Independent Thinking (2)

The Demonisation of Trump Helped

This is where the Deep State wants him (Image from South Front).

I should point out that there is some biographical information in this series of discussions. I am not entirely comfortable with that because the focus should be on the issues. However, these issues did not arise in a vacuum, therefore omitting the biographical completely would make the narrative less comprehensible. This series should have been called: ‘How I began to think more independently’ but that would have been too long winded.

I will be making my points regarding independent thinking with reference to one Donald John Trump who is either loved or despised by many. I have to admit that for a long time I was fooled by the character assassination of Donald J and shared various memes of ‘Trump the Fascist’ - OR - ‘Trump the Misogynist’ - OR - ‘No Woman is Safe with Him’- on Facebook. It would never have occurred to me that I should find out more about Donald J. My research of Trump was a stage in my journey to becoming more independent as a thinker.

After my break with the left and in a fit of drunken defiance I did the unthinkable: I began to examine the devil himself; the arch enemy of left Wokists; the unredeemable monster whose horns jut out from beneath his false ginger hair piece. Given the exaggerated quality of the rhetoric against Donald J, one could be forgiven for thinking that this person had been responsible for mass genocide or trying to destroy civilization and the planet we live on. It is claimed by the left, without any sense of contradiction, that he is incapable of governing and yet quite capable of leading a fascist dictatorship at the same time. No woman is safe in this monster’s presence: he who once talked about grabbing a woman’s ‘pussy’. As far as the Woke left is concerned, anyone guilty of such a hate crime is no better than a Hitler or a Stalin, or Attila the Hun, or Vlad the Impaler - choose your own examples. And anyone saying anything good about Donald Trump has automatically condemned himself to a life and afterlife in purgatory - as far as the ‘left’ is concerned.

My study of Trump’s history didn’t reveal a saint but neither did is uncover a monster. My studies certainly did not establish grounds for the unprecedented persecution this man has suffered. I am not a supporter of Trump as such, after all I live in Scotland - the land of his mother (pictured). Have you noticed that the legacy media rarely portrays Trump as a family man, but that’s what he is. But I think he has been unjustly treated and I want him to be President: the alternative does not bear thinking about for very long.

By way of balance, I should say that Trump is inexperienced as a politician and made many mistakes last term, including the killing of Soleimani. I don’t share all his values and am not uncritical of aspects of his character - but outside of his election mode, ‘campaign trail’ persona there is a real person in the sense that he has autonomy: no one is pulling his strings and that’s why the establishment hates him.

Donald J Trump, whether he is misogynistic or not, has done good things and has not done some bad things such as starting a war (as most presidents before him have done). I offered to send a lefty friend of mine some links to the good things that Donald Trump has done, but was rebuffed with the demand that I not mention Donald Trump’s name ever again.

The left has succeeded so well in creating the ‘Orange Man Bad’ myth that even mentioning his name is considered beyond the pale for some ‘lefties’. It is amazing how much people love to hate the villains who have been created for them. I will leave readers to explore Donald Trump through their own resources; suffice to say that the legacy media created myth does not compare well with the Donald Trump who lives and breathes. That animal was well presented in a recent interview with Joe Rogan - excerpts of which you can watch here. There is a degree of authenticity about this interview which is rare indeed among politicians and journalists. There is a degree of mutual respect and mutual admiration from both men which is also rare. If you want some idea of the real Donald J Trump, you will get a glimpse of it in the Rogan ‘conversation’.

But for the left, a puritanical, politically correct but incompetent President who curtails civil liberties, bans free speech, forces Woke ideology down people’s throats and creates endless wars, is to be preferred to Donald J. Such is the irrationality induced by the Trump myth.¹ But this deception is also one that seeks to divert people’s gaze towards the personal at the expense of virtually any other considerations – and this is very interesting. Of course, the personal is also the realm of the emotions; it is the realm which Wokeness invades and through which it thrives. The ‘left’ group think, which is amplified through social media, is a powerful force indeed. It can make you hate someone (like Trump) very intensely but with very little justification beyond the personal. It can make you sing the praises of villains such as George Floyd; elevating them to heroic saint like status. But this is all at a personal and emotional level; we would be ill advised indeed to use this as a foundation for making judgements that impact on our lives.

Having done ‘the unthinkable’, the way was now open for me to hear all those forbidden voices, with their quite legitimate points of view. Now I would hear the other side of arguments I had previously considered to have been won by the left; the other sides of arguments I had previously considered unworthy of consideration, just as my observations about the good side of Donald Trump had been considered unworthy by my colleague.

I began to realise that ever since I entered full time education back in 1990, I had been told by ‘left wing’ colleagues that certain thinkers were too right wing to be considered worthy of study. I became intellectually lazy in consequence.

Now, since I had gone where no lefty was allowed to go; I no longer felt any sense of loyalty or duty towards the left; in blood stepped in so far that I could no longer describe myself as a ‘lefty’ in the sense in which a ‘lefty’ is commonly understood in contemporary politics.² But this loyalty and duty had not served my independent thought well; these things had not served me well as a philosopher – and I was so glad to be free of these ties and breathing the fresh air that I now gulped down greedily.

I even watched Tommy Robinson (alleged racist) give a presentation to the Oxford Union and studied the works of Jordon Peterson (alleged Misogynist): I had gone way beyond the pale.

The tendency of ‘the left’ to create villains out of people and to demonise certain ideas is shared to some extent by some on ‘the right’, though it has to be said that ‘lefties’ have made an art form out of this. My position on the fence between the two, with no sort of affiliation to either, has afforded me the luxury of making independent judgements regarding the claims of either. It can be lonely on the fence, but I would not wish to be situated anywhere else given that my thinking has benefited from this vantage point. I do not agree with the right that socialism has to be a bad thing (it depends on what sort of socialism we are talking about it and on whose authority it is created) and I still believe that Marx as a thinker has a lot to contribute to our understanding of the world we live in. But I don’t agree with ‘the left’ that there is anything positive about identity politics or its judgement that institutionalised racism, patriarchy or global warming exist. I don’t share ‘the left’s’ views on the freedom of movement of people without consideration for those on whom these people are imposed. I certainly don’t agree with any form of global governance and believe that the sovereign nation state still forms a good basis for global association/relationships.

I should say that some on ‘the right’ have a very wide definition of Marxism and Marxist that bears no relation to the Marx I studied for nine years, while some on ‘the left’ are paranoid in their assessment of Republicans as ‘far right’ racists and so on. Intelligent people on both ‘left’ and ‘right’ have blind spots that make them appear stupid and/or misinformed. I am no more intelligent than they, but from my position on the fence perhaps I can see the issues more clearly than they can. However, I am not claiming that I do not have any blind spots though I have fewer now than I have had in the past.

But one of the issues that make me feel more at home with ‘the right’ than ‘the left’ is Libertarianism. As I have said, I consider myself to be a libertarian socialist – and the libertarian side of this is, perhaps, more important to me than the socialist side. I can live without socialism – and have done for over 70 years – but I could not live without liberty. In the US, it is Republicans and other capitalist supporters who are the defenders of liberty, whereas everywhere on the left the ugly face of authoritarianism glares at me from all directions: from the top with the Joe Biden’s vaccination mandates³ down to the foot soldiers of BLM and Antifa, with their intolerance, violence, cancel culture and so on.

When someone like Noam Chomsky, who claims to be a communitarian anarchist (the equivalent of a libertarian socialist) speaks out for ‘vaccine’ mandates⁴ and for depriving the unvaccinated of food⁵, we know that we have a huge problem on ‘the left’. When distinguished Marxist economist, Mark Blyth compares those who do not believe that CO2 is causing global warming to those who deny the connection between smoking and cancer, then we have a huge problem on ‘the left’. When ‘lefty’ football manager Jurgen Klopp publicly compares the unvaccinated to drunk drivers,⁶ we have a huge problem on ‘the left’. These people are arrogant, condescending, unwitting apologists for authoritarianism, who accuse others of the ignorance they ‘possess’ themselves - in abundance. The ‘huge problem’ I refer to is the apparent absence of libertarian principles that has been shared by the most authoritarian state socialist regimes in history.

There is no one more critical of smoking than an ex-smoker – so it is said. The same sort of thing applies to an ex ‘lefty’; in my case at least. I am now so independent of the modern ‘left’ that I feel no obligation to exercise restraint in criticising it. There is no vindictiveness in my assessment of the ‘left’, there is no anger or condemnation of individual ‘lefties’ who are mostly well meaning (many whom were once friends) but there is a sense of having discovered something much too late; especially since I had held certain reservations about ‘left wing’ politics for nearly 30 years. But it should be said that the working class ‘lefty’ of 30 years ago was quite a different animal from the middle class ‘lefty’ who struts his stuff at BLM demonstrations today.

In Part Three, I will go back to the beginning in 1990 when I re-entered full time education as someone who was totally ignorant of politics. This will explain some things and fill in the gaps.

1 I have heard that some US ‘lefties’, who don’t believe in wearing masks, are doing so because they don’t want to be misidentified as Trump supporters who are typically against mask wearing. This is how irrational the left has become in the US.

2 i.e. someone who believes in Wokism; Global Warming, unfettered immigration (i.e. free movement of people); the European Union, Lockdowns, de-funding the Police, the NHS and vaccinations. It has to be said, however, that many working class ‘lefties’ are opposed to the EU and some middle class Green ‘lefties’ don’t believe in vaccines.

3 President Joe Biden introduced vaccine mandates in the fall of 2021.

4 mRNA ‘vaccines’ do not claim to prevent people from getting a virus, so they do not fall under the definition of vaccines at the time of writing, but this may change.

5 Noam Chomsky recently suggested that the non-vaccinated should be isolated and deprived of food – see Famous Leftist Calls For Unvaccinated To Be Isolated And Deprived Of Food, Civil War Talk Escalates - YouTube (Tim Cast 25^th October 2021)

6 He actually said; "I don't understand why that is a limitation of freedom, because if it is, then not being allowed to drink and drive is a limitation of freedom as well - but we accept that’. BBC Sport online 3^rd October 2021. To be kind to Klopp, this shows how little he has thought about the issues. The mRNA vaccines do not prevent people from getting Covid 19 or passing it on, so not having the vaccine harms no one. It is quite baffling that he appears to think that not having the freedom to decide what we place in our own bodies (especially in relation to ‘vaccines’ that research shows can be harmful) is on a par with not having the freedom to pose a threat to others through drink driving. He should definitely stick to football in order to avoid embarrassing himself.