Thick as a post

Just before bunging this post onto the interweb I realised it’s my 3000^th post. Not a huge number by blogging standards but when I began I didn’t expect – well I don’t quite know what I didn’t expect. Here it is anyway.

There is a vital sense in which we need eccentrics, extremists and perhaps even criminals. From the harmless nutter to the politically correct loon to the megalomaniac, we need them as boundary posts. They indicate where sanity comes to an end and insanity begins. They are the boundary posts put there by bitter experience to indicate where we must not go. It’s where the expression thick as a post comes from. Actually it isn’t, but perhaps it ought to be.

The trouble is we also need similar boundary posts for a completely different reason. These boundary posts indicate where we have gone wrong and how we should change our boundaries in the future. Spotting the difference between them can be a problem.

For example, Jeremy Corbyn is an obvious boundary post of the don’t go there type. An intransigent extremist who over more than three decades has contributed little of political, economic or moral value to any public debate. An easy boundary post to spot one would think but for many voters apparently not.

An example from the US could be Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who if given the opportunity could do a great deal of harm to the US. Ursula von der Leyen seems to radiate post-like qualities and of course the EU itself is an enormous institutional post. Our leaders ignored that one on our behalf.

The problem of boundary posts is an old one, but current difficulties seem to stem from our history since WW2. One might suppose that WW2 and communism left us with a number of massive boundary posts in Hitler, Stalin, Mao and co. Compared to that lot Al Capone was a cuddly teddy bear of a businessman.

Hitler, Stalin, Mao left us with huge clues about the boundaries of political endeavour. Vast clues only a raving lunatic could miss. Unfortunately the posts have been moved and all we are really left with today is Hitler because numerous intellectuals, journalists, politicians and activists choose not to see the others.

The Guardian is an institutional boundary post, as is the BBC, both showing us how the upper middle class pulls up the social ladder to minimise social mobility. This is why we have comprehensive schools – the grammar school educational ladder was pulled up.

The Daily Mail is yet another institutional boundary post, warning us that tits, bums and celebrities aren’t everything. The Pope is another post as is the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Unfortunately ours is also the age of fake boundaries such as identity politics fake racism, fake sexism and the wider problem of numerous fake prejudices. These boundary posts show us where free speech is being abused and where language itself is abused.

Climate change gives us a huge boundary post to indicate where science is corrupted by politics if we are foolish enough to cross over to the mad world of invented physical phenomena. As with all such problems, rational argument goes nowhere. Ignore the boundary post, cross the boundary and reason no longer functions.