The “Judy Syndrome” of the left leaning

Having seen what the takeover of Twitter by Elon Musk has caused in terms of scandal, derangement, and reactions,this concept dawned on me.

  This piece is not entirely baked out of my thought, but I must recognise an heavy debt to Professor Luca Ricolfi, one of the most brilliant and honest minds in Italy, and a prolific writer who is in my opinion unknown outside Italy and not popular with the elites here. His most recent book, “La Mutazione” (“the mutation”) is an enlightening read on what the left part of the political spectrum has caused in terms of political and social discourse, and while I haven't finished his book yet some of his words resonated within me.

But first, a small “materials and methods”: not only my opinions are my own, but they are all.... wrong. Or at least, I treat them as such: They are simply the filters through which I look at the world around me, and like all filters they make something evident and mask something else in the process. I simply order them from the one that seems more adapted to the facts to the one which is less, and discard those which clash with any one fact on the ground that is credibly established. At this point in my road, I found the one I am about to present one of the most helpful to explain reality.

So what IS the “Judy syndrome” I put in the title? Well, the name come from the female rabbit in Zootopia, Judy Hopps, whose objective in life is becoming... a Cop. And a”woke” one at that, of sorts.

Because THAT is the filter: many are complaining and “leaving” Twitter since Elon Musk changed the Leopard's spots into something more accepting of EVERYONE's views, but to me that is simply because they liked feeling “cops”, of the public opinion.

But what does that mean in practice? I was lucky in that being a cop ( a Carabiniere, actually) was how I spent my conscription year, and a late one at that: I was drafted in February 1987, at the tender age of 24, which made me the second oldest draftee in the whole battalion, in a see of 18 year olds. So, since many of our daily duties were as guards, I had both the age and the time to think it over.

And the real meaning of being “Police” is this one: you are above the laws you enforce, and know it.

Mind you, I am not depicting Police as a kind of unruly mob, with no law or rules: I only meant what I said. There I was, on the road, with a loaded full auto sub machine gun. With another guy five year my junior, and no radio, which meant something. I actually have a sport shooting license and when I applied, long after that time (wife and I had agreed on not being involved in weapons as long as the kids were minors), a prim policemen whom I showed my association card duly scolded me for asking that, and I was sent to the obligatory weapon handling course when I insisted on acquiring one.

But even if I was very conscious that duty came with that, we HAD to know and were duly instructed that provided that it was for the goals, laws and values that we were trained in, we HAD been invested with a power that is corrosive: a policeman has to decide on the spot and in seconds if the only alternative he has to save others is to take a man or woman's life. And I am not talking about MY life: all legal systems in some shape or form recognize the individual right to protect oneself from harm, subject to proportionality. But only those who have served in the street have to admit, if only to themselves, that their answer to “would you ever kill someone who is not a direct threat to yourself?” is “yes”, or a lie.

But apart from that gruesome thoughts, the key is that the thread piercing through wokeism, climate change battles, interventionism in the economy by the state or central bankers is only one: those wanting to exercise and impose their will on others are exempt from being so constrained themselves. So private flights to Davos to advocate carbon taxes is as legitimate as my mate driving the jeep back to the barracks using the lane reserved to public transport: not as an abuse, but a necessity for the common good. And the “Stop oil” kids blocking thoroughfares feel no different than big city Majors impeding car traffic by reserving lanes for bikes without having checked if the previous ones are used or not, and mostly not using them themselves, outside the perfunctory press event. And are they materially different, I ask?

Same goes for the Twitter fracas: The same guys loudly proclaiming on twitter that they are joining Mastodon were not as vociferous when Milo Yannopoulos was deplatformed, because... they feel like a cop car getting a parking ticket.

 Ditto for the brilliant idea of having people pay 8 bucks for the blue checkmark, which in darker day of oppression of dissenting opinion, like the COVID madness, gave rise to the nickname “Checkisti” which elicited wry smiles by old Sovietologists, who had seen and often seen first-hand that kind of pre-emptive censorship.

So where is the problem here? The BIG problem is potentially that a “shoe on the other foot” movement arises out of this, and no one ends up caring for the shortest and most important legal concept ancient Roman legal minds bestowed on us: “Erga Omnes”.