Post #671138

2023-11-15 01:55 UTC

In case you were wondering what #PierrePoilievre means when he says he'll take a #CommonSense approach... Conspiracy-minded Esther McVey was appointed "minister of common sense" by the UK's Conservative PM (not her real title, but the one provided to the Sun newspaper in an advance briefing) Edited to add: she'll be “leading the charge on the government’s anti-woke agenda” 😬 https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/nov/14/what-views-will-esther-mcvey-bring-to-cabinet-as-the-common-sense-tsar #CdnPoli #NeverVoteConservative

Replies (2)

@zazzoo@mstdn.ca 2023-11-15 01:56

@myeyesaredim Nice thing about common sense: The more ignorant you are, the better you think you are at it.

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@theogrin@chaosfem.tw 2023-11-15 02:08

@myeyesaredim Back in the day, and this may be apocryphal, a large fast food chain of some renown elected to push a 1/3 lb. burger in direct competition with a 1/4 lb. product. People didn't buy it. They thought the 1/3 lb. one was smaller. This is the story I think of whenever I hear a populist crowing about folk wisdom and common sense. Common sense is a reductivist philosophy which demands that the very complex world in which we live (which is not that much more complicated than it was 50 years ago) be stripped to its barest, simplest explanation without room for nuance, scope of consideration or breadth of possibility space. And oh, yes, that allows for hilariously complicated conspiracy theories which boil down to 'people I don't like did it!' Common sense is taking a sledgehammer to a grandfather clock, then proudly proclaiming that you've fixed the ticking noise.

Open ##1458270