Over thirty years ago,
I went to a stamp fair in the Imperial Hotel with one of my sons, who was
interested in that sort of thing. They
advertised that they were doing free appraisals, so by way of curiosity I dug
up an old stamp album from my younger days and took it along with me. I presented it to someone at one of the
exhibition stands—a pup of a fellow from Dublin in his early twenties with an
arrogant air—and without even opening it he immediately dropped it into a waste
bin. I made him retrieve it and have it
still somewhere in a drawer.
Now the fellow in
question, I am convinced, knew little or nothing about stamps, he was there
simply as a salesman, and the whole charade of dumping the album was an attempt
to establish psychological dominance.
His attitude was meant to make one feel small and stupid, and therefore
ready for the plucking. Except in this
case it didn’t work.
The reason for
mentioning it is that it is symptomatic of the attitude adopted down the years
by the liberal elite and its minions to ordinary people—and which has now blown
up in their faces. It involved a form of
negative programming. There was no
question of persuasion or argument, but rather a form of psychological
undermining aimed at making people feel unsure of themselves, and therefore
susceptible to being talked down to and patronised and ultimately controlled.
There was seldom any
cleverness involved, certainly at ground level, but rather a box of tricks,
like that of the salesman, designed to achieve the desired political end. The sneer, the mock look of horror, the air
of bored impatience . . . all with the ultimate intention of, in the American
argot, ‘selling you a bill of goods’.
Now there has been
unending debate in the media over the victory of Trump in America. It was because he lied, ran scare stories . .
. because of a sense among sections of the population of being economically
left behind etc. etc. All of which are true. Yet at the root of the victory, and nothing
at all to do with Trump, is, I believe, a popular reaction against the sense of
being contemptuously taken for granted by the liberal elite and the ‘useful
idiots’ who front for them, even as at the same time they are engaged in cutting
your throat.
It’s great to see it.
