Arrogance and political intolerance

Arrogance and political intolerance.

Is arrogance the basis for modern political intolerance?

Arrogance is defined as :- having or showing an exaggerated opinion of one's own importance, merit, ability etc.

It is a basic truth that all people should be treated as equals, as humans of equal value, but the notion that everyone is of equal ability in every subject is ridiculous. Not everyone can run 100 meters in under 10 seconds, not everyone can be pitch perfect in singing, not everyone has the mental capacity to understand advanced nuclear physics and all the possibilities of quantum mechanics. This does not make anyone a better human being than any other but it does mean we are are not all the same in every respect.

Modern education, which has become politically controlled by socialist dogma, now tries to indoctrinate all pupils with the idea that they only have rights, duty is not mentioned, they are led to believe that each individual is as good at everything, as anyone else. Admitting other achievements are greater than their own, is not allowed. In many education establishments competition in all forms is avoided. This is calculated to, and indeed does, induce a form of arrogance. It teaches that no matter what the evidence, everyone is entitled to believe they are personally the equal of or better than, any and every other individual in every subject and every aspect of life.

This childhood indoctrination with arrogance, is the root cause of intolerance and particularly political intolerance. The Web trolls and their foul abuse, their absurd lies and cowardly “virtual” violence towards anyone not agreeing with themselves, is all due to this teaching of arrogance as being acceptable, even desirable to socialists. Not everyone, but far more than historically existed, has been conditioned to be arrogant. Those that have, now take everything personally, they truly believe that any and every event or even utterance, is about them personally. This results in the snowflake generation, where people are afraid of even knowing other views exist; it results in the no platform attitude, where protecting themselves from opposing ideas is thought desirable. It explains the hysterical reactions to any comment they personally do not agree with. It results in the internet trolls with their cowardly stupidity and violent abuse. It results in fake news, since the arrogant believe they can make up what ever they like, since they are always right and every one else is always wrong. Even on subjects where they have no experience of, or even knowledge of, the basics, they declare all ideas that they have not accepted, should be silenced. This is Fascism but also practised by extreme socialists.

Instead of considering a political proposal on its merits or for what it is, they take it as a personal threat, a direct challenge to their own ego. The fact is that those who they take this attitude with, did not even know they exist and so it can never have been personal. Maybe the fact that the politician does not know they exist just fuels their hysterical arrogance. How dare anyone not know they exist. How dare an idea they do not agree with, be formed at all.

Each individual part of the media feeds this arrogant attitude by being so “partisan” in their comments. In order to get a balanced view it is now necessary for anyone to study 4 or more different media outlets and see both extremes of views, they then need to check the standing bias of those 4 outlets and try to sort out a rational study by amalgamating the opposing reports, even though these outlets may all claim to be reporting the same thing. How many are willing to do this? Not even most academics bother, so many have their predisposed concepts and they only seek those media outlets that support this predisposed view. This all feeds the growing intolerance of alternative political views.

The old quote, attributed to Sir Winston Churchill; that while he disagreed with every word an opponent uttered, he would fight to his last breath to defend the opponents right to say them; has been replaced with an attitude of “I do not know what you are about to say but I disagree so you should not be allowed to say it.”

Historically the making of religion, any religion, a basis for political control, leads to oppression and intolerance; a crime becomes a sin and so renders the perpetrator liable to both secular and religious laws. In Britain the largest of the civil wars led to governance by Oliver Cromwell and the parliamentarians, all of whom based their political ideals on protestant Christian rules. This led to suppression of opposing views. This happened in nations ruled by devout Roman catholic Christians. It happened in many nations with various religious overtones. We are now, in the modern western nations, where instant mass communication with no”moral” rules; being dragged into political intolerance, not caused by religious observance but ruled by quasi anarchic, socialism.

Voters need to make the effort to find balanced arguments, reasoned debate; this may be harder and harder to find but if democracy is to continue, the electorate needs to start paying more attention to policies and the effects of policies than it appears to do now.

It is so hard to find genuinely balanced reports, in Britain we have the BBC but it has been shown that the laws of homogeneous attraction, coupled with only advertising vacancies in certain selected media, has resulted in a staff collective view of what is politically acceptable and this collective view has led to bias in the way it reports events and political policy proposals. Other media outlets are dependent on advertising revenue and money always exercises some control over views expressed. Social media is not exempt since the activists will be those with ardent views and it is the posts of activists that will be the most common.