, Scotland and Ireland too) – is probably something most peoples of the world are more than happy with. It’s like the boring guy who often sits beside you uninvited, suddenly announcing that if you don’t pay more attention when he’s speaking, he’ll just sit somewhere else…
But I’m an adult, so I’d like to move onto general things instead of insulting the English people who may read this and think that they’re so offended that they’ll not only leave the EU, but move to expel Australia from the Commonwealth… Which may be the quickest way to a republic, when I think about it.
It seems to me that experts have bored people for years. Let’s be real. Think of all the times you’ve been at some barbie or dinner party and you’ve had a few glasses of this or that and you’ve started explaining the problems of the world and why your ideas will solve them, when someone who works in the area or has studied it at university embarrasses you by pointing out that your ideas are so completely wrong that it would take them more than an hour to dismiss the basic hypothesis before they got onto nitpicking all the minor ways in which you’ve quoted the wrong person and misunderstood the basic problem. I mean, those bastards who actually know things. Who invited them? We were having a good time until someone introduced facts into the discussion until they started using language like that. Hypothesis, for fuck’s suck…There may be children present. Thank god, for Pauline I say. Nobody could accuse her of letting evidence stand in the way of a good rant.
And so it seems to me that the recent political events are a response to years of having politicians citing experts. We’re damned sick of it, so when a Trump comes along and says that he knows better, he gets a cheer. When the experts start to point out that he’s wrong, we love him even more. Not because he isn’t a complete dunce, but because he is. I mean, don’t we feel great that we’ve got a leader who doesn’t make us feel inferior. At last someone with the self-confidence to stand up to all those experts and not be intimidated by the fact that he knows almost nothing about the topic at hand.
When I read the letters page in the Murdoch newspapers, any self-doubt immediately disappears. Not because I disagree with some of the letters, but because without any knowledge of the subject under discussion these people are expressing an opinion which is so little logical consistency with itself that I wonder how nobody has pointed out their stupidity… And then I realise that people have. Which is why someone like Trump or Boris appeals. They take the heat off the stupid. The experts are so busy talking about them that everyone else gets off scot free…
Mm, Scott free. Nice idea.
Anyway, I suspect that we’ll eventually get sick of it and, just like the person who gives up on the thing that isn’t working and goes back to the doctor, we’ll start to elect people who actually know things.
Or at the very least don’t pretend that they know things when they don’t.
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