Rhetorical questions round a rectangular dining table
Vol 5. First impressions, lasting impressions and why is Elon Musk supporting the Canadian truckers?
Vol 5. First impressions, lasting impressions and why is Elon Musk supporting the Canadian truckers?
Longer term readers of my voluminous rhetorical questions will attest to my distrust of Elon Musk and so I am rather bemused at his support for the Canadian truckers. Why? Well, we’ll get to that question soon enough. First time readers may be questioning why I’m starting at the end of my article, or the presupposed titular end of this, the 5th volume of unexplainable and deeply personal rhetorical questions, and I dearly hope they might be. Questions make the world go around, open debate and help to crush the binary reality being foisted upon us. Is that why Elon Musk is supporting the cause of the truckers? Is that why Justin Trudeau is playing a very elaborate current game of hide and seek? And what will the Canadian truckers do when they reach Ottawa?
Answers aren’t my domain, not really, and when I do occasionally expound on a possible answer it’s usually wrong. Maybe my views are as “unacceptable” as those of the protesting Canadian truckers? Maybe. My rather more pertinent question would be when did we vote and agree to be spoken to in such a way?
“Unacceptable views”?
Politics died long before a Camelot King did via a grassy knoll and an exploding magic bullet, but this isn’t about politics any more. Colourful rosettes and bombastic speeches abound yet despite the colour of the pin badge, the result is the same across the world. Red and Blue, Liberal/Labour Democrat and Republican Conservative. There is not a cigarette paper to be wasted between the two opposing political groups. Justin Trudeau is the Leader of the Liberal Party in Canada. Read that sentence again. OK? Now read it again.
So how then can a supposed liberal minded thinker ever describe his fellow citizens as a “fringe minority” who hold “unacceptable views”?
It’s lucky I don’t “do” politics anymore otherwise I’d be thoroughly outraged by this but who has the time for such emotions any more? Not me Jack. I just want to trust Elon Musk and as previous readers will also confirm, I really want to trust Elon Musk, I really do. Obviously Mr Musk won’t be losing any sleep as to whether a cranky, if occasionally dashingly handsome middle aged man from the UK trusts him or not. I don’t trust anyone and I expect this in return. But I want to trust the man who’s putting 67 quadrillion satellites into near earth orbit, who has a futuristically dystopian company that specialises in inserting microchips into the human brain and who has another company named after a famous Serbian inventor who proved that the earth and it’s natural and cosmic electrical grid could be used to generate free energy. But I don’t see much of that free energy being distributed, you know, freely? Microchips being inserted into the human body went from conspiracy theory to fact during a pandemic! And you wonder why I have questions?
Then again, maybe we should be thankful to Elon Musk? If it wasn’t for his array of surveillance satellites (surveillance? Politics Ed) the Canadian truckers wouldn’t be able to quickly download to their mobile devices what an incredible and significant piece of a freedom of expression movement they’re currently engaged in. After they’ve had a damn good sleep in the back of the cab, obviously! That trucking convoy has been going for sometime now and crossing many hundreds of miles and for a “fringe minority” it sure looks like a rather large fringe minority. But they hold “unacceptable views” and if you read the following articles you’d think they were some kind of underground guerrilla warfare group with whispered tales on “Telegram Channels” and their funds have been frozen on a funding website due to “red flags”.
Blimey!
And aren’t liberal thinkers supposed to engage with fringe groups, all groups in fact, explore views they find “unacceptable” and see where a more common and liberal ground can be found?
Canada truckers' vaccine protest spirals into calls to repeal all public health rules
A convoy of truckers and their supporters is set to converge on the Canadian capital in a protest which has spiralled…www.theguardian.com
Fact Check-Photo does not show truckers participating in Canada's 'Freedom Convoy 2022'
A photo showing rows of illuminated trucks has been falsely linked to a 2022 protest convoy in Canada. The rolling…www.reuters.com
I could recommence with my railing against the above article and the proliferation of “Fact Checkers” in today’s laughably serious dystopian world, but I won’t. I’ll just posit this simple rhetorical question and we’ll move on:
Who fact checks the fact checkers?
Answers on a postcard please, or a sealed down envelope, text it to 666–666 if you wish or just howl at a full moon if you have to, just don’t come to me looking for an answer to this particular enigma. Facts no longer matter in our post truth world. Impressions matter. Facts? Less so. Here in the UK we currently have a lying Prime Minster clinging to his job by his supposed fingertips as he’s given the rough treatment by the finest police force her Majesty can provide. I picture in my mind’s eye Prime Minister Johnson being “sweated down” by a couple of beefy, butch cops, slapped around a bit, a really bright light shone in his face perhaps, or a good cop, bad cop routine, but I’ve probably been watching too many 1980’s American police shows again.
“Just the facts Ma’am”? Well perhaps, but facts, checked or not, mean nothing anymore. Impressions do and our Prime Minister will continued to be viewed around the world as a bumbling buffoon akin to a previous Boris, Yeltsin, as he stumbles and bumbles his way through a life of a thousand privileges. Talking of which we return to Justin Trudeau. The current impression is he’s shielding with the virus or playing a childhood game as avoids those pesky, liberty seeking truck drivers. It’s lucky I don’t “do” politics anymore or I’d accuse Trudeau of doing an incredibly poor impression of a “Liberal”. That’s certainly the impression I get and it’s backed up by the facts of The Matrix which confirm the rosette of the party of which he represents. That’s a fact.
But it’s very far from the impression I get.
There are many impressions and the most well worn are those of the first and the last, and I’d also posit the notion of the lasting. The scribes of our time have always stated that first impressions are the most important, but will we evolve over time and give more credence to lasting impressions? It’s almost a year to the day that I made all three impressions in one day and because I’d done my due diligence, checked my facts, prepared like a lunatic and had an utter determination to give a grand old lady the send off she thoroughly deserved, I believe in my heart I may have succeeded. Family, friends and strangers will all have gained an impression of me on that brief day nearly a year ago, and a morning in which I paced around alone, among some beautiful grounds in a misty rain, as I rehearsed my speech for the umpteenth time. I wanted to convey a real lasting impression to my family members in particular, and a family I barely see from one generation to the next. Quixotically, I wasn’t seeking a lasting impression of me, in that moment, but of that grand old lady and how much my family individually meant to her and how much she’d loved and cherished spending her lifetime with them. They will all have first impressions of that much missed and joyously antagonistic and lovingly misunderstood old lady. They may well have their individual last impressions of her too.
I was just determined to give them a lasting one as well.
A year has passed in a blink of our Matrix time and I have both a last and a lasting impression of my grand old lady that haunts my darkened soul and I don’t know what to do with it. I have questions. I always seem to have questions. Answers on a postcard please, or just send me the coordinates for the meeting ground for where I can join you to howl at a full moon too.
Impressions are everything and my first one of Elon Musk was of a strangely, quirky soul running at a million miles an hour and a very engaging interview presence on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast. He returned a second time and was equally engaging but I couldn’t shake the lasting impression of someone at odds with his interview persona. I’ve kept a keen eye on his Twitter pronouncements and his support of the Canadian truckers surprised me. Why? He’s in the “club” George Carlin warned us about, the club that Justin Trudeau and Boris Johnson believe they’re in, but they’re not quite and never will be, despite the freedom deleting tyrannies they currently both oversee. All power to Mr Musk for his Twitter ramblings to his HUGE audience, but I have questions and I have to ask why he’s supporting the truckers? After listening to 80% of Joe Rogan’s podcasts over the past decade I have a very good impression as to why he’s so supportive of liberal thinking, freedom of expression and societal ways and means. But already the impression is being cast of him as a right wing leaning expounder of false information and liberals, LIBERALS, and left leaning people around the world are screaming for him to be censored! What’s happened to my political left?
I am a left leaning liberal by the way but if you’ve read the articles or the scant coverage of the truckers on the “News” or read my surprise and delight of Elon Musk’s support or my inclusion of the current enfant terrible’ Joe Rogan, the impression of me maybe very different. Impressions are everything. Identity Politics is everything. All style. No substance. What will the lasting impression be of Justin Trudeau or Boris Johnson, or Musk or Rogan?
And isn’t the phrase “mis-information” so gloriously odious? So dystopian? So Orwellian? Then again, we have a Liberal Leader of the free world calling his national people “fringe” with “unacceptable views”. It seems all bets are off these days.
And I have questions.
Anyone fancy a game of hide and seek before we howl at a full Moon?
If you’ve in any way enjoyed these silly rhetorical questions from a misunderstood misanthrope, here are some previously published volumes in the series hence far:
Rhetorical questions round a rectangular dining table
Volume 1: Why does uncertainty kill? Why don’t I answer the telephone? And why are there more questions than answers?medium.com
Rhetorical questions round a rectangular dining table
Vol 2. Compliments and Quotations. Starry nights and distractions from within The Matrix. And why do I waste my time on…medium.com
Rhetorical questions round a rectangular dining table
Vol 3. Swiping left and right at internet dating. Should you believe in the future? And is long form writing now…medium.com
Rhetorical questions round a rectangular dining table
Vol 4. Please could you stop the noise? Why don’t I “do” anything any more? And why are we going to war with Russia?medium.com