The idea of contempt is not usually held in high regard. It is a negative state, a state in which typically one finds oneself only in more extreme circumstances and it is not terribly high on the “useful” emotion scale.
That needs to change.
Contempt – wisely deployed – can have a positive, or productive, societal impact.
On a personal level, it rarely turns a bad situation – or person – towards the good. Holding someone in contempt - especially if the object of contempt is aware of the feeling – tends not to engender thoughts of “hmm, maybe you have a point, maybe I’ll work on that…”
Typically – and often appropriately – the object of contempt will simply cut the person out, dismiss their objections as spiteful and ludicrous, and move on in their life unchanged.
It is this personal experience that keeps contempt in the corner of things that are too mean to clearly show in public setting.
But it is in that public setting where contempt is not only appropriate but can be useful in stopping – or at least slowing – the awfulness of the current state of societal governance.
If the actions of a governing body are contemptible, as they often are, the citizenry must act accordingly and hold them in clear, open, reasoned, implacable, and very public contempt until the reason for the contempt is rectified.
Contempt does not have to rude or impolite – there is no need to note the questionable dating habits of an official’s mother, for example, while railing against their clear incompetence and/or the vicious dehumanization caused by their policies, positions, and actions.
While all protests of various political stripes seem to involve a level of contempt, defining the target of that contempt is key to determining the validity of the protest. In other words, contempt has to have the right reason to work.
For example, yesterday in Los Angeles a group of people decided to shut down a freeway to protest the Gaza war - https://www.foxnews.com/media/angry-commuters-confront-pro-palestinian-protesters-blocking-l-a-freeway-rush-hour . So who were they holding in contempt? It can be assumed they thought their target was the Israeli government and for some reason they thought by blocking a road 7,000 miles away from a war that it would have some sort of quantum entanglement effect on the electrons in Bibi Netanyahu’s brain that would make him stop.
That did not – and could not – happen. And because it was impossible, the actual target of their contempt was the people driving on the freeway, of whom they thought so little that it became perfectly okay to interfere in their lives.
Their contempt was not for Israel but for everyone else around them in the city, so besides the position itself being problematic the focus of their ire was not even faced in the right direction. And that’s why the anger directed at them by stranded motorists was righteous.
Closer to being proper contempt was the Delaware politician who yelled at Vice President Kamala Harris about the same topic, demanding a ceasefire while attending an event unrelated to Gaza -
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Again, the heckler’s (by the way, the term “heckler” is automatically demeaning to the ideas of the person voicing their opinion so do be cautious when that word appears in print) point was not based on facts, evidence, or a clear understanding of history but she made her point and clearly discomfited Harris and that is a step in the right direction.
At another protest – this time about fossil fuels in Germany – the protestors themselves became the target of contempt with motorists literally dragging them off roadway in a manner that actually did show real (and personal) contempt -
One woman dragging another woman by her hair is an unquestionable sign of contempt and, while physicality is not needed in all signs of contempt, in this case it was appropriate.
As to what the protestors held in contempt? They said oil but, as in the Los Angeles case, their real target was their fellow humans going about their day. That and their protest – considering the ongoing elite-profiting green energy boondoggle – could be said to have been in favor of making the currently ascendant woke rich and powerful even richer and more powerful, so the contempt of the people they actually impacted was magnified.
You – the protestors were saying – must be poor and powerless so the rich and powerful may benefit. One doubts that that has occurred to the protestors, making them even more contemptible for their idiocy.
Using appropriate contempt on a day to day basis to change society may not have to go as far as actual hair-pulling.
From simple acts of defiance to demanding answers to questioning questioning questioning to standing with one’s back to the official during a public meeting to rebutting every possible point clearly and succinctly and to absolutely not tolerating public relations hackery are all methods of showing proper contempt.
If and when you meet them or attend a public meeting, use their first name only – no title, no honorific. This put an official off-step and makes them wonder how much you really know about them – including stuff they do not want people to know - as first names imply a closer relationship than they believe exists.
When a hand is proffered in greeting don’t take it – few things make a person feel more awkward and small than such a public show of disapproval.
Contempt can also drip from the end of a pen. Officials – elected or not – are used to being called crooks – they can take it.
But satire and mockery cuts through their official shields easily and deeply and leaves mark they may not forget - https://thomas699.substack.com/p/wither-withering :
The best satire starts with the truth – in whole or in part – and adds intelligent humor to makes its point much nastier – and more memorable - about some public awfulness. That is why both truth and humor – the foundations of satire – are attacked and oppressed and de-platformed and intentionally misunderstood and somehow branded “misinformation.”
Public shaming is an aspect of contempt that can be effective, but can also be lost on the typically jaded official.
And if one is capable of feeling shame, it is a personal aspect that can be easily disposed of, or at least trundled aside temporarily through rationalization – “yes, what I’m doing is bad but it’s my job and if I resign out of righteous protest my kids will have to go to public school so I’m only compromising this one time for the good of my family.”
Fifty compromises later, it becomes a reflex.
One specific avenue of productive contempt is language. By simply refusing to use the delivered-from-on-high euphemisms – person temporarily experiencing an unhoused state, for example – the naked truth is laid bare.
Contemptible public actions are always hidden behind comforting public words.
By using contempt, often by simply and plainly stating the actual state of affairs, the nomenklatura of the ever growing state may start to lose even more luster than it has in the past three years.
They were and are wrong about the pandemic, censorship, freedom, the climate, finances, woke culture, and on and on and they deserve to be repeatedly reminded of those facts.
And that’s why our backs will now be turned.
A little loathing can go a long way.