A Quora reponse I would Like to share

For just over a year now I have been following "Quora" - a website where people ask questions and others answer. Many of the questions asked are loaded (i.e. include statements as "fact" designed to elicit a strong response) that I am convinced they are being posted by trolls who get their jollies by goading others. One clue is that the most outrageous questions are posed by anonymous individuals.

While I prefer reading the more thoughtful questions and answers, occasionally I do respond and I would like to share with you a recent question I came across and my response.

Question:  How do foreign heads of government such as Justin Trudeau, Emmanuel Macron, and Angela Merkel view Donald Trump?

My Response: I will give a response as a Canadian who prefers to sit by the wayside and watch the world around me, and from those observations draw and develop conclusions. As another poster has observed dealing with a different, yet very similar question, none of the names presented is admirable in their own right. What is consistent, especially here in Canada, is that natives of one country commonly ignore the obvious failings of their own leader and instead love to mock the leader of another country and Trump is a frequent target of that mocking.

Trudeau is nothing like his father who was a very intelligent person with a quick wit. He knows nothing about ethics or morals and even when called out on that learns nothing. Here he should be the focus of much joking. Many of my family members and friends do not hesitate to mock Trump but will not say a single thing about Trudeau.

Over the last 4 years I have done a lot of research to try and find answers as to why I am seeing what I am. From that research 3 terms have bubbled to the top: “projection”, “confirmation bias”, and “cognitive dissonance”. As a quick summary of each, I see many who project onto others their own failings, who look for confirmation of their own prejudices and who just ignore what is going on around them as it does not support their beliefs.

Here in Canada a lot of people just cannot accept we are being governed by a party lead by someone so shallow, someone who, without a memorised script, can only say incomprehensible things and who awards people not on their skill but what focus group they belong to. Cognitive dissonance rules here, as no doubt it rules in the other countries named. As a result many of us project his failings onto an outsider named Donald Trump, a person we had nothing to do with being elected yet we have the right to take anything he says as proof that he has to be worse that what we have. This so we can feel good about ourselves and the bad situation we collectively have got ourselves into. Donald Trump is the avatar of the person too many of my fellow citizens have elected to the highest post in the country I reside in. Why? Because we can and one we thing we Canadians like to be is sanctimonious, especially if it is my mocking someone who isn’t one of us.

Now I am sure you are asking “but aren’t you suffering from those three conditions too”? Maybe I am, but I try my best to be as unbiased as I can. That is why I have always worked hard to be independent. I seldom have joined a political party and then it was only to support an individual who’s message, at that point in time, resonated with my core beliefs. Even so I still wonder. When I do if I can come up with rational answers based on unbiased observation then I think I am above those failings. I try my best to not choose sides, or at least not until the evidence is overwhelming one way or the other.

In conclusion I would like to make a comment toward the person who posed the question. This one is too much like many here on Quora; either they are a troll trying to antogonise a partisan group, or one looking for confirmation to their own biases. In this particular case I am thinking the latter. Sorry if I have disappointed you.

Thoughts on the Madness of Crowds

I recently read the new book by Douglas Murray, “The Madness of Crowds”, and it got me thinking about items that have puzzled me for some time. A case in point, something I have mentioned before, is our innate hypocrisy. How do we fight discrimination? Why, by discriminating! Take “affirmative action” as a great example. Or how about how best to fight bullying? By bullying the bullies of course! The most recent irony is how do we come together as a global community? By accentuating our differences! You know, “diversity is our strength”. It made me realise that the egalitarianism promoted by science fiction shows such as Star Trek, set in the future, cannot and will not ever happen if we continue as we do. In effect we are in the throws of tearing apart every societal gain we made during the Twentieth Century all in the name of creating “a better world”. We very well may be on the verge of a major upheaval that could set us back to a primitive time we struggled so hard to escape. While I hope to live to a ripe old age it may not happen due to the “kindness” of others. As Pogo the Opossum once said; “I have seen the enemy and he is us”.

In the first 2 decades of the 21^st century a lot of these negative changes have been fomenting, and I have wondered why they have gained the popularity that they have as they can easily be refuted as making no sense. The very title of Murray’s book gives the reason; while people, as individuals, act in a sane fashion, once they take part in a crowd, they let their irrational aspects come to the surface and madness ensues. We have all seen this with basic morals and ethics. A person publicly abhors the killing of another person yet has no problem throwing deadly projectiles at someone else if they are amongst a crowd. Their inhibitions are lost, and the true personality is exposed. Just like Jeckle and Hyde.

This madness has been accentuated by “social media” whereby it is so easy to be anonymous in the propagation of trolling and slandering of others. The worst, in my mind, is Twitter, apply named as only a twit would have the gall to take part. But like so many things there are positive aspects. South of the border President Trump has used it with great skill to get simple messages out unfiltered by a very biased media. You may consider him a twit but at the very least he is not pretending to be someone else and if you take the time to properly parse his messages you quickly see that they expose a truth that others, the media in particular, actively try to hide.

Note that this collective madness is being magnified by our mainstream media. How else can you describe a group that do their very best to cut their own throats by alienating a significant portion of their potential readership? Journalist ethics have been cast aside and for what? The promotion of thoughts and ideas that we worked so hard in the latter parts of the 20^th century to rid ourselves of, such as racism, sexism and all other divisive measures.

For me a highlight of the evolution of our nation was the repatriation of our constitution in 1982. No sooner was that affirmed by Parliament that the backward slide began. Maybe it began back in 1968 when Pierre Elliot Trudeau first declared that “Canada must be a just society” where “the rights of minorities will be safe from the whims of intolerant majorities”. At face value, especially for a person such as myself who grew up and still resides in an area that has wants and needs that are a minority to the wants and needs of the far more populated regions of Canada, it resonated well. In practice it has become perverted.

I suppose the greatest perversion is that “rights” have lost their meaning. Under our Constitution we all have “the right to the equal protection and equal benefit of the law without discrimination and, in particular, without discrimination based on race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability.” Now we are not “equal” because of our race, colour, sex and age as just some examples. It has reached the point that even the basic “freedom of speech” is being denied by the charge that something you say can be considered “racist” just because of the colour of your skin if deemed inappropriate to the situation.

Another perversion taking place right now are our basic “freedoms” from the same Constitution. Two of our supposedly “fundamental freedoms” are the freedom of peaceful assembly and freedom of association. Both have been turned off, or at least limited, thanks to the current, as I write this, Covid-19 “pandemic”.

You see, the “madness of crowds” has been working hard to destroy those things that we had believed make a “civilised society”. More and more we are seeing the return to rule by tyrants and the loss of everything of value we had worked so hard to gain over so many generations. At the forefront is “Socialism” – the sheep’s clothing being used by the wolves of discord.

There is Nothing to Fear but Fear Itself

I know it has been some time since my last post. I have been focused of late of just absorbing information rather than commenting on what has been happening, specifically the current Covid-10 "pandemic" we are being subjected to. As time passed I started having doubts and so started doing research. The greatest concern I had was that there appeared to be too much panic that did not appear to support the facts. I put these thoughts and concerns down and first tried submitting to the local community paper, the Nipigon Gazette. But the local editor has yet to publish it so I tweaked it and submitted  the following slightly modified version to the Thunder Bay Chronicle Journal, that was published last week.
 

The media and our politicians are screaming that we are in the throws of a deadly pandemic and that, in order to fight it properly, we need to suspend many basic freedoms. I too have been resigned to having my rights infringed but with the understanding it is for the better good. But I have been troubled in that, to me, things do not appear as they should; the numbers are not adding up.

I first became suspicious when it was declared that we had reached the “pandemic” stage. While familiar with that term it did not feel appropriate to the numbers being published.  I, like many of us, have been following the reported cases, and associated deaths, worldwide closely for several weeks now. A pandemic is defined as being an “epidemic over a wide geographic area and affecting a large proportion of the population”. The fact it has been reported in most countries in the world meets the first criteria, but cases and related death numbers do not support the second.

There is a web site called “nCov2019.live” that has been tracking the virus for some time. As I write this, April 14th, there are 1,988,816 cases reported worldwide and 125,597 have died from the virus. Scary numbers for sure but let us put them in perspective first to better understand if this is a “large proportion” of the population. Currently there are about 7.8 billion people on earth, or 7,800 million. 2 million have been diagnosed as having the virus which does not look so bad. Sure, it is growing but it has been over 3 months since it was first reported. How about if we look at the numbers from a Canadian perspective?

There are 37.7 million people in Canada. Of those a total of 26,897 have been diagnosed as having the virus. And of those diagnosed a total of 898 have died. While it is sure to climb higher that number does not scare me, yet there is a lot of fear mongering going on right now. So, I looked to see, on an annual basis, what the most recent leading causes of deaths in Canada are. For example, 12,524 died last year from accidents (number 4 out of 10), and 6,235 from influenza and pneumonia (number 8). Even if the death numbers for Covid19 end up being 5 times higher (about 5000 total) we would then barely be in the same ballpark as the annual influenza epidemic yet it isn’t considered a “pandemic” which we do not panic over; we have all come to accept it as a risk we have no choice but to live with.

But it is very deadly you say! Well, again let us check the available evidence. A closed system that has been well documented is that of the Diamond Princess cruise ship. Now I am going to cite from a report issued by the United States Centre for Disease Control issued March 27th. On January 25, a passenger with Covid-19 symptoms got off in Hong Kong. Within days the ship was put into quarantine when it reached Yokohama. The results of the quarantine showed that of the 3,711 passengers and crew that were on board, 712 had positive tests for the virus, meaning that the rest (90.8%, or 4 out of 5) did not, and in effect were immune! Of those that were diagnosed a total of 9 died, or 0.2% of all on board. The other interesting feature of the virus is that it is a viral pneumonia that is deadly if old and infirm or if younger people have pre-existing respiratory issues. It also needs to be noted that the average age of all on board was 60, whereas the average age of Canadians is 41 so the death rate one would expect based on the Diamond Princess data is less.

It has not helped that while worrisome, this “pandemic” is being blown way out of proportion. The fallout is that we are being subjected to what a free society should consider totalitarian measures encouraged by a deeply ignorant media apparatus. While the media should have been digging deep to find the evidence to prove it is the scourge that they pretend it is, they instead are fanning the flames of panic!

I am appealing to all to please relax and calm down! As Marie Curie said: “Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more so we can fear less”. The silver lining is that we are now more aware of how we can lessen the effects of the annual flu. Wash your hands more frequently. Give others a bit more space during the winter months. Do not be ashamed to wear a face mask; no matter the quality it is still far better than not using one.

But this is not the time to let our rights be trashed by petty tyrants no matter who they are, using fear of this “pandemic” as the means of doing so. Just remember that the last time personal rights were abrogated by government to the  extents we are starting to see now was by the Fascists in the first half of the twentieth century taking advantage of the fear that enveloped many countries thanks to the ramifications of the Great Depression. Let us not have history repeat itself.