The Age of Ridiculousness
The struggle against reality
“Wokeness is where common sense goes to die.”
—Bill Maher, Real Time, 1 March 2024
In the 17th and 18th centuries, Europeans ushered in what we now call the Age of Reason. It was a time of enlightenment when human beings began to champion logic, scientific inquiry, and philosophical rigour. Voltaire, Locke, Smith, Diderot, Hume—they all rallied behind the idea that reason could lift humanity out of the murky fog of superstition, bigotry and ignorance.
“The Woodstock generation was into free speech, whereas the Wokestock generation wants to cancel it.”
—Niall Ferguson, Bloomberg, 8 March 2021
Fast-forward to the 21st century, and here we stand, looking back wistfully at those optimistic visionaries from the past while observing the perplexing landscape of today's world—a world where the dawn of enlightenment has been replaced by The Age of Ridiculousness.
Welcome to the modern day, where wokeism—a term as nebulous as it is loudly proclaimed—dominates the discourse. Today, wokeism is bellowed mainly by antisemitic, obesity-promoting, reverse-racist, police-defunding, sexually deviant, paraphilia-promoting, art-destroying, intellectually post-modern, book-burning, terrorist-appeasing, history-ignorant, biology-confused, climate-crazy zealots.1 The Age of Ridiculousness, indeed.
“Let me tell you something that we Israelis have against Moses. He took us 40 years through the desert in order to bring us to the one spot in the Middle East that has no oil!”
—Golda Meir (1898-1978), Fourth PM of Isreal
In this topsy-turvy age, one can proudly march against oppression with a megaphone in one hand and an antisemitic placard in the other. The cognitive dissonance is astounding, as activists who shout “freedom and justice for all” conveniently skip the history lesson where “all” should include, well, everyone. In the Age of Ridiculousness, consistency is optional; it's more about volume, theatre, and soundbites than value, substance, and reason. If you call the LGBT crowd who support Palestine the dumbest group of people ever, you are both homophobe and misogyn.
“We don’t like things you have to carry out to 3 decimal places. If someone weighed somewhere between 300-350 pounds, I wouldn’t need precision -- I would know they were fat.”
—Warren Buffett2
Remember when health and fitness were considered virtues? Now, calling out obesity as a health concern is an attack on body positivity. Obesity is the new healthy! If you suggest that carrying an extra 100 pounds might lead to heart disease or diabetes, you’re fat-shaming. In the Age of Ridiculousness, fat guys can wear bras and show their feminine side by joining the college football cheerleader squad. It’s a new interpretation of Yin and Yang. No one bothers to explain the medical science behind the new claims; it's feelings over facts now! A true woke warrior celebrates obesity as a lifestyle choice.
“The E for ‘equity’ in DEI [Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion] is about equality of outcome, not equality of opportunity…
DEI is racist because reverse racism is racism, even if it is against white people (and it is remarkable that I even need to point this out)…
You can say things about white people today in universities, in business or otherwise, that if you switched the word ‘white’ to ‘black,’ the consequences to you would be costly and severe.”
—Bill Ackman, X, 3 January 2023, on Claudine Gay’s resignation
In the Age of Ridiculousness, combating racism no longer means striving for equality. It means turning the tables. Why bother with justice for all when you can simply switch the oppressors? The solution to historical racial injustice is apparently to create new forms of it, preferably under the guise of reparations or some other euphemism that looks great on Twitter. Kamala Harris, Ilhan Omar and AOC are to equality what Marjorie Taylor Greene, Beavis and Butt-Head are to wisdom.
“The Social Democrats have not lived to what they have promised. They put more money into immigration than elderly care — they care more about people who have come to Sweden in the last two or three years than the people who built the system.”
—Julius Lundqvist, a resident of car-fire-bombed Trollhattan, Sweden, who now parks his car in a garage in the city centre, Financial Times, 23 August 2018
In the Age of Ridiculousness, we defund the police, but don't worry—crime rates are just “perceived” to be rising, according to these same enlightened souls. It’s all in your head. All we needed to do was trade law enforcement for community counsellors armed with nothing but pamphlets on mindfulness. Surely, criminals will reconsider their ways when faced with such enlightened intervention.
“The very same people who say that the government has no right to interfere with sexual activity between consenting adults believe that the government has every right to interfere with economic activity between consenting adults.”
—Thomas Sowell3
The Age of Ridiculousness doesn't just tolerate sexual deviancy—it promotes it as a new frontier of human rights. Not only are we supposed to celebrate every imaginable paraphilia as “identity,” but if you raise any concerns, you’re obviously some kind of puritanical oppressor. Old taboos? They weren’t just social constructs—they were cages for the human spirit! Children are involved early, up to a point where LGBT+ would even make Jeffrey Epstein blush. If you do not take your kids to a drag show where they are encouraged to throw money at a gyrating drag queen pulling his skirt up, you are a terrible parent. If you question puberty blockers or gender transition, you might lose custody of your own child.
Monthy Python had foresight. The makers of The Life of Brian called it a “struggle against reality”:
“Socialism is the historical loser, and if socialists know that, they will hate that fact, they will hate the winners for having won, and they will hate themselves for having picked the losing side. Hate as a chronic condition leads to the urge to destroy.”
—Stephen Hicks (b. 1960), Canadian-American philosopher4
Why preserve timeless art when you can destroy it? In a bold act of “liberation,” statues of historical figures are toppled by mobs with little understanding of the history they’re trying to erase. Art, architecture, and literature from the past are nothing more than relics of oppression. The new art is TikTok videos and performance pieces about crying into the void.
“The final test of truth is ridicule. Very few religious dogmas have ever faced it and survived.”
—H. L. Mencken (1880–1956), American journalist and literary critic5
Gone are the days when intellectuals sought universal truths. Now, the Age of Ridiculousness gives us post-modernists who declare that there are no truths. It’s all subjective. All ideas are equally valid—unless, of course, you dare to disagree with them, in which case you are objectively wrong, and you ought to get cancelled. Logic is colonialist, reason is patriarchal, and math is racist. In the Age of Ridiculousness, 2 + 2 equals whatever we want it to be.
“Where they burn books, they will ultimately also burn people.”
—Heinrich Heine (1797-1856), German poet6
In an ironic twist, the Age of Ridiculousness has given us the woke book-burners. But don't worry, they're only burning the bad books—you know, the ones that challenge their worldview. Orwell warned us about this. Clearly, no one read 1984, or if they did, they burned it right after.
“For years, many governments played down the threats of Islamic revolution, turned a blind eye to international terrorism, and accepted the development of weaponry of mass destruction by dictators. Indeed, some politicians were happy to go further, collaborating with the self-proclaimed enemies of the West for their own short-term gain - but enough about the French!”
—Margaret Thatcher7
Where once we were cautious about extremism, today’s zealots cheerfully appease terrorists in the name of diversity and inclusion. The mullahs who convert Iran’s oil reserves into weaponry are freedom fighters, and UNWRA is on a humanitarian mission. Can’t we all just get along? the disillusioned reality-deniers cry while offering tea and sympathy to those who would happily see them eliminated. This kumbaya strategy of diplomacy is so absurd that it borders on tragicomic. In the Age of Ridiculousness, critics who apply reason are islamophobe, and US flag burners are “social justice warriors”.
“Women with pasts interest men because they hope history will repeat itself.”
—Mae West
If you think understanding history might help inform today’s decisions, you clearly haven’t grasped the essence of the Age of Ridiculousness. Who was Santayana8 anyway? In the Age of Ridiculousness, history is either ignored or completely rewritten to suit whatever narrative is currently trending. After all, who needs facts when you can just make stuff up? The past is an inconvenience to progress!
“If you fell out of your chair upon realizing that the University of Michigan has a full-time diversity staff of nearly one hundred employees, one of whom earns more than the president of the United States, you can be forgiven.”
—Mark Perry (b. 1966), American economist9
Remember when biological facts were based on science? Ha! That’s so Age of Reason. In the Age of Ridiculousness, biology is fluid. Bearded men who breastfeed can operate as fact-checkers at Facebook. Men can be women, women can be men, and the rest is open to interpretation. Anyone who asks for a clear definition of “woman” is a bigot, and don't even think about bringing up chromosomes. That’s “hate speech.” In the Age of Reason, men don’t beat up women. In the Age of Ridiculousness, it is an Olympic discipline.
“Europe is belatedly discovering how unbelievably stupid it was to import millions of people from cultures that despise Western values and which often promote hatred toward the people who have let them in.”
—Thomas Sowell in 201510
In the Age of Reason, immigration policy balances national security and economic needs by promoting legal, orderly migration while ensuring humane treatment and fair opportunities for immigrants. It prioritizes integration and social cohesion within the host society. In the Age of Ridiculousness, national borders cease to exist, and illegal immigrants get free food, housing, and a new iPhone, all the while the people who help build the host, the elderly, freeze in winter. If you speak up on immigration, you’re a xenophobic right-wing Nazi thug.
“Left-wing zealots have often been prepared to ride roughshod over due process and basic considerations of fairness when they think they can get away with it. For them the ends always seem to justify the means. That is precisely how their predecessors came to create the gulag.”
—Margaret Thatcher11
Finally, we come to the climate zealots. They vandalise art and architecture, block traffic, support the protein-deficient upbringing of children, promote inefficient energy sources, deindustrialisation, climate lockdowns, un-freedom, and central planning, fight the four agricultural revolutions, modern farming and reproduction, cover glaciers with blankets, politically misuse science to instil fear into the young and naive, and lecture us about our carbon footprints while jetting around the world for environmental summits. In their world, saving the planet means inconveniencing everyone but themselves. Applying reason to problem-solving is less important than outrage. It’s the performative activism that counts.
“Those who promoted the banning of DDT and other pesticides, in order to eliminate the dangers created by residues, seldom take responsibility for the resurgence of malaria that followed.”
—Thomas Sowell12
Environmentalists successfully had DDT banned from 1972 to 2006 because a 1962 book claimed it was bad for robins.13 DDT was highly effective in reducing malaria transmission, and the ban is responsible for 50 million human deaths during the ban based on one estimate. (It had saved millions of lives before the ban.) Environmentalists also successfully fought nuclear energy for the past 50+ years, which is one reason why 82% of energy production is still based on fossil fuels, which is, of course, much appreciated by the oil & gas industry and the autocracies that require oil revenues to fund wars and terrorism. The waste from the combustion is estimated to cost 7-10 million human lives per year.
In the Age of Ridiculousness, it is human flourishing denying vegan tree-huggers who believe they occupy the moral high ground. They are always uneasy with the growth in population and the affluence of ordinary folk. It is no coincidence that the same laugh-shielded people who seek supra-national diktat in the green-hippie-energy-transition-net-zero utopia also appease Iran, the primary funder of several armed conflicts, most notably in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Gaza. In the Age of Ridiculousness, there will be no Nürnberg-like trials to hold the neophobic instigators of misery responsible for their inflicted hardship on mankind.
“No idea should be above ridicule. Ridicule is a very important tool.”
—Lawrence Krauss (b. 1954), American theoretical physicist14
In the end, the Age of Ridiculousness is just a historical phase. Like puberty. An intermittent struggle against reality. It’s also an experiment in how far we can stretch irony before it snaps. As the imbecile zealots lead the charge, armed with NGO-funded placards, WEF-sponsored education-denying antisemitic humour-impervious teenage cheerleaders, UN-supported social justice manifestos, EU-backed narcissist judicial activists in supra-national courts, and a staggering ignorance of their own contradictions, we can only sit back and marvel at the sheer spectacle of it all. As Bambi’s mum famously said: “It seems long, but it won’t last forever.”
Trivia:
Journalist: “What’s the solution to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?”
Activist (male): “Dismantling Israel and creating a hierarchy-less, feminist-led society. It’s not a dream, it’s reality. It’s happening in Syria.”
—From X, October 2024
Alexander Ineichen, ESG and the BCG Matrix, Substack, 18 October 2024.
Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting, 3 May 2008, Omaha, NE.
Sowell, Thomas (2006) “Ever Wonder Why? and Other Controversial Essays,” Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, p. 306-307.
Stephen R.C. Hicks, Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault, 2004.
H. L. Mencken, In Defense of Women (New York: A.A. Knopf, 1918).
Almansor (1821).
Margaret Thatcher, Speech to the Atlantic Bridge, St Regis Hotel, New York City, 14 May 2003.
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. In the first stage of life the mind is frivolous and easily distracted; it misses progress by failing in consecutiveness and persistence. This is the condition of children and barbarians, in whom instinct has learned nothing from experience. “—George Santayana, Spanish-American philosopher, 1863-1952, in The Life of Reason, 1905.
Mark Perry, “More on my efforts to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion and end gender discrimination in Michigan,” Carpe Diem, 17 May 2018.
Thomas Sowell, Random Thoughts, Jewish World Review, 18 August 2015.
Thatcher, Margaret (2002) “Statecraft—Strategies for a changing world,” New York: Harper Collins, p. 273.
Sowell, Thomas (1993) “Is Reality Optional? And other Essays,” Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, p. 3.
See Alexander Ineichen, The history of climatism, Parts 6-7, on Substack for detail.
The Unbelievers, a 2013 documentary film, directed by Gus Holwerda.
What catalysts do you see for the fall of the Age of Ridiculousness? Europe seems beyond hope. Spain is going Venezuela and proud of it. Will Switzerland be a bastion of common sense?