it always was, for how are we to believe those morsels of undigested breakfast that now exit the mouth of each and every public official and are instantly labeled ‘news’? In Toronto we are in the middle of the dreaded third wave. Young people — we are told —are being carried off into ICUs kicking and screaming, and are apparently expiring in droves. But patios are opening. Oh that’s nice. And what is this third wave? Well it’s just a manipulation tactic, as every time they mention it they also mention that 'we must only be safe for a couple of more months.’ But they’ve been playing that violin for over a year. Just try finding any statistics about the number of young people that are dying of the third wave in Ontario; you will be greeted with impenetrable gobbledegook that speaks of ‘flattening out’ statistics because — why? Because if they gave us the proper numbers we would not be frightened enough. The final non-statistic that has driven me to write this blog: no one got flu this winter. No one. No one had the flu — but we are experiencing a deluge, a catastrophic exponential growth in the death rates from COVID-19. Excuse me. If no one is getting the flu, then won’t the overall death rates be less— COVID-19 or no COVID-19? I know, God help me if I dare suggest COVID-19 is the flu. Jesus, I can’t navigate my rickety little boat through this mess of misinformation. The important thing to note is that we have stopped verifying facts anymore. And even more importantly, we have decided without a doubt that we have already made up our minds about everything. The mountain of skepticism installed by Nietzche in the 19th century that consequently morphed into Existentialism in the 20th century -- has now switched to a terriffyingly objective moral and factual certainty. If you ask anyone what is right or wrong, they'll roll their eyes and say -- ‘Well isn’t it self-evident?” Everyone knows what the truth is; the point is to get it done, to spread that truth using the most effective manipulation possible. At one time this was called persuasion. That was when we cared to analyze data and/or ideas, when it was possible to have a thoughtful unpopular opinion about anything. But the digital world has taught us is that we are either on one side or the other -- on the side of truth or lies -- and our task is to trick the other side into joining our camp. To this end, any chicanery, any immorality, is justifiable. Thus Vivek Shraya — who holds the great ‘trans truth’ that there are no longer two genders -- was allowed to trash gay men in her book I’m Afraid of Men, going on about how selfish, vain and hypersexual we are. (Well yes we are selfish and vain and hypersexual, but isn't everybody!) Vivek is forgiven because she is on the right side of things — therefore fully justified in shaming her fellow queers, damning and slamming fags to promote a worthy cause. It didn’t always used to be like this. There is an answer; and I’m sorry it can’t be more interesting. We must revisit the time worn principles of ancient Greek rhetoric. Something happened in the mid-1700s — the powers-that-be began policing language (as they are doing today — exiling mean, lacerating wit — the wit of Shakespeare) and then they (The Royal Society) started promoting science. And it was the new ‘scientists’ who banned the imagination, much as the lovely Rebecca Onion of Slate magazine, is doing now with Dr. Seuss -- to protect as yet unformed minds from Theodore Geisel's cruel sense of humour. There was a time, you see, when rhetoric was taught in schools, and there was at least a very vague sense of what sophism is. (Nietzche was a fan of sophism, he was mad as a hatter, but so very very wise) The essence of sophism is skepticism; a distrust of rhetoric. If one understands that everything is a lie, that all speech is figuration, that everything we put into words becomes a fabrication as soon as the words are formed our mouths -- and if we therefore come to the public square (our present day digital platforms) armed with sharply honed critical faculty, ready to do battle with the reality being present by various rhetors, we can then take fundamental issue with what any authoritarian might say, and most importantly, be ready and able to critique the way he or she says it. It is by both respecting rhetoric and fearing it -- but most of all, by critiquing it -- that we will ever have a hope of living in a world that is not mad, a world in which we are constantly being manipulated. This is why I go on about lies all the time, and why I am writing a book about this. It’s called Shakespeare Lied, and I’m half way through. Like my first book on Shakespeare it will be relegated to the dustbin, but may live on in the libraries that are somehow not yet destroyed by the overzealous politically correct woke folk. This is my goal -- before I die, to write so much, and publish so much, that when books become obsolete — as is happening so quickly — and we become less and less able to tolerate transgression (i.e. they finally get around to burning Lolita) -- there will be enough of my books around that people will find them by accident and read them. There is something, after all, about coming across an old book in the corner of an attic. What I love is what I find inside them. And I don’t necessarily mean the text. I stole a book from the shelf of an old house in Stratford once -- The Dream Life of Balso Snell by Nathaniel West. When I got it home a note fell out. The note said “Clive, meet me in the bar at 10 pm, and don’t tell a soul” (I paraphrase). It was, in my view, a gay note, arranging a secret assignation, it was a plot; nay, a budding romance. Nothing could have more persuasively convinced me that the book was meant to be stolen by me. Goodbye! I must go outdoors! The patios are open! The faggots will be out; putting their live at peril in the third wave. But our lives were always in peril, weren’t they? And some of us still managed to survive.
