Written by Zoomer Enoch
One widespread symptom of the decline of “Democracy” recently (if we’ve ever had such a thing) seems to have bubbled up from the ether in the form of petition signing. The right is not immune from this sort of death cry from the bottom, with the recent “record breaking” petition against the “assault rifle” ban in the Canadian parliament. The examples are, of course, more plenteous among those on the left. One only needs to peruse a “left-leaning” white woman’s Instagram page to see a plethora of petitions to sign, which would probably take the better part of a full workday to go through. But even though this sort of slacktivism might be signed-off by the HR department at your workplace, if you were to fit the demographic of people that should be signing these sorts of petitions, what cause or effect is there in the grand scheme of things?
To drill down on the Canadian rifle petition that garnered generous media attention— among those who care about guns in Canada, at least—the effect was nothing. The cause was a bunch of gun owners feeling quite upset over being labeled ‘criminals’ for existing as Canadians and happening to own one of these naughty items.
But the parliament has steamrolled on, nonetheless... Yes, the ban hasn’t taken full effect yet, but different buy-back schemes are still being floated, with champagne in hand, among the representatives who you voted for.
On the left, as well, any sort of meaningful social change seems to find all its energy wasted in ‘petitionism’; possibly more than what I’ve witnessed on the right. Like I alluded to, I doubt there is a single reader under 25 that has not encountered one of these ‘CARRD’ or other shady websites with dozens or hundreds of petitions to sign… for… um… black people? I think you can fill in the rest of whatever we must be outraged at.
What is the GAE’s response? Probably some more giggling, and some more bottles popped at your tax dollars expense. Really, this is probably a legislator’s wet dream. To see people outraged at those who are their working-class brethren and then go about returning to the wage cage or the steel-wheel cage (cars… try to keep up…) for the rest of their day, with their political libido settled to a reasonable level… It’s the perfect outcome. Those in power can continue doing whatever the fuck they do after you’ve signed the ‘current thing’ petition and are feeling like you’ve “done your part”.
The petitionist’s power isn’t all meaningless though. Take the recent Russian/Ukrainian scuffle as an example. By the power of COVID social signaling, the masks have come off for most of us, and the generally blue and yellow signals have been put on in their stead. Many jokes have been made in this regard, but the pressure has stuck, and has been used as the OK signal to send in the boys to help free Ukraine from the oppression of anti-anal-sex Russians.
My own workplace inside the belly of the beast (The Canadian Federal Government) has decided to light up various work buildings in a yellow/blue hue until absolute globohomosexual (or globohegemony, whatever…) victory is declared… I’m sure many of you have experienced such virtuous gestures, as well.
But no matter how stupid these signals might appear to those of us on the outskirts, it doesn’t matter, does it? The media apparatuses have already decided that we MUST support Ukraine, which most definitely will NOT help Raytheon at all, fellow peace lovers. In some sort of closed loop, or vicious cycle, the trend lines will only go up, for both the arms industry and the professional social-signaling industry (… it is a proper industry now).
It is easy to become quite cynical of the current state of the West, given these circumstances, but for a moment, can we not look to our fellow countrymen, and see broken people who have nowhere to look for positive guidance? Democracy, whether you believe in its virtue or not (… so 1800’s), is utterly broken if these signals are any kind of pressure gauge. We’re not even voting anymore; we all know that that’s fallen to the wayside. So now, CHANGE.ORG might come to save us, as we drown in email and Instagram notifications, unable to feed our family sans-microplastics, or to support our wives to not have to work.
Our nations might reach a breaking point soon if the hundreds of thousands of CHANGE.ORG petitions are anything to view as a signal of what’s to come. Petitions are a sure-sign of ‘late-stage-democracy’ (… that one might actually get a rise out of some of the lefties in your circles)… So, don’t participate in the theater of it all—at least, not with any kind of sincerity. Don’t VOOOOOTE. Don’t SIIIIIGN. Your hopes and your energies are all much better spent elsewhere. For instance, how is your family life at the moment? How is your network of friends and loved ones doing? How is your relationship with God?… Is the ‘current thing’ not taking your energy away from something more important?
I wish to paint a rosy picture of the West within the next 50 years or so, but if we don’t read the signs properly we may easily get lost in the rush of it all. As for the rest of you, let me know if you’d like me to make an auto-generating petition website to continue to splatter your doxable information on petitions for web scrapers to soak up. It would be an honour.