Tyranny In The Nanny State

In what insane society could someone who accidentally sent sexually explicit text messages to his entire contact list instead of just his girlfriend even be charged with a criminal offence, let alone jailed for it?

A prudish, “sexual morality” obsessed Muslim state like Saudi Arabia or Malaysia? The authoritarian and equally prudish Singapore? A communist state waiting for the opportunity to persecute a dissident?

No … modern Britain. The fount of Liberalism.

This is precisely the fate which befell 24 year old Craig Evans, who was sentenced to 18 months jail in Birmingham. How could this be, you might well ask?

He is a swimming teacher. As such, amongst his contacts were a 13 and a 14 year old girl. The explicit text also found its way to them and so some idiot copper consequently decided to charge him with inciting a child to engage in sexual activity.

Surely incitement must require intent. How could there be such an act as negligent incitement?

Which idiot(s) at the CPS allowed this case to proceed? They should be named and required to publicly justify their actions to the citizens they serve.

Why didn't the original judge throw the case out?

Why did the appeal judges not quash the sentence altogether? Instead, they simply reduced the sentence to nine months, wholly suspended. Craig Evans still has a conviction for a sexual offence against children. He will be on a sexual offenders’ register for the rest of his life. His career is destroyed, as he will never be able to work with children again.

For what? A mistake using his mobile phone. There is nothing more sinister here: the offending message was sent to his entire contact list, including his parents. It was clearly accidental.

How does this farce in any way represent justice? Would any of the people involved, who allegedly represent the justice system, have lost a wink of sleep?

Of course not. They will all keep plodding along, moronically ruining more people’s lives as they go.

That Craig Evans was even charged at all is a travesty. His life has effectively been ruined. He should be able to sue for wrongful prosecution and defamation. The police who laid the charge, the CPS prosecutors who pursued it and the judge who sentenced him should all be sacked. How can such people possibly be trusted in positions where they have the power to destroy lives with accusations?

It is a good example of the justice system being taken over by morons and mindless bureaucrats. The separation of the powers of parliament, the judiciary and the executive is a long and deeply held principle in Western democracies. However it is being destroyed in the country of its origin as the police, CPS and judiciary become infected with the disease of nanny state politics.

This is not simply an occasional perverse outcome from badly framed legislation in a blind justice system: it is tyranny.

We usually think of tyranny in the organized form of the totalitarian police states of the communists or Nazis or Robespierre’s Republic. But tyranny is usually not so well organized. In modern, Western societies, it is arising via the correlation of the actions of hand wringing nanny staters and social democratic ideologues, mindless bureaucrats, arse covering jobsworths and cynical, careerist politicians, all aided by interconnected databases and lazy media.

This is the tyranny which charged and convicted Craig Evans. No Stalin, Hitler or Robespierre signing death warrants. Not even a hegemonic conspiracy. Just gutless, mindless stupidity, flowing from one idiot to the next within a channel of either ideologically based or fearful, reactionary legislation, all incompetently written.

In the police states of the Communist era, had a man been falsely accused of a child sex offence on a spurious construction and interpretation of “facts”, most people would not have believed it. It would have been done as a warning to dissidents or vindictively as a result of a personal dispute. The prosecution would have been seen as an act of raw political power. This enemy is known and does not even attempt to hide itself; in fact, it makes itself known at every opportunity.

But in Craig Evans’ case, the enemy is not a unified, coherent entity: it is the combination of the above mentioned nanny staters, bureaucrats and careerists with the fear, apathy and stupidity of the citizens who could organize and vote this crap out, but don’t bother.

Who will fight to clear Craig Evans’ name … to have his conviction overturned, his name removed from the various databases and the media print the story of his innocence such that a significant proportion of people will actually read it?

Very few could be bothered … too busy with job and family. Life’s pretty tough these days, you know. The lumpen middle class not even realizing that his struggle is their struggle.

In some ways, that tyranny is more terrifying, because we are fighting the willful ignorance within. People pretend it’s not really happening because the alternative is to admit to themselves that they are regularly presented with the opportunity to remove the enemy at the ballot box, yet consistently fail to take it.

Instead, they pretend that the tyranny does not exist: it is a fantasy of conspiracy theorists, Tea Party reactionaries or redneck racists.

TYRANNY DOES NOT REQUIRE A LARGE SCALE CONSPIRACY.

Human societies are complex, self organizing systems. That self organization is not always directed or even initially evident. Tyranny can arise via the unwitting, but persistent correlation of the actions of various people or groups who have different motives. All it takes to become established is for no-one else to organize to stop it.

Satire In America

Subtlety in satire increases its value as humour because it widens its target to those who don’t pick up on the joke. Laughing at the earnest reactions of these idiots is usually considerably more funny that the original article, as it was with Roger Simon’s piece on Republican VP hopeful Paul Ryan’s antagonism toward Mitt Romney.

Satire works best when people can see an element of truth in the caricature. Despite this, it is a defence to defamation because it is not intended to be taken literally, even though what makes it funnier is the knowledge that many people will take it literally. In that sense, the irony of the actual satirical target(s) not being the literal target greatly compounds what would otherwise be an only mildly humourous piece.

Satire is one of the most important elements of free speech for precisely this reason. Mockery is and has historically been in many cultures, including our own, a powerful social device against hypocrites, self-aggrandisers, tyrants, urgers, curmudgeons, malingerers, whingers and in general, people who take themselves just a bit too seriously. Not only does the satire ridicule them and their positions; it also mocks their supporters and those who pretend that the ridicule itself should be censured.

As most Americans have little grasp of irony, the compounding nature of subtlety in satire unfortunately makes such humour an elitist, almost esoteric pursuit in the United States.

Even the Bloomberg article discussing the plethora of commentators duped by Simon’s piece ended with negative judgement (and thus made itself part of the satire):

“Satire should actually be funny."

Well, the original piece may have been only mildly funny, but it’s a lot funnier now.

“Or, at least it should be pretty obvious. There is no underestimating the literal-mindedness of the American reader.”

What? Why would anyone want to laugh at the average American? I don’t get it. That’s just un-American.

“Naturally, no writer wants to put a blinking sign indicating "This Is a Joke" above his or her parody piece. But editors should realize that if there is even a chance that such a sign is necessary, it's probably best to spike the whole idea.”

Yes, much better to take the Golden Girls approach:

1.      Spend most of the scene setting up the joke

2.      Deliver the line

3.      Look pointedly at the target for several seconds with tongue in cheek

4.      Play canned laughter just in case

No wonder Americans just didn’t get Dan Quayle and Sarah Palin.

Bummer For Eel Smuggling Ring

Things went embarrassingly awry for an “eel mule”, who ended up in Auckland Hospital last week. The unnamed man is believed to be a pawn in an international frog and eel smuggling operation.

“I was only worshipping Tunaroa”, was the man’s lame excuse.

“Thet’s not how you worship Tunaroa”, replied a burly Samoan orderly. “Here, see how you like these coconuts instead!”

The Country Would Be So Much Better With A Venomous Old Queen In Charge

There aren’t many young, misogynist, gay men. It seems to be a generational thing. There are very few young, gay guys who aren’t comfortable around women, don’t have women friends and generally eschew the company of women. As gay people have become more comfortable with their sexuality, significantly because the majority of (Western) society have realized there are far more important things in life than moralizing about what other adults do in the privacy of their own homes, the separatism which was a significant subculture within the gay community has largely evaporated in the younger male generation.

There is however, a subset of older, gay men who really do not like women (or most people for that matter). Nasty, bitchy, poisonous old queens¹.

There’s a different kind of separatist subculture amongst lesbians, with its origin in left wing, feminist politics: men are responsible for the oppression of militarism, capitalism, racism, sexism and therefore most of the world’s evils, from war to famine to sexual abuse to global warming.

Separatist lesbians don’t like gay men because they see them as vacuous and apolitical, aspiring lumpen-bourgeoisie. As a result, many gay men are suspicious of most lesbians. They see them as ugly, aggressive and humourless (as indeed, some of them are).

I’ve never met Alan Jones, but he makes (more than) enough public comments to give one a sense of the man. He strikes me as the archetypal, poisonous old queen.

There’s nothing particularly bad about occasionally being misanthropic, but in such moods, one should hold both sexes in equal contempt. The venomous misogyny which so often suffuses Alan Jones’ references to women is something altogether different.

His railings against Julia Gillard seem to have that extra dimension. There was his over reliance on referring to Director of Military Prosecutions, Lynn McDade as “this woman”. I remember hearing the sneering contempt in his voice.

Women are wrecking the joint, eh? I agree that Julia Gillard, Christine Nixon and Clover Moore are all poor performers, but I doubt that has much to do with their gender.

The problem with Jones’ misogyny is that it obscures his political points.

Lynn McDade should not have had the power to ultimately decide whether Australian soldiers are prosecuted for acts committed in combat, because she has never been in combat and therefore could not have adequately understood the soldiers’ situation. That’s not to say she should be unable to have input from a legal perspective; just not the decision making role. Being a woman should exclude her not per se, but because of the circumstances: Australian women do not serve in combat roles. Many men should also have been excluded from that decision making role.

I don’t want $320 million of taxpayers’ money spent by Australia promoting Pacific island women in business and politics either. It smacks of a typical, lefty pet project: lacking in clear measures of performance, wasteful, open to abuse, largely unaccountable and funded as always with someone else’s money.

But how about some evidence based, rational analysis, instead of invective ultimately focusing the listener on Jones’ psychological problems with women instead of the political issues?

Of course, Australia would be a far better country with an ignorant, venomous old queen at the helm. The ministries could be staffed entirely with athletic, young men. Instead of taxing them, we could pay energy firms to produce more CO₂. It’s not a pollutant: plants thrive on the stuff.

We could all hold our heads up high as our PM gave the opening address at the APEC summit after having been charged with "outraging public decency" and "committing an indecent act" in a London public toilet.

“I was just looking at his cock to make sure he didn’t piss on my shoes, Your Honour.”

¹ Not all gay men are queens, but all queens are at least a bit poisonous; some are highly venomous.