The Age of Lawlessness

Random news story - passengers on a UK plane bound to Turkey prevented the deportation of an immigrant, on the grounds it would be cruel to separate him from his family. What the morons on the plane didn’t know was that the Somali national had been convicted for taking part in the gang-rape of a 16 years old British girl. The police escorting the immigrant did know, yet they backed off faced with the protests of said morons. The law was not enforced because of the objections of a small group of loud PC liberals. This type of incidents have become indicative of the times we’re living in - the age of lawlessness.

I don’t know how many of you are old enough to remember the early days of Political Correctness and the endless fun we made of the loonies finding offence with all sorts of innocent words. However, the days of carefree coffee-break banter are long dead and ignoring the lunacy behind that movement we, as a society, did it at our own peril.
Those pockets of loonies we ignored have coalesced into one humongous body with a collective mind which styled itself as executioner, judge and jury replacing the old laws. In my mind, it takes the form of Cthulhu lurking beneath the surface of the water, ready to spring on its next prey.

We are all aware of stories of more or less important people falling foul of the various hashtag movements out there, we talk about them and take sides without paying much attention to the glaring fact that the rule of law has been abolished in much of the Western world. Innocent until proven guilty, due process, freedom of speech - all out the window. You might say it’s not that bad - after all nobody is thrown in jail or put to death by the hashtag warriors. (Yet!) But to all effects and purposes the punishments dictated by the unseen monster are just as severe as a jail term - lives are destroyed, careers are shattered, people are left unemployable just like an ex-con - only without being judged in a court of law.

I have written before about the case of Kevin Spacey - deprived of his career and dignity on allegations which will not make it to a court of law. I mean the old law, that we still find in books, but not in our society.
Once again, you might say it’s just an actor and these stars are all depraved and it doesn’t matter to us. It does, because there are countless other stories out there of little people whose lives are impacted by the hashtag monster. Sure, they don’t stand to lose millions and walk-of-fame stars like Kevin Spacey, but their lives are altered nevertheless.

Ordinary Lives Matter, Too

There was a recent story about a young British student being fired from a youth magazine for daring to tweet his doubts about the new PC dogma that women can indeed have penises. He was not thrown in jail, but his reputation has suffered and his future career might have been altered. No doubt, he’s but a snack for the appetites of the Cthulhu being, but there’s no law to protect the unfortunate young man. It’s not only about criminal law, even the ethics code in the work place has been thrown out the window. The teacher who lost his job for using the wrong pronoun for a mutant pupil, the scout leader forced to retire for wondering if children are safe in the care of a burqa-clad Muslim woman rowing a boat, the university professor whose career is in jeopardy for making a vaguely-sexist joke in an elevator. Best of all - the London School of Economics professor whose life was ruined after he did not sleep with the assistant infatuated with him. There are many stories like these, stories we read and forget the next day - it’s not the end of the world. In many ways it it the end of the world as we know it.

Laws don’t apply anymore - we have come to accept and resign ourselves to the fact that there are no laws to protect people against the hashtag monster. We choose to ignore this fundamental fact as we tend to think nothing really bad happened. The guy that lost his job over a stupid joke - oh, well… What if tomorrow it’s you or your husband fired for being insensitive to some minority or other? You don’t have to be a ‘predatory homosexual’ like Spacey, you could lose your job over a bloody joke, become a social outcast because you accidentally pissed off some minority or just a faction of a faction of a minority. As opposed to the old legal system, there is no appeal, no organization would risk the wrath of Cthulhu over someone as insignificant as you.

Even more dangerous is the rise of Cthulhu in political life. Since Trump was elected president, the monster’s many mouths have voiced their opinion demand that he be ousted from office by whatever means. A completely undemocratic demand. Those are the rules of the game - majority rules whether we like it or not. And it is not only about Trump, it’s a new mentality I’ve witnessed in my own little country - we don’t like the result of the last elections, it needs to change. Not by democratic means.

For the time being, nobody takes such calls seriously, but then nobody took the PC brigade seriously 20 years ago.Back then we made fun of those who used terms like weight-challenged, marveled at the stupidity of such phrases, but today you might easily lose your job just mentioning something about the elephant in the room if a member of the body- positivity cult happens to be around.
We still poke fun at some of their outrageous ideas but I’m afraid we might be doing this at our own peril.

Images: 1, 2, 3, 4