The Honking Torture

 

Xerxes makes the point that only those who experience prejudice know when it happens. The prejudiced will have no idea. And he adds that he is being discriminated against by the truckers who went to Ottawa.

He is wrong to say that only the victim of prejudice can recognize it. Prejudice is a thought. We cannot read minds. Therefore, only the perpetrator knows.

The perpetrator may not believe he is prejudiced, true. Prejudice is a logical fallacy; people make logical errors all the time.

But so do the supposed victims. Hans Christian Andersen illustrates the problem in his parable of The Princess and the Pea. The privileged, if they face the slightest hardship, will think it a grave injustice, and raise a loud lament. Those who are often discriminated against are likely to have become conditioned to their lot, or rarely dare complain.

Accordingly, we cannot accept the judgement of the person claiming to have experienced prejudice. We need clear evidence.

We see a good example in the recent Freedom Convoy. The judge in the bail hearings for either Tamara Lich or Pat King referred to the honking of truck horns as “torture,” justifying a criminal charge, denial of bail, and perhaps even the declaration of a national emergency. I have heard complaints about diesel fumes.

The comfortable judge and the other complainers do not realize that the sound of truck horns and the smell of diesel is daily life to the truckers. A mine or a typical factory floor is also smelly and noisy. If their work experience is indeed torture, they surely do have something to complain about. QED.

Conversely, the truckers may have had no idea honking or diesel fumes would be torture to folks in downtown Ottawa.

Who, it must be said, are the most privileged among us.