The Silence of the Cuckolds

Never underestimate the power of people to deny reality.

I know someone who works for the Home Office. The Home Office is the department of the British government responsible for overseeing immigration. I mentioned to this man that thousands of fighting-age men from the Islamic Third World are coming over the English Channel in inflatable boats, landing on the beaches of Southern England, and being given accommodation in four-star hotels at the taxpayers’ expense.

He became angry at this and denied that the hotels were four-stars. He didn’t deny any other aspect of the story. He just became angry when I suggested that the hotels were four-stars. In fact, there is a four-star hotel near where we live, which is closed to the public and full of migrants. You don’t have to look very far to find evidence of this.

It struck me as a strange kind of denial. He tacitly admits that he knows that what is going on is wrong. He knows that what I am saying is true. He must feel awkward knowing that he is trying to defend the indefensible. Otherwise, why become angry about it? He picked upon one detail of the story to contradict, and even that was wrong. Does he mean to imply that this invasion of the country would be perfectly acceptable as long as we accommodate the invaders in hotels which only have two or three stars?

There is an old saying that it’s impossible to get a man to believe something if his salary depends upon him not believing it.

The last few years have been a profound insight into human psychology. Years ago, we would ask each other how it was that German civilians worked for the Nazi war machine. How could they bring themselves to do it? Now we know. Never underestimate the power of people to deny reality.