Idiots, Assholes and Bastards, Oh, My!

Sometimes my wife or one of my kids will ask me, “What are your plans for the day?”
I am likely to go out the door with the answer, “My plan is to avoid the idiots, assholes and bastards”. I am only half joking. 

I think I picked up this notion from the author Norman Maclean, in his book ‘A River Runs Through It’. There’s a part about his coming up where he observes, “The world is full of bastards, the number increasing rapidly the further one gets from Missoula, Montana.”

The idiots, assholes and bastards are out there. You may come across them in your morning newspaper, often in the form of politicians, ostensively doing things on your behalf - the kind of people that if they all disappeared tomorrow the world would roll along just fine without them.

There is a theme for this, I think. The idiots assholes and bastards I have run across in my time, earned that title because they thought they knew, but didn’t. Worse, they were obtuse enough to try to impose their opinions on others nonetheless. Their attempts were maladroit, and generally landed with a thud. You can see them in management at places of work. They are the ones whose theories of how things function comes from a book, rather than from observing life as it happens around them. They cannot see a real problem. Hence, their solutions often compound the problems which already exist. 

The common denominator is that those people are detached. They are people from somewhere else, trying to tell you what to do, where you are. The dissonance between their opinion and your reality can be jarring. 

Local, tends to work. It is not rocket science, why. Things are do-able and fix-able on a small scale before they become unnecessarily overcomplicated. Real scrutiny and accountability decreases, the more you distance yourself from centre. That is why I tend to cast a suspicious eye toward ventures like amalgamating several municipalities into one mega city. It might work in theory, but on the ground it translates into overspending, disorganization, and disconnect. It’s really a way to concentrate power at the top, and has little to do with efficacy. Those who desire such arrangements, generally have to lie to people as a means to an end. 

Most prognostications originate from unelected bodies like the United Nations and the European Union. I recall how they hectored England over Brexit, yet England seems to be doing just fine. There is much of this fear-mongering going on in the world today - those who who claim the world will end unless you bow the knee to their advice. They live somewhere else, yet want to tell you what to do in your own home. People fall for it, briefly, then they become somewhat irate. They have discovered the idiots, assholes and bastards close-up.

Canadian sage George Grant had some salient observations about the likes of these kind of arrangements. There is no such thing as love, in theory. Everything in life tends to be pretty specific. Real people, they love what is close-up, because that is how they know it. People who talk about universal anything, rarely have a real-life application. They are mechanics, and bad ones at that. The lesson, is keep them away from monkeying around with anything that matters because they will only give you a headache. They fail to understand a very basic premise, that the real world of experience is local, while global is a distant theory at best. 

It is something to understand moving forward, and chances are it will lesson your aggravations if you are a bit selective about whom you allow to have a say in your daily arrangements. It should be a very short list, because that’s how life works best. Remember what your mom used to say, that not everyone in the playground is your friend. It could just be that those globalists who would sell you idealistic schemes to build a better world out there ‘somewhere’, are the ones most likely to throw your real-life local concerns under the bus. Their intentions focus on a shiny green land, far away that may well be imaginary. 

Dorothy had it right – “Toto? We are not in Kansas anymore.” It is not the Lions and Tigers and Bears you must be afraid of however. It’s the idiots, assholes and bastards (Oh, my!) and they are for real. They have strayed far from home and they are on your turf, and mine, trying to tell us what to do.

Have a good day. Try to avoid the idiots assholes and bastards if you can. And pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. He is one of them.