I went to bed late last night. The polls indicated the Remain campaign would be victorious. So I shut down the computer, went to sleep and had a wonderful dream about going back into a barber to have him fix the haircut he had left me with earlier in the same dream. When I awoke I felt a sense of justice, and congratulated myself being so brave and standing up to the dream barber.
So sure was I that a Remain vote would be a forgone conclusion I published my latest story, one I am most proud of, and then I clicked on the Irish Times. The headlines stabbed a grim new reality into the centre of my head.
I am not a political commentator. I couldn’t conceive of being involved in politics in any way. I would agree when Billy Connolly once said “The desire to be a politician should bar you for life from ever becoming one”. Good, decent caring types are few and far between, and, in my opinion power hungry sociopaths tend to rise to the top.
This result is extremely worrying. We laughed at The Donald’s campaign when it started. Each public gaff and ludicrous piece of right-wing rhetoric seemed like a sort of strange satire. Then he started becoming more popular. Then it looked like he might win the nomination.
Then he did…
We blamed uneducated, reality TV watching, easily manipulated Americans. Meaningless buzz phrases like “Make America Great Again” acted as a clarion call for many, and the scapegoating of immigrants sealed the deal. But that wouldn’t happen in Britain surely…
Mr. Farage, who consistently looks like someone who has farted in a packed elevator and is silently enjoying the discomfort of everyone around him, is an odious ghoul. He and his ilk ran a thinly veiled racist and dishonest campaign. His language was, and continues to be, hideous. His stance on immigration allowed everyone to see where he was coming from, saying that his “country looks unrecognisable…like a foreign land”. It doesn’t take a political degree to see that he’s not talking about an influx of American muscle cars crowding the streets of London.
He spoke of “Romanian Crime Waves” and against showing compassion for the plight of refugees fleeing Syria. Ukip, his party whose logo looks like it belongs on a Pound Store, has a long list of members who have lost their positions for making brazenly racist remarks in public and in social media. Joseph Quirk was quoted as saying “Well I reckon dogs are more intelligent, better company, and better behaved than most Muslims”. Seriously. I won’t give any more examples further exposure, but that kind of sets the tone.
So how did the Leave campaign win? I’ll tell you why. People. Stupid, stupid people. The polls show that the majority of people over the age of 65+ voted to leave. You know, the type of people who still get their news primarily from newspapers. The wrong newspapers. Other people, people ruled by fear and sensationalism, also voted to Leave. Already today I have seen interviews with stunned members of the public who voted to Leave, quoted as saying that they figured that Britain would end up staying, and that their “vote wouldn’t count”.
People who thought their vote wouldn’t count. I can’t read that quote without automatically sighing and slapping my forehead like Homer Simpson. That’s how voting fucking works you half-witted bridge troll! How people like this have not met with a Darwin Award level demise by now, at the hands of a microwave or sink, is beyond me. There is no saving these people. Evolution should win out in the end.
Democracy is now broken. The rise of the Kardashianism, materialism and style over substance, Big Brother TV, YouTube/Vine stars making millions and Hollywood remakes should have alerted you to this by now. We need a change. We need a Benevolent Dictator.
I know, Dictator is a scary word, but here in Ireland we have a government of knuckle dragging savages, that OUR idiot masses elected, causing regular folk to do the same Homer forehead slap en masse. Our own, human Irish 1950s countryside caricature, Danny Healy Rae recently spoke out against Climate Change saying that “only God above is in charge of the weather”. He said this. With his own mouth.
So here’s my plan for electing a Benevolent Dictator to any country, and do away with stupid people having any say in anything. Some will think this megalomaniacal. Well The Republic of Rome worked until it didn’t, and they did ok after it fell. This system isn’t working. We tried. Stupid fuckers fucked it up to fuck.
First off we get intelligent people from all disciplines together to form a council of the “Decent”. We take professors, artists, writers, people who have accomplished great things in their lives, from all walks of life. We make sure to have lots of cultural groups, and, now this is very important, ZERO Religious leaders. Let them do their own thing. If we ignore them they just might fuck off and leave us alone.
The council convenes every 2 years, and its members get a fresh injection of good, accomplished, well-meaning folk, while some older members have to step down. They meet for 1 week to pick a new Benevolent Dictator, and to appoint his cabinet. Each governmental department would be headed by someone whose background and education is solely in the discipline of the Department to which they have been assigned. You’d think this would be fairly common sense, but that’s not how our governments work. I’m looking at you Minister For The Arts, who never went to the National Concert Hall, or even went to college…
The cabinet, Dictator and public servants are handsomely compensated, to stop the brown envelope kickbacks, and each governmental job is evaluated every 6 months. There are bonuses for performance, and demotions for underperforming. The mandate of the Benevolent Dictator is to do good for his/her people. To concentrate on educating and looking after those less fortunate. To be an erudite and charming public figure when meeting foreign dignitaries. To create jobs. To be inclusive.
After 100 years or so the council would meet to assess its population and see if it can be trusted to try democracy again. People will be shown videos about Farage, Brexit and Trump and asked how they felt about them.
Should they not show their disgust and revulsion about the mistakes of the past, the era of the Benevolent Dictator would continue until people learn…
