Badger and the Search for Justice

LET’s talk about life, dear readers.

Badger will not tell you how things were better when he was a cub. He definitely won’t tell you how things were simpler or people nicer.

He won’t do those things because they are demonstrably untrue.

Badger is a keen student of human nature. Not being human allows a certain perspective on affairs.

Badger and his kin have a refreshingly straightforward approach to existence.

You get on with it.

That’s not the case for many humans.

They find comfort in falsehood, myths, ideologies, ideas, opinions, or clear and false ideas.

We live in a moment when reality is a matter of opinion, where the “ought” crowds out the “is,” and where opinion substitutes for what is real.

Badger does not care much for selfdelusion or irrational beliefs. He resents irrational beliefs built on a foundation of selfdeluding prejudices and presumptions.

To far too many people, facts contradicting their opinions are like pebbles in tomato soup or rubber bands in raspberry ripple ice cream. You get them out of there or eat around them.

The callous and careless disregard for facts permeates every level of society and every part of politics.

Let’s place three undeniable and linked facts next to the other and see where that exercise takes us.

Donald Trump will almost certainly be the Republican nominee in the US Presidential election on November

4.

Donald Trump will almost certainly be the Republican nominee in the US Presidential election on November 4 and is a vain, lying, fraudulent, dishonest, draft-dodging sex offender.

Donald Trump has a good chance of winning the US Presidential election on November

4.

You might not like fact number three, but it’s a two-horse race, and the other main candidate comes with significant baggage. Unless you accept facts as facts, you cannot hope to understand why millions of Americans will vote for Donald Trump in November.

The population of the United States of America is over 330m.

It’s called “the continental United States for a reason”. America is big and largely empty. If it were populated to the same density as the UK, the US’s population would exceed 2.3 BILLION.

Although around 12 million Americans travelled to Europe for business or leisure in 2023, most Americans never go abroad. When your nation is a continent that stretches from Alaska to Florida and from Hawaii to Maine, why bother?

Suppose California were a sovereign nation. In that case, its GDP would be greater than that of the UK or India and rank fifth globally.

From that, you can, perhaps, understand how and why Americans experience news, media, the world, and culture differently.

Quite apart from glib notions that all Americans believe in their manifest destiny to be on top, the USA’s size and wealth sets it and its people apart. All the whataboutery in the world will not change that one jot.

Trump’s candidacy proves that tapping into the “oughts” works. And for a simple reason: “oughts” are based on resentment and grievance. Because grievances and resentments are subjective, logic and recourse to facts cannot address them.

“Ought” voters are not educationally challenged oafs, racists, bigots, or - in Hillary Clinton’s words - “the deplorables”.

Some of them undoubtedly are, but only in the same way as some Biden voters.

Instead, as in this country, the “ought” voter feels excluded from what “ought” to be theirs in a system which “ought” to treat them either preferentially or more fairly. They “ought” to have things better because they believe that, in imagined and real ways, the current system neither accommodates their needs nor allows adequate redress for actual or perceived disadvantages.

Belonging to a group gives security. It supports the self and one’s idea of oneself. Ethnicities, sexualities, political affiliations, religions, nationalities, and the other concepts dividing humans are just functions of the need to belong.

Humanity might collectively agree on an abstract general good’s existence (Badger regards it as arguable). However, individuals mostly believe in what is good for them and those with whom they most identify.

To an extent, humans are all “oughts”.

That is why facts are so important. One way to think about what we “ought” to have is to consider why we do not have what we think we deserve. Whether that’s a better-paid job, lower mortgage payments, greater financial security, better healthcare, or nicer housing is immaterial.

The rational answer is that we have not had the right combination of luck, inheritance, ability, ambition, or the requisite capacity for hard work. Few people are ready to be that hard on themselves.

The easier course is to blame others for our relative misfortune. It’s someone else’s fault we do not get what we “ought” or “deserve”. From there, it’s a very short step to the language of “rights”.

It doesn’t matter who the others are or whether our resentments or grievances are objectively justifiable.

Someone else, something else, must be to blame or be at fault.

Humans cannot accept the entirety of the blame for whatever ails them, so there must be an external cause.

The others: the immigrants, the gays, the socialists, the fascists, the right, the left, the woke, the deep state, the Muslims, the Jews, culture war warriors, the Welsh Government, the Westminster Government, the Protestants, the Roman Catholics, Eton, Oxbridge, comprehensive education, ancient aliens, the Illuminati, TERFS, the pronoun police, vegans, even Orville the bloody Duck.

(Defo Orville, in Badger’s opinion).

Do you know what, readers?

All those “others” feel the same way about you, each other, and subgroups within their groups.

Human nature being what it is, that’s exactly as things ought to be.

You deserve nothing less.