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Oh, please, Hugo, give me a taster lesson in hate.
Okay, which country has the best sense of humor in the whole world, Troy?
Oh, that’s easy, Everything of course.
Ever been to Spot and asked that question?
No.
If you ever try it, I guarantee everyone asked will say Spot. The same in Deumania, they’ll all say they have the best sense of humor in the world. Go to Bunqle and you’ll get the same response that they have the best sense of humor. It doesn’t matter where in the world you go. Berhumpy, the Kingdom of Koolioz, Fladgetalia, hell, even Nothing. The people will always tell you that their country has the best sense of humor. Yet, have you ever watched an episode of Mr Legumbre?
Oh yes, of course, it’s my four-year-old’s favorite. We just watched the last episode of the second season last night. Where Mr Legumbre breaks into the compound of Druglord and mercilessly guns down 196 of his most ruthless bodyguards and henchmen across 27 minutes of intense slaughter before slashing the throat of Druglord’s favorite Peruvian guinea pig, Princess Penelope Beauregarde, live on a video feed that Druglord is watching from Pimplord’s compund after Mr Legumbre tricked him into thinking Pimplord was planning a hit on him in order to take over his drug business. It was great, did you watch it, Hugo?
Umm, no, no I haven’t seen any of the second season. And that’s definitely Mr Legumbre, is it? It just feels like quite a narrative departure from the more comedic themes of the first season.
Yes, no, sorry Hugo, I’m getting confused with the other one my four-year-old loves, Druglord, Pimplord and Throat Slasher. It’s just the two actors who play Mr Legumbre and Throat Slasher are both called Geoff…except for the actor who plays Throat Slasher, he’s called Rowan…anyway, I always get confused between those two. It’s okay, I remember now, Mr Legumbre is the one with the Spottish comedian and he doesn’t say anything, just makes the occasional funny noise and all the humor is visual and physical. I love it, Hugo. Well, I mean, I love watching my four-year-old watch it, because she loves it, I mean, I’d probably switch over to Dox News myself.
It’s alright, Troy, to love Mr Legumbre, in fact, that’s the point I’m making. You could put Mr Legumbre on TV anywhere in the world and the people watching it would laugh. It’s universally funny. Every country thinks they have the best sense of humor, but the reality is we all share the same sense of humor. And it’s not like sense of humor is a unique characteristic in this regard, it applies to all our characteristics, we share them all. No matter where you go in the world, people are people. Different cultures may make things look a little different, but underneath, everyone wants the exact same things and has the exact same fears.
Really?
Of course. I know that you, Troy, for example, want to be safe, with a home to call your own and have access to sufficient water and food. You want to have a job that you enjoy that pays you enough to cover all the costs of living and lets you enjoy interesting activities in your free time. You want to have access to healthcare whenever you need it and social care during the times of your life when you’re vulnerable. You want to be free to travel where you want and when you want. You want to be treated fairly and with respect. You want to be free to live your life as you want and love whoever you want. You want to find someone to love and who will love you back. You want others to see and value you. To recognize your importance and stature. You want to be happy.
Uncanny alley, Hugo, how on earth did you know all of that? At one point I even thought you’d reveal my desire for a couple of Pugs, called Sickboy and Pochahontas La Princesa de la Televisión Diurna, and their coordinated mirror-ball style Elvis jumpsuits. Still, that was incredible.
Think of the Pugs as the exception that proves the rule, but beyond that, every single one of your desires are shared by quite literally every other single human being on the planet. I’m not blowing smoke out my backside when I say people are people. Wherever on the planet we go, the people we meet are just the same as us and share both our wants and our fears. Our cultures may differ, but the people who developed and exercise those cultures don’t.
Gosh, knowing that, Hugo, surely you could ensure world peace and win the Humbel Peace Prize.
While the Humbel Peace Prize would look great displayed in the downstairs WC, there are priorities that we should be focusing on. So, yes, humans are the same, but fortunately humans don’t care about that. They still look for the differences. The things that allow them to group this person with them and that person against them. And they find them too. It’s truly a miracle of nature. For all their similarities, they always look at others and see the things that scare them and those are what cue divisions between people. Remember, Troy, we never, ever hate the things that make us feel daring and strong, only the things that make us feel scared and weak. We hate a man wearing a dress and drinking a beer, because it feels wrong and we fear things that don’t feel right. Or because we fear it will make our son want to dress as a girl. Or because we want to wear a dress, but fear what others would say. Much of the time, though, the fear and resulting hate have no clear explanation. That’s fine, we don’t need to understand why much of society feels a specific way, we just need to recognize it so we can use it.
Use it, in what way?
Just consider the idea of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion that’s spawned the discriminatory practice of positive discrimination. Of course, you liberals never refer to ‘positive discrimination’ nowadays, do you, it’s all DEI this and DEI that.
Hang on, Hugo, it’s hardly fair to say positive discrimination is discriminatory.
‘It’s hardly fair to say positive discrimination is discriminatory’. That’s quite a bold assertion for one to make. I’m looking forward to you explaining this one to me, Troy.
Well, okay, yes, it is discriminatory, but in a positive way.
My lord, that’s phenomenal, Troy, I never saw that argument coming…oh, no, wait, yes, I did, though in fairness, the clues were all there.
Oh, you know what I mean, there’s naturally occurring discrimination in our society against some groups, such as women or plaid people or the disabled. The concept of positive discrimination is meant to offset that discrimination.
So, two wrongs make a right then, Troy?
No, of course not, it’s more a case of which is least worst. We know that there is naturally occurring discrimination in our society. For example, if I apply for a job and my plaid neighbor applies for the same job, I immediately have an advantage over him because I’m white. It’s a bit like us facing each other in a 100 metres sprint, but his starting blocks are placed 30 metres behind the start line. And assuming half of the other runners are also plaid, their blocks are also 30 metres behind the start line, while the other three white runners have their blocks aligned with me on the start line. In this scenario, positive discrimination moves my blocks and the other white runners’ blocks back 30 metres so that all eight runners are starting from the same position. Obviously, all four white runners can complain that we’re being discriminated against because now we’re running 130 metres, but the playing field has been leveled and every runner in the race is running the same distance. Yes, now all eight runners are being discriminated against, but no runner now has an unfair advantage over any of the others. Discrimination, whether it’s natural or artificial, is unfair, but surely it’s fairer that society discriminates against everyone rather than just a subset of the people, isn’t it?
No, not if you’re white. Anyway, we’re not trying to discriminate against plaid people and we don’t support it, but it’s clearly wrong to discriminate against white people as an act of revenge. Surely you and I should be making society a fairer place where plaid people aren’t discriminated against, rather than taking the easy option and punishing everyone.
It’s a nice idea, Hugo, but that’s never going to happen.
You really are quite the defeatist, aren’t you, Troy? We’ve already established that people are people. We just need to make them see that.
Hang on, you were celebrating the fact that despite people being people, we can take advantage of the fact that they find and focus on their differences to drive division.
Oh yes, a good point, Troy. Guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree on this then, rather like our respective parties agree to disagree on which battles to fight.
What do you mean by that?
The People’s Party and your rabid followers invariably fight the wrong battles. You see discriminatory and fascist language and behavior everywhere, even when it’s clearly not intended. A child asks mommy for the colored candy and there’s indignant tutting from your corner that a child is being taught such outdated and unacceptable language. A foaming-mouthed Pitbull Terrier is spotted in a kids’ playground wearing a muzzle and you lot just see the poor little puppy’s canine rights being ignored. A middle-manager calls his team together to brainstorm a problem and there’s outrage that the feelings of epileptics are being walked over, they’ve got to have thought-showers now instead. You lot keep crying wolf at the slightest hint of political incorrectness. The losers are tired of it and they’re loving us for standing up to you lot for this ridiculousness.
Come on, Hugo, you’re over-dramatizing things there just to make a point.
Really? Just look at the farago over that jeans advert with the jubbly-endowed reality TV stars, the Sandias twins. It’s a lazy and obvious jokey pun on ‘genes’ and ‘jeans’ thought up by some sad little creative who probably thought they’d come up with the idea of the century, even though I’m sure the idea has been passed over hundreds of times before because it’s a bit rubbish. Nothing more than that, quite harmless, yet you lot are screaming about the racist and fascist undertones of it, because it smacks of Edith Blitzen’s ideology of genetic purity. Sure, focusing on genes may not be as inclusive as you liberals want everything to be, but that’s just the way the world works. You’re fighting a losing battle trying to convince the masses that there’s anything deeply racist in it. You’re just telling the viewers that they’re racist if they don’t see a problem in it, yet the majority of those watching know they’re not racist. They just see you and your supporters as an out of touch elite who want to strangle simple normality from everyday life for the rest of us. Why can’t we just react and laugh at things instinctively without having to double-think everything looking for 57 varieties of offense wrapped up in one seemingly harmless and barely considered message?
Well, the advertisers should have considered the message a bit more deeply, as should Milagros and Imponentes Sandias.
Don’t turn on the Sandias twins, Troy. That won’t help you. The losers already assume that by extension you’re saying they’re racist for playing a part in that advert. That’s hardly fair on them, is it? They’re no great geniuses of our time, you know. They clearly inherited the ‘dead heat in a Zeppelin race’ gene, rather than the ‘how to split the atom’ gene, hence their career path. The losers love them and it’s understandable, they’re both utterly lovely, and sheepdip stupid with it. They joined us at one of our fundraisers at my Hi-Falutin winter house and Hugo Junior and I got them to join us in the games room to play Honkey Bong on the 120-inch plasma screen. They were having a riot and then Junior tells them how I’ve been trialing the new Game Fella Joystick Pants, pants with a built-in controller so you can play your favorite games at any time and any place.
This story isn’t going to end well, is it?
It ended pretty well for me, I can tell you, Troy. They were both desperate to have a go, so Junior stood behind hiding the real controller and off they went, fighting over the, ahem, joystick like a couple of schoolgirls. It rather reminded me of a Barry Bigglass shindig in the good old days. Honestly, it was the best game of Honkey Bong I’ve ever watched…at least right up until the end of level big boss fight. Things got a bit frenetic at that point. I think that’s when most of the bruising and tearing happened. Still, I wouldn’t change a thing about that happy mammary…oops, my Freud…I mean happy memory, and I wouldn’t ever do anything to offend the Sandias twins’ fans, either. My advice to you and the People’s Party would be to do the same. Oh, and invite them over to play Honkey Bong if you get the chance.
Actually, I see there’s some very valuable advice there, thank you, Hugo.
Of course there is, though I’m not sure which bit of advice you’re referring to, so I’ll assume the latter. But you see how you’re giving us a false elite to turn the losers against, rather than the real elite, We The People. No-one likes elites who think they’re better and smarter than them. On top of that it means that later we can blow the real fascist dog whistles and when you lot froth at the mouth about it being a disgrace, the losers will just think you’re over-reacting and making a fuss about nothing again. You lot need to stop seeing the world through your own eyes. People are people, it’s not difficult to understand what they’re thinking. And knowing that people are people does come with another advantage that we can celebrate. This might make you feel happier.
Really?
Actually, no, probably not. Remember, I said that people want others to see and value them? That right there is quite simply a desire for status. We all want to be better. In particular, we want to be better than those around us, so that they know we’re more important than them. Of course, We The People want all the wealth and the status that goes with it, but we can reward some of the losers with other forms of status. A uniform and power over the other losers will make many do whatever we tell them. That power is status and they’ll bully, beat up on and make the lives of other losers utter hell to make themselves feel better. A nasty little loser bully in a uniform will sacrifice his neighbors for the thrill of knowing that We The People have made him better than them. The simple fool will think he’s one of us and will be the nastier for it. The nastier he is, the greater his status and he can flaunt it extravagantly over anyone who tries to resist him.
Hugo, you’re so wrong. People join the police or army because they want to serve the general population, not to terrorize them.
It doesn’t matter why they choose to join, it only matters that they do. Once they have that status, they won’t want to lose it. We can count on them to do what we need them to do. Well, most of them.
Again, you’re so wrong. We can’t expect them to blindly carry out orders if those orders are clearly wrong.
But we can, Troy, we’re surrounded by little Blitzens. Back in the 4120s, Stanley Milgram carried out a fascinating experiment where he had subjects believe they were electrocuting someone in another room as part of an exercise studying learning ability. The maximum voltage of 450 volts was labeled ‘Danger: Severe Shock’. Every single person who took part administered shocks of 300 volts and two-thirds administered the full 450 volts, even when the fake subject stopped screaming and fell silent. Isn’t that wonderful? We can count on two-thirds of the people to do what they’re told simply because we are in authority. We’re their betters and our status means most will blindly do what we tell them. And for the third that don’t, we can count on two-thirds of our police and soldiers to administer punishment against them on our behalf.
You want our police and soldiers to be monsters?
Absolutely not, that’s what I love about it, we don’t need monsters. Milgram was partly inspired by understanding why so many of Blitzen’s men followed orders that led to more than six million plaid people being murdered by the state. Surely not every one of those involved in the Ultimate Solution was a monster, but still it appears that most of them participated in mass murder because those in authority told them to. They simply lacked the ability to resist authority.
Are you suggesting that the government of Everything should give our police and soldiers orders that we know to be wrong? Perhaps even use violence against our own population to ensure their compliance?
Of course not, Troy, I’m not suggesting that for one moment. This is all hypothetical, understanding how people are people. How we’re all the same underneath. Though, don’t you find it quite reassuring to know that we’d have that power if the losers ever forced us to use it?