Essays in Idleness

An acquaintance, and former friend, says that I’ve been mixing with “controversial” people. By this I think he means, others in need of cancelling, as the revolution proceeds. It is true: I am partial to intelligent people, although also to my saltier Parkdale neighbours, fewer of whom smoke pipes. I hang out disproportionately with the perfesser types, even though I hate universities; but then, so do they. Every one wears socks and shoes, and some wear ties, on the Zoom cameras. A couple of lawyers, too, and miscellaneous other vocations; but what we have in common is, that we’re all more-or-less reactionaries, or what is just as good, capable of coping with views we disagree with, without melting down. (A John-Stuart-Mill liberal counts as a deep reactionary, today.)

But, you should meet their wives.

For none of my buddies is married to a feminist, or anything close. Rather, it seems, they all coincidentally married anti-feminists; and all, by whatever chance, learned, impressively independent women. These ladies are of a tribe who contemptuously refuse office jobs. They’re too busy as the principals of their little home schools. They are producing the sort of offspring that Leftists dream of putting in re-education camps with the Uighers; but some are already old enough to bear arms. Nevertheless, gentle and peaceful and very well-behaved, until they are threatened.

It is true, there is something weird about these women. They all strike me as unusually beautiful, and seem to grow younger after each new child. Too, they dress conservatively, not like the models in lingerie ads. Perhaps Margaret Atwood could write a novel about them.

I love to see Mother Hen at work, training her little chicks by example.

One, for instance, was shopping by necessity in a “big box” store. She found that all the cashiers had been replaced by machines. By the Helpful Person attending them, the new regime was explained. She asked if they’d fired all the cashiers, and he — lying with a smile — said no. There was no effect on employment, he recited. So she left the Helpful Person with her basket of goods, and walked out the door, back to the family SUV, after mentioning that she would never return. Her husband, with the children, walked out meekly behind her.

For Mother Hen knows you make a scene, only for the sake of entertainment. Much better to just dump the goods, and exit. The police still can’t force you to buy stuff. Only the gummint can do that; and then, only on the days when the gummint can find you.

Unfortunately it has been shutting down all the little family stores, in honour of the Red Chinese Batflu. And it is winter, and so, hard to grow things this far north. But the family has a plan, for “back to the land,” and it is well advanced. Classical scholarship goads them on.

A majority still complain that the gummint hasn’t locked them down harder. The polls show this, and the meejah are constantly on the case. But as these people have few children, the cities may soon clear. This will solve a lot of environmental problems.

There has been some moaning about Big Tech, gratuitously closing “social media” accounts. They think it is their duty to silence Trump supporters and the like, or at least to taunt them. But they make the need for an alternative infrastructure wonderfully apparent, instead. And no one much suffers by cutting out them.

Moreover, thanks to such as Amazon and company, the cashiers already will have lost their jobs. All the warehouses will have been mechanized. Their discarded staff will have nowhere else to look for paid employment. This will solve the problem of union wages, which slows agricultural renewal.

Things are looking up.