The Age of Stupid

We live in the age of stupid: an age of perpetual twisting of concepts, the inversion of truths, where myth and superstition collide, transcending that dreary inconvenience that is reality, into the domain of established fact.

You cannot argue with stupid. Stupid does not disprove truth; it merely regards it as irrelevant, substituting reason with suitable repetitions and a vagueness of concept, rendering impotent canons whose existence is built upon centuries of weighty thinking and hard-gained evidence.

There is a muddying of political thought underway, a blurring of identities used only – of course! - for the gain of established wealth and power. Voices championing the status quo masquerade as dissenting bodies, berating the Left and equating them with those of fascist ilk: the tyrants of the past.

This is dangerous ideology. Is it not precisely for the benefit of the ruling classes the notion of dividing capitalism from corporatism?: a splitting-hairs over identical concepts. Left wing ideology is rarely granted such an intricate autopsy, instead delivered the most disposable of throw-away comments.

The strict amputation of corporatism from capitalism is important: it excuses the problems of this world (inequality, poverty, excessive wealth) and places the blame entirely on the mythical corporatism. Capitalism is afforded no charge on these counts, liberated from its crimes and held up as the model political system. The result is a recognition of the world's inequality but an outlook that yearns for, and promotes, the maintaining of the current broken economic system: a perverse bait-and-switch; the problems realised are never truly addressed, continually blamed on some other system whilst the status quo is held aloft as the unattainable ideal, the desirable possibility.

Platitudes replace solid arguments, repeated to propagate the notions, working people's availability heuristics to steadily infiltrate their minds with corporate propaganda. Phrases like 'unregulated capitalism' are casually inserted into discussions as if the author beholds a vast complex knowledge of world economics What exactly does that mean but to allow corporations a restrictionless environment for their money making?

Unregulated how? Removing minimum wage? Removing job security? Allowing age, race and class discrimination? Removing taxes? Removing health and safety? Removing workers rights? Allowing corporate disregard to environment damage? Removing public services in favour of private services? Unregulated how? To encourage those with wealth to fix the market, to use their vast power to ensure no one can compete with them? To overwhelm the small business owner with an empire of cheap products and prime business locations?

Unregulated how?

It is asserted with vague conviction for a self-regulatory system where supply-and-demand naturally sets the value of commodities, but what are these harbingers of regression vying for but a world condemned to the laws of the music video?; where women, and men, are perpetually humiliated for their misfortune of their measly existence, a bleak, unregulated, technicoloured vista where privilege reigns and wealth is both flaunted before those who do not have it and is used to make sure others do not have it, belying the reality that it is you that pays them: without your fandom, without your custom, without your monthly payments, they would have considerably less.

Over and out for now, guys!

xxx