Today, I had to give myself a new rule. I will stop engaging in political dialogue over Facebook. I know, this seems like a pretty logical thing to do and not particularly stressful. Unfortunately, I'm a political addict and Facebook is pretty well my only means of communication with a lot of my friends. So why cut this activity from my behaviour? Pretty simple really: it isn't fun anymore.
I love political debate. I was on the debate teams of my high school and college, and there's nothing I like more than some good verbal sparring. I also have unconventional views (Sir Winston Churchill would say I'm either heartless or old before my time). In college, I was used to being looked down upon and mistreated by those who really had no right. After all, most of my opponents were student activists at one of Ontario's many fine institutions; each convinced that in their own way they had all the answers. Queen's students were of course the worst, and closest in proximity. I remember bemusedly listening to a second-year history student telling me, a fourth-year politics major, that I knew nothing about Canadian politics. It was to be expected- she was stewing in her own exalted sense of self (no doubt encouraged by profs), and I was merely "a brainwashed army drone". No harm done. It was something to share over a beer with like-minded friends and have a laugh.
Flash forward almost 4 years, and I am now a relatively widely traveled taxpayer. I have seen, first hand, the collapse of Euro-Socialism in Italy and Cyprus. I've watched mobs of British hooligans trash other countries' historic cities. I've listened to French girls commiserate in airports over how they have to carry headscarves in their purses in case the Metro takes them through the wrong neighbourhood. I've sat and had tea with Imams in a country that receives millions a day in naïve and well-meant aid a day that has little effect. In my own country, I pay more taxes than pretty well anyone with whom I used to debate (unless they too live in Québec). I've lived next to lovely 20-somethings who, thinking they're in love, get pregnant and are surprised when their grungy jobless boyfriend takes off. Hell, I pay for the subsidies that keep the cost of their daycare at 1/4 the national average. Worst of all, some of the people I used to debate are still in academia and earn numerically the same amount I do a year, except their incomes are non-taxable grants. I'm sorry, but if you earn over 70k a year tax-free, I don't care how "green" you are. You no longer have the right to criticize me as being bourgeois.
My new life means that I see, directly and daily, the impact of poorly made policy. Helping people is a lovely sentiment, but all I see is people refusing to behave as adults and expecting me to willingly give up my income so they can continue living in a fantasy. A jobless university graduate is proof of two things: our universities are beginning to provide meaningless and easy-to-acquire degrees, and that person has an inflated sense of their own worth. If you survived 4 years of "higher" education, it shouldn't be all that difficult to find a job, even if it's only part-time. Small business owners I have met, and I admit this is purely anecdotal, have begun discriminating against newly minted grads because they seem to think they will start at 45k a year or more. I started at that- after 4 years of specialized job training, and I worked 80 hour weeks quite regularly at first.
I know, I have meandered. This long diatribe is to say that basically, I refuse to let students (or those who can't let go of the activist attitude) tell me I'm stupid or evil for believing what I do. I'm all in favour of passionate discussions, but responding to my lack of enthusiasm for gender affirmative action with "typical argument for a man" means that you have no interest in debating me. What you want is to browbeat me into submission; to accuse me of mala fides until I agree with you. How about you argue my facts or philosophies instead? When I say "maybe the reason that women are not equally represented in politics is because they aren't interested" you could respond "maybe they aren't interested because it has historically been an old boys' club, and they need help overcoming this bias". Instead I get "You're a drooling sexist ideologue who attacks anything with even a whiff of socialism, your mortal enemy". Well shit, if socialism shows up at my door with a baseball bat and tells me to take my beating and like it, you can bet I'm going to give it a size 10 boot to the head. If instead it showed up for tea, we could pleasantly rip away at each others ideology, and enjoy crumpets.
But that's just it: people in my age category are not interested in genuine thought. "The Science is Settled", so to speak. It's in-group dynamic on a global scale. The same people who tell me I should vote for Andrea Horwath in the Ontario election, despite her feeble grasp of economics and the law, work themselves into a furious lather over the idea of anyone voting for Sarah Palin. The idea that they're hypocrites never surfaces, because this isn't about thought. It's about intellectual fashion. Conservatism has been defined as uncool. Trendy adherence to the latest leftist dogmas are enforced by cults of shrill young people who can't understand why someone like me would dare to disagree with them. It's the old joke about Lady Astor being surprised at Reagan's election, saying "but no one I know voted for him!"
They always have a suitable anecdote to hand to tell me that I'm wrong, of course. When I point out that socialized medicine has led to a crumbling and ineffective service, they tell me how their aunt survived breast cancer thanks to an Ontario hospital. When I point out that welfare, instead of helping people get back on their feet, is creating a permanent underclass of those who have never and will never work, I'm tearfully told of how one survived thanks to food stamps for a year. I get it! Sometimes, the system does exactly what it's supposed to! Anecdotes, however, serve to reinforce arguments, not to replace them. If, in Britain's case, 20 percent of the population has never and will never have a job, you cannot respond "yes but I survived on welfare for a while". The elimination of 1/5th of the potential workforce due to government-subsidized laziness cannot be explained away by tugging at my heartstrings.
But alas, all of this argumentation is me just venting spleen. None of this will matter until I turn 30. So I just keep quiet, and comfort myself that I am actually motivated and talented enough to change things, whereas these others are sound and fury, signifying nothing.
I love political debate. I was on the debate teams of my high school and college, and there's nothing I like more than some good verbal sparring. I also have unconventional views (Sir Winston Churchill would say I'm either heartless or old before my time). In college, I was used to being looked down upon and mistreated by those who really had no right. After all, most of my opponents were student activists at one of Ontario's many fine institutions; each convinced that in their own way they had all the answers. Queen's students were of course the worst, and closest in proximity. I remember bemusedly listening to a second-year history student telling me, a fourth-year politics major, that I knew nothing about Canadian politics. It was to be expected- she was stewing in her own exalted sense of self (no doubt encouraged by profs), and I was merely "a brainwashed army drone". No harm done. It was something to share over a beer with like-minded friends and have a laugh.
Flash forward almost 4 years, and I am now a relatively widely traveled taxpayer. I have seen, first hand, the collapse of Euro-Socialism in Italy and Cyprus. I've watched mobs of British hooligans trash other countries' historic cities. I've listened to French girls commiserate in airports over how they have to carry headscarves in their purses in case the Metro takes them through the wrong neighbourhood. I've sat and had tea with Imams in a country that receives millions a day in naïve and well-meant aid a day that has little effect. In my own country, I pay more taxes than pretty well anyone with whom I used to debate (unless they too live in Québec). I've lived next to lovely 20-somethings who, thinking they're in love, get pregnant and are surprised when their grungy jobless boyfriend takes off. Hell, I pay for the subsidies that keep the cost of their daycare at 1/4 the national average. Worst of all, some of the people I used to debate are still in academia and earn numerically the same amount I do a year, except their incomes are non-taxable grants. I'm sorry, but if you earn over 70k a year tax-free, I don't care how "green" you are. You no longer have the right to criticize me as being bourgeois.
My new life means that I see, directly and daily, the impact of poorly made policy. Helping people is a lovely sentiment, but all I see is people refusing to behave as adults and expecting me to willingly give up my income so they can continue living in a fantasy. A jobless university graduate is proof of two things: our universities are beginning to provide meaningless and easy-to-acquire degrees, and that person has an inflated sense of their own worth. If you survived 4 years of "higher" education, it shouldn't be all that difficult to find a job, even if it's only part-time. Small business owners I have met, and I admit this is purely anecdotal, have begun discriminating against newly minted grads because they seem to think they will start at 45k a year or more. I started at that- after 4 years of specialized job training, and I worked 80 hour weeks quite regularly at first.
I know, I have meandered. This long diatribe is to say that basically, I refuse to let students (or those who can't let go of the activist attitude) tell me I'm stupid or evil for believing what I do. I'm all in favour of passionate discussions, but responding to my lack of enthusiasm for gender affirmative action with "typical argument for a man" means that you have no interest in debating me. What you want is to browbeat me into submission; to accuse me of mala fides until I agree with you. How about you argue my facts or philosophies instead? When I say "maybe the reason that women are not equally represented in politics is because they aren't interested" you could respond "maybe they aren't interested because it has historically been an old boys' club, and they need help overcoming this bias". Instead I get "You're a drooling sexist ideologue who attacks anything with even a whiff of socialism, your mortal enemy". Well shit, if socialism shows up at my door with a baseball bat and tells me to take my beating and like it, you can bet I'm going to give it a size 10 boot to the head. If instead it showed up for tea, we could pleasantly rip away at each others ideology, and enjoy crumpets.
But that's just it: people in my age category are not interested in genuine thought. "The Science is Settled", so to speak. It's in-group dynamic on a global scale. The same people who tell me I should vote for Andrea Horwath in the Ontario election, despite her feeble grasp of economics and the law, work themselves into a furious lather over the idea of anyone voting for Sarah Palin. The idea that they're hypocrites never surfaces, because this isn't about thought. It's about intellectual fashion. Conservatism has been defined as uncool. Trendy adherence to the latest leftist dogmas are enforced by cults of shrill young people who can't understand why someone like me would dare to disagree with them. It's the old joke about Lady Astor being surprised at Reagan's election, saying "but no one I know voted for him!"
They always have a suitable anecdote to hand to tell me that I'm wrong, of course. When I point out that socialized medicine has led to a crumbling and ineffective service, they tell me how their aunt survived breast cancer thanks to an Ontario hospital. When I point out that welfare, instead of helping people get back on their feet, is creating a permanent underclass of those who have never and will never work, I'm tearfully told of how one survived thanks to food stamps for a year. I get it! Sometimes, the system does exactly what it's supposed to! Anecdotes, however, serve to reinforce arguments, not to replace them. If, in Britain's case, 20 percent of the population has never and will never have a job, you cannot respond "yes but I survived on welfare for a while". The elimination of 1/5th of the potential workforce due to government-subsidized laziness cannot be explained away by tugging at my heartstrings.
But alas, all of this argumentation is me just venting spleen. None of this will matter until I turn 30. So I just keep quiet, and comfort myself that I am actually motivated and talented enough to change things, whereas these others are sound and fury, signifying nothing.
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