The Need for Discernment

 TOO LITERAL TO SEE A JOKE OR DISTINGUISH A PENIS FROM A PENCIL" is a line (from his excellent 'Ode to Terminus') in which WH Auden criticises crude, undiscerning technocrats (perhaps encouraged by the crudities of a mathematical data-driven reductionism) who can see the superficial cylindrical resemblances between penises and pencils but overlook the far greater list of differences between the two objects and the enormous difference in thier functions. In 2016, at the time of Brexit and the Trump election there was much talk on the left about "Fascism". Brexit and Trump expressed a degree of national pride, Hitler and Mussolini expressed national pride; QED Brexit and Trump were "Fascist". So far, though, we don't have Blackshirts in the precinct. It is a humble opinion of mine which I, no doubt, have the right to express that a similar thing has happened on the right. The same resort to a vocabulary of historical extremes in order to express what are really fears has been made. Over the Covid response terms like "Totalitarian" are bandied about, again invoking the spectres of Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin and Mao. I think this is as over-stated and inaccurate as the earlier charge of "Fascism." It really comes down to a need for a Linnaeus-style form of historical classificiation of genera and species where a measured forensic scrutiny capable of going past the superficial resemblances that ignite panic is in play. Trudeau certainly errs on the side of autocratic leftism and has recently been getting a deserved come-uppance at the hands of the Convoy. But does he deserve the epithet of "totalitarian" that fails to distinguish him from Benito Mussolini whose thugs beat up their enemies and publicly humiliated them by making them soil themselves in town squares? At the moment the elastic responsiveness of the Canadian democracy seems to be allowing the protest against him to be registered in no uncertain terms. This is bound to price in a big political effect once it is all over. Democracy, in that sense, still seems to be working in ways which it would be unable to work in a truly "totalitarian" regime. There would have been tanks and squadristi with coshes ranged against the trucks there and those trucks would have been reduced to twisted wrecks and their drivers would have been imprisoned and executed. Today, in the UK, England will play Scotland in a packed Murrayfield and the economy is doing fairly well despite the world-wide inflationary worries, gas prices etc . The Covid restrictions seem to be withdrawing and we will be back to the old vigilances of the preceding culture wars.