n retrospect,judging by all the rants that had been posted here over the years, most readers would reckon that the old days were just awful, and for the most part, that would be correct. I don't have a single nostalgic bone in my body, but I concede that I did not anticipate the sheer depths of what we would eventually experience now-- in the States, in the UK, in the developed world in general-- four years ago, which feels like a quaint and innocent time of another planet. In the post-Brexit, Trump-led, late-stage capitalist world, we wake up to increasingly intensifying new horrors every morning that easily surpass whatever horrific nightmares we could muster ourselves the night before.

While I always tell people that I’ve been an inveterate leftist since I was ten, I reckon that I may also be inherently conservative temperamentally, in the sense that I generally prefer changes in life and career to proceed cautiously, with plenty of research and planning beforehand, backed by science if applicable. Yes, this attitude may lead to a sort of inertia where nothing exciting ever happens in my life. On the other hand, I also believe that gradual change on the social, political, and economic front may not always be appropriate, as people are hurting or dying right now, and circumstances demand immediate or drastic courses of action. This does not mean that we should not try to understand what are the underlying currents that keep the underclass and the oppressed of the planet from staying afloat to survive, let alone to thrive. As sane, educated citizens of the world, we should all perhaps pull back just a bit, to try to get to the root of structural problems that beset our society. It sounds like a cliché, but we need to evaluate the big picture first, in order to act effectively and efficiently to make things better for the long run. You know, that whole bit about thinking globally, and acting locally? Smart evolution is probably a tastier cup of tea than revolution.

o who's causing all our troubles? Yes, we all know capitalism is fucked-up, but more specifically, why does it seem like all the right-wingers the world over are so evil? While it may seem childish, I reckon that the world is a mess primarily due to these mean people with intent to harm. Indeed they are mostly right-wingers, as they embrace violence and intimidation with their propensity to carry and use firearms, at least here in North America. People often blame their extremism and bigotry on the Murdoch media empire's reign of disinformation, or on American talk radio, or on social media algorithms. However, aren't most of these factors mere symptoms of a society that's sick? That pathology has to do with a failure of imagination, which often leads to lack of compassion. You need to have the ability to feel the pain experienced by someone else, besides you or the people close to you-- strangers, perhaps someone of a different ethnicity or economic circumstance. To some degree, empathy requires a sense of imagination, which is ultimately the aptitude to visualise something that is currently not present. These can be any form of creative output. Overwhelmingly across history, artists and people in the creative fields are leftists, because their jobs actively require imagination-- making up something in their minds, and then conveying or building it via a medium, whether it be writing, dramaturgy, painting, sculpting, gastronomy, designing, music, acting, filming, comedy, scholarship, architecture, etc.; the ability to make up stories and art requires creativity.

Illiterate and undereducated bullies rarely make compelling art. Look at all those mispelled signs at protests in America. On the other hand, right-wingers lack imagination and creativity, and that’s why they’re fewer of them in the aforementioned creative fields, or to a lesser extent, in academia, or in independent bookstores, or in libraries, or in art galleries. Remember that Republican presidential candidates always have difficulty finding good songs whose writers wouldn't object to their use in their campaigns? Because they don't exist! When you lack imagination, you also have difficulty putting oneself in another's shoes. Since self-identified conservatives seem to have profound difficulty envisioning tragedy ever happening to them, they cannot effectively empathise -- that may be the basis of most of the problems in our society. To some extent, this form of myopia also seems to be reflected in corporate boardrooms, amongst CEOs, and in business management schools across North America, where quarterly results drive everything. They cannot fathom anything farther out, nor basically think or plan in the long-term, so they act accordingly. Is it any wonder that business school graduates traditionally tend to vote more Republican or Tory than their peers from the universities?

Myopic right-wingers naturally become selfish people lacking in compassion. After all, they worship at the altar of Ayn Rand, the atavistic proponent of the cult of selfishness. In their world, if bad things happen to people, they obviously deserve it! They are all just a bunch of beta cuck soy boys and snowflakes. That's why we as a society shouldn't ever enact laws that coddle and protect fellow humans from unforeseen circumstances. These safety-net measures are 'socialist' schemes that sanction weakness. Alas, they hold on to these attitudes until, of course, something bad or tragic actually happens to them. Only then would they consider government measures-- once thought to be oppressive shackles to freedom-- to prevent or mitigate against these unexpected outcomes. Consider all these 'socialist' schemes that they’ve been fighting tooth and nail against for decades: social security, universal healthcare, Medicare, childcare, unemployment insurance, workers’ compensation, deposit insurance, community education and recreation programmes, housing subsidies for the poor, work training programmes, protection for the environment, rules to maintain clear air and water, and on and on and on.

To wit, why should they ever care about what happens to poor people, or people who have pre-existing medical conditions, who have been abused by private American insurers or the big pharmaceutical companies? These kinds of stories must be fake… 'they’re fake news!' …until, of course, it actually happens to them and to their families. To right-wingers, if it didn't happen to them, it doesn't exist. If the legislation doesn't benefit them personally, they'll oppose it.

ake civil rights and voting rights. Or protection from discrimination against people of colour, against refugees, or members of the LGBTQ communities: why would we ever need the government to get involved? Aren't they just lifestyle choices? What about religious freedom? Why should we sanction these behaviours?
Because for the most part, right-wingers never experience real oppression, for they are often the oppressors. Their rights have never really been violated. How dare they liken making cakes for gay weddings to religious oppression! They don't know what real oppression is. That's why they're always fighting against civil rights legislation. Oppression doesn't exist for them, nor can they visualise it, so 'it must be fake news!’

Take the recent rise of the Black Lives Matter movement. Right-wingers don't support it, simply because they don't experience police brutality. They don't get abused by cops, mostly because they are the cops. It really helps that they are bigots-- who wouldn't love to beat up or kill people who look different from you? From personal experience, I knew guys (for I had dated at least two) who originally joined the police force so they could beat up black or brown people. Many conservatives cannot envision the pain and oppression experienced by others, and therefore they do not believe them to exist. They do not understand, nor care to educate themselves about, the systematic and structural racism that leads to a creation of a permanent underclass that leads to high crime rates among people of colour. This is why laws in America are the way they are, as they are for the most part enacted by people who lack the ability to visualise, understand, and thereby empathise. Laws are made by people who are not only bigots, but also lacking in imagination.

Take the instance of rampant gerrymandering of voting districts by state Republican lawmakers with the intent of diluting the power of Democrats and people of colour in state or Congressional electoral races. Not only has this issue been battled many times in the courts-- with the latter often correctly determining that boundaries have indeed been malicious drawn-- but the GOP lawmakers themselves have admitted to flagrant gerrymandering time and again, since that has their MO for decades. Fair play and good faith are completely alien concepts to them. They even have the audacity to address to journalists the notion why the Democrats won't do it themselves when they’re in power. Ultimately, this is whole the point, isn't it? We on the left do not do this, because we do actually have a sense of fair play. We're better than that. We're able to visualise ourselves in others' shoes, and determine that this is not how we would like to be treated. Therefore, we should not be doing this to other people, when the shoe's on the other foot. Back in the days of the W. Bush administration and its 'war on terror,' we on the left fought for respecting the Geneva convention, and against the use of torture on foreign prisoners, because we want our soldiers, if they should ever be captured in the future, to be treated fairly and humanely. That is how the world should work, and that is how normal, civilised society operates. But somehow, time and again, right-wingers have this pathological inability to foresee what would happen when tables are turned. This is a concept that they're utterly unable to comprehend, and the world is worse off because of it.

What about the ongoing hostile intransigence from right-wingers to wear masks during the pandemic? They always point out that they don't work in terms of protecting oneself from getting Covid, and that's why they don't want to waer them. But it's not about protecting oneself! It has always been about protecting others from infection, for the greater good and health of the community. And that's why it's so hard for them to get around to the concept-- it's about caring for other people. They have to think about the well-being of people in the community-- not about themselves. They have to overcome selfishness. That's why it's so hard for them. Science shouldn't be politicised, but somehow these people made it so.

Needless to day, the inability to empathise naturally compromises their sense of fair play. Remember when President Obama tried to nominate Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court on 16th March 2016, six months before the presidential election? The Republican Senate prevented even hearings from being held for his confirmation. On the other hand, in year 2020, the Republican Senate confirmed Amy Coney Barrett to the Court on 26 October 2020, mere eight days before the presidential election. The hypocrisy of Republican Senators like Mitch McConell and Lindsey Graham goes everything against common decency. We wonder whether this a form of myopia that we've been discussing, or simply evil form of cynicism? It's probably both.

o how do we get them to change their tune? To get them to see beyond their own bubbles, and maybe expand their minds? How do we appeal to their compromised sense of fair play? We reckon it may help if more of their children and friends come out as gay. Or if more of their own friends and families get kicked out by private insurers. Or when they get sick from unsafe foods and drugs, or from toxic contamination of their environment. Again, they would not care unless it happens to themselves. I don't think we're able to teach tolerance and compassion in schools. You know the kids wouldn't buy it. Bullying and bigotry may even seem to pay off-- look at the occupant in the White House? Should we cultivate more creativity in schools at an early age, so they wouldn't grow up to become bigots? Teach art to children, so they will not grow up to be bigots?

11 November 2020