Category: Culture

The War On Free Speech

silence

In 1946, Martin Niemoller wrote a damning bit of prose to illustrate the rise of fascism and the cowardice of the intellectuals (including himself) who let it happen.  Here is one of the original versions.

First they came for the Communists —
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist.

Then they came for the Socialists —
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists —
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews —
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me —
And there was no one left
To speak out for me.

In the 21st century, they may call themselves innocuous names, profess their moral authority and say they speak for the betterment of society.  But don’t be fooled.  This is all about power.  This is about who controls the flow of ideas.  This is about silencing the opposition.  And the pattern is exactly the same.

First they came for Hate Speech —
And I didn’t speak out
Because it sounded like a good idea.

Then they came for Controversial Speech —
And a lot of people didn’t speak out
Because they didn’t want to get lynched on Social Media.

Then they came for Offensive Speech —
And most people didn’t speak out
Because the ones who did were losing their jobs.

Now they’re coming for Opinion,
And everybody is too frightened to speak out.

So when they come for Free Speech,
Don’t be surprised
When there’s nobody left to defend it.

Parlour Games

questions

In a different life, I used to go to dinner parties.  You remember those: friends got together to eat and drink and talk about the people who weren’t there.  I used to love it when the wine outlasted the dessert and all the boors and bores would hit the road and leave the field to the serious among us.  At really, really good dinner parties, that’s when the parlour games come out.  There are a number of them (I’ve mentioned them here, before) and most are a lot of fun.  One of my favourites is quite simple: everybody takes a turn to wonder out loud about something they’ve never understood.  As the circle gets tighter, the questions get better and can provoke general agreement and/or heated discussion. Either way, most of them are interesting insights into the world around us.  Here are a few of my favourites (as close as I can remember.)

Why can Keanu Reeves be so good in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, The Matrix and John Wick and suck so badly in everything else?

Does anybody watch regular TV anymore?

Why does everybody win in Vegas — except me?

Why do they teach (3x + 2y) – 12 = (7x + 3y) even though every teacher knows it’s never going to come up in real life???

Why did August get 31 days instead of September?

Why didn’t Darth Vader remember R2D2 and C3P0?

Why doesn’t glue stick to the inside of the container?

Why do people who say they don’t believe in God, always talk about guardian angels?

How come a pizza can get to my house faster than the cops?

Who cares if a tree falls in the forest?

Why do potatoes have more chromosomes than people do?

How come people who say outlawing guns won’t change anything still think that making drugs illegal will?
How come people who say outlawing drugs won’t change anything still think that making guns illegal will?

Why are brushing your hair and brushing your teeth such totally different activities?

Why do dogs hang their heads out the window of a car moving at 60 kph but hate it when you blow in their faces?

Who owns the Internet?

How does aspirin know the difference between a headache and a sore knee?

Why do tornados always attack trailer parks?

Why, whenever there’s a riot anywhere in the world, are the protest signs always in English?

What is déjà vu “really?”

Is the light at the end of the tunnel that people say they see when they’re about to die, just being born again?  (I think somebody cheated on this one – just sayin’.)

Why didn’t Gandalf just fly Frodo to the top of Mount Doom on the eagles that rescued him?

Is calling it Mother Nature just a sneaky way of saying God?

Why, when adults talk to kids, dogs and old people, do they use the same voice?

Why do light years measure distance, not time?

Why didn’t Samantha Stevens realize she was sleeping with the wrong Darren?

And my personal favourite:

Is Harry Potter just a psychotic kid who made up the whole Hogwarts thing to cope with his miserable life, living under the stairs?

 

Let’s Write Something

moon

Okay, okay, okay! We’ve all been stuck with our four walls and families for an eternity, and it’s beginning to wear thin.  We’ve cleaned out the fridge, we’ve cleaned out the garage, gone through 8 years of emails and binge-watched 6 years of television.  We’ve organized the towels by fluffy, the food by expiration date and the underwear by number of holes.  We’ve done all those stupid patio exercises and gained 5 kilos (11 pounds.)  We’ve taught the kids all the math we remember and nobody normal cares how long the 30 Years War was.  The dog is refusing to go “walkies,” and somebody stole the chocolate you hid in the tampons box (Steven, you bastard!)  So, now what?

This is the perfect time to write a national anthem for The Moon.

Think about it! You definitely have some time on your hands.  You wrote poetry when you were young, “moon” rhymes with everything (“swoon,” “June,” “raccoon”) and you can just steal the music from the public domain (“Moonlight Sonata,” perhaps?)  Plus, how cool would it be to be the person who wrote the national anthem for The Moon?  Like Way Cool!

The truth is, even though The Moon is central to the tides, the calendar and romantic love, humans have always treated it badly.  For example, there are 181 moons in our solar system — from Ganymede (bigger than the planet Mercury) to Deimos (smaller than Liechtenstein) — and every one of them has a name — except ours.  Ours is just “The Moon.”  C’mon folks!  Make an effort!

Meanwhile, people always say weird stuff happens whenever there’s a full moon.  Hey, that’s celestial profiling.  Venus doesn’t get that kind of abuse, and it spins backwards, for heaven’s sake.

Then there are the million and one songs supposedly written about The Moon that aren’t actually about The Moon, at all.  We have blue moons, harvest moons, moons hitting your eye like a big pizza pie and even bad moons rising — but nothing about The Moon itself.  You never hear lyrical lines like, “From thy rocky cratered majesty/Across your lifeless plain.”  Nobody ever sings that stuff.  No, Moon songs are always about love or lonely, or “My God, you make me horny.”  We look at The Moon and gush our emotions all over the place like water from a runaway garden hose, but when it comes to praising our shiny little friend, suddenly everybody’s mute.

However, even though we’ve treated our closest neighbour despicably for centuries, that isn’t the reason we need a national anthem for The Moon.  Here’s the deal!  The way things are going here on Earth, we’re probably going be living up there sooner than we think.  So, rather than getting caught with our pants around our ankles like we did with Covid-19 — let’s get prepared!

God save our gracious moon
Long live our shiny moon …

How am I doing?