By Dr. Bruce Smith ——Bio and Archives--August 22, 2023
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Whether microscopic or all-encompassing, mute constituencies make the best causes and the best weapons. Perhaps you’ve heard of some of them. There are the whales, there’s the snail darter, there are the homeless, there are the stray dogs, there are the stray cats. There are the monarch butterflies, there are microorganisms in the soil, there are various pests, and there are the anonymous starving masses of the world. There are people whose slavery ended 150 years ago.
Haven’t heard a word out of one of those old slaves for a while, have you? One of the best mute constituencies is Arctic ice. It’s melting! Oh, and there are those nice cuddly carnivorous polar bears that (sniff!) don’t have any ice floes to play on any more, poor things. Any creature that benefits humans cannot speak for itself and must be protected. Do you like a nice lobster salad or a steak or a fish sandwich, you murderer? How do you think they feel when they get tricked into going into a trap or into the stockyards at Omaha, or into one of those brutal nets far out to sea? How would you like to be fileted and dumped into a dark hold with lots of ice so people at McDonald’s can eat you with fries and a sugary drink loaded with (OMG!) carbon dioxide! Give us all your money and give up your privileges and we’ll bring justice to the entire world.
Then there are wonderful mute constituencies called goals. For example, there is the goal of ending world hunger, the goal of getting everyone vaccinated for the pathogen du jour, the goal of getting someone else’s money into the right third-world hands, the goal of ending discrimination (ever hear of that one before?) against a chosen group, the goal of getting everyone to walk (preferred), or drive EVs. The best goals evoke plenty of guilt and make people think they are really too well off. It’s not fair that you have so much and others have so little.
No matter the mute constituency, the user will skew every bit of information about it to convince you that you must
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Since they’re adept at roping the legacy media into their causes, expect to hear the mantra endlessly repeated day and night until they win, or until they move on to the next existential threat. So don’t get too comfortable in your ongoing discomfort. The chosen mute constituencies change often, almost willy-nilly, I’ve observed. Today it’s ozone, tomorrow it’s an invasive species, and the next day it’s all the hungry children. There are so many causes that we must understand that our masters are at wits’ end to keep us in bondage to them. It’s not a job for the faint of heart.
Mute constituencies make great enemies, too. Take carbon dioxide, for example. Even if we do nothing in life but breathe, that sucker will doom us all. Greenhouse gasses! Run for the sequestration caverns! Crowd in like lemmings and hope they don’t shut the blast doors before you can join the others in slavery! Last one in’s a climate denier! Greed is a good one. Every hear greed standing on a street corner on a Saturday night complaining that he’s been given a bum rap? Bet not. Greed is evil and it’s everywhere. That makes it the perfect mute constituency target.
The beauty of it all is that a mute constituency doesn’t ever have to stand trial or answer charges. The mute constituency’s captors will tell you everything they want you to you need to know. No matter the mute constituency, the captors always somehow escape the consequences of their dire warnings and demands of others. Ocean levels are rising and New York is going to be flooded? Run (or swim!) for your lives! But pay no attention to the really smart people who own and live in homes on the same ocean just a couple of hundred miles away.
And don’t pay any attention to those same people who burn all that jet fuel (isn’t that a no-no?) to get to and from their climate summits in the luxury to which they are accustomed. You hoi polloi just need to give up your gas ranges, laundry sets, air conditioning, and gas-guzzlers in favor of scaled-down electric appliances, solar powered fans, and public transportation to get around in your fifteen-minute cities. Not in a fifteen-minute city yet? Well, there’s your problem right there!
Even vocal constituencies can become captive of the mute constituency crowd if they’re aggressive and assertive enough. “I speak for women all across the country.” “We must stand for the voiceless working poor.” “It’s time we did something for the disadvantaged.” Try asking some of these people what they really want and see if the local TV station will put your story on the air. And good luck. Here again the news media plays into the scheme. They like to talk to “official spokespersons” for the agencies involved, not some cranky taxpayer who gets to pay the bill. Don’t like those potholes at the end of your suburban driveway? Do you think your petty problems are more important than starving people living on the streets in the urban core? You’re worried about paying a little more for gas? Uncaring brute! We have to raise people out of poverty! We have to save the planet! Hurry, we’re running out of time!
There’s another odd thing. These programs and crusades and big spending plans that are supposed to help the targeted beneficiaries always first help the con men working the scheme, you’ll notice. Take welfare spending and ‘jobs programs.’ Most of it goes to people in offices in the bureaucratic structure who are supposed to be in place to give benefits to the poor and unemployed.
The office types get paid on time every week, no matter how many more of them there are now than there were a year ago. It’s an ideal setup. If the problem gets worse the solution must be to spend more and hire more bureaucrats. Those speaking for the mute constituencies always agree and get busy lobbying for more. The mute say nothing.
Solid results of these programs are often a little difficult to find. When the results don’t seem like benefits at all, the response is usually, “We just need better funding and more awareness.” Yeah, right. They’re working on it. If people weren’t so greedy and self-serving we could bring lots more people out of poverty, and do it fast. Results are a little hard to find because anticipated results are the justification to start or expand the program. The end goal isn’t something they talk about, except in very vague terms. The end goal doesn’t really matter because it’s always just out of reach, anyway. Once in a while a really sharp pundit or investigator will ask someone heading up an anti-discrimination organization or a poverty agency this question: “How much money and effort would it take to once and for all solve the problem and consider it finished?” The answer is always a study in evasion and puzzlement. They have no idea, of course, because they don’t think that way. And they don’t think that way because ending the problem isn’t the goal at all. Perpetuating the problem so that they can command a bigger and bigger organization (public or private) and order more people around is the real goal, the goal about which they remain mute.
In the end, if all their crying and moaning and pleading on behalf of their chosen mute constituency fails, they just resort to brute force or police tactics. They intend to win either way, but they’d prefer that we just agree with them and do it their way. It’s much easier that way, at least for them.
Next time someone is pleading for public funds to solve a problem, check to see if their constituency is mute. If it is, dare to ask how much it will take to solve the problem once and for all.
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Dr. Bruce Smith (Inkwell, Hearth and Plow) is a retired professor of history and a lifelong observer of politics and world events. He holds degrees from Indiana University and the University of Notre Dame. In addition to writing, he works as a caretaker and handyman. His non-fiction book The War Comes to Plum Street, about daily life in the 1930s and during World War II, may be ordered from Indiana University Press.