Many have asked “Why is Perigo writing for Salient…?”
From the perspective of Salient itself, we know that the Editor was trying to create debate, in enrolling a writer whose views were “out there, all alone, on Pluto”, and that he, in fact, over-succeeded.
But what were Perigo’s own motivations for writing for a publication that caters to “skanky student scumbuckets”?
By stirring up such a lather, is he perhaps trying to further a self-fulfilling prophecy of himself as martyr for the Objectivist cause, surrounded by irrational infidels?
Ironically, most of his writing seems to have veered away from such high rational ideals into goading his opponents with rhetoric and emotionally loaded language.
Maybe he is trying to emulate the style of his heroine, Ayn Rand, who preached the virtues of man as a rational animal, while virtually foaming at the mouth?
Maybe his aim in stooping, as an intelligent man, to merely baiting people with poorly written tirades, was to prove to himself that he is a pillar of truth surrounded by unthinking swine?
The reality is that this frequently adopted approach makes his column appear to thinking people as unreasonable, at times unreadable, and certainly not worth replying to.
But of course, we are ignoring the entertainment value and the sheer poetry of this man’s words. Let us take a tour now through the highlights of his appearances on these pages, and maybe we can learn to appreciate his own very special brand of genius.
1. Description of Nanny State
“… this hybrid of gargoyle and dominatrix …her child-molesters-of-the- mind run our education system on her behalf and deliberately dumb down our youngsters so they’ll vote for her when they come of age (hence the illiterate zombies emerging from her universities); she pays the unproductive with the money of the productive to be reproductive and breed even more voters for her…”
– Here he has produced a brilliant work of fiction that mixes paranoid conspiracy theory and schoolboy fantasy to rival such classic tracts as “the Illuminatus Trilogy” and Pink Floyd’s ‘The Wall’ video.
2. Death to Islamofascists!
“…Now we are told these squalid savages, these bigoted barbarians, these hysterical humanity-haters, these tawdry terrorists, these god-ridden grotesqueries, these ignoble ignoramuses, these genocidal jihadists, are not to be called Muslims because other Muslims—who remain mute while deeds of unspeakable foulness are perpetrated in their name—might get offended! Well, tough turds. As Salman Rushdie has observed, freedom of speech is nothing without the freedom to offend.”
This is so poetic it makes me want to cry.
Perigo, I love you! Please now join with me in a chorus of ‘Peace Train’ by Cat Stevens (the well known singer/songwriter/islamofascist).
3. On ‘The Age of the Airhead’
“…Democracy is dictatorship by numbers. Democracy should never be confused, as it always is, with freedom. Democracy counts heads, even heads with nothing in them, and imposes the resulting abominations on all of us. Democracy is dictatorship by politicians in thrall to majorities or pluralities—and when those majorities or pluralities are stupid, you have the tyranny of stupidity. Ours is such a time.”
This is a wonderful description of our modern quandary. I suggest expanding on these ideas by reading ‘Manufacturing Consent’ by Noam Chomsky. There we discover how the role of government gets subverted in protecting us (the masses, regardless of intelligence) from concentrations of power, usually corporate power. As Mussolini once said, “Fascism should more correctly be called Corporatism.”
4. On ‘The Global Warming Conspiracy’
“…The inconvenient truth for the caterwaulers and their guru, Al Gore, is that the earth has warmed and cooled since the beginning of time, peskily independent of human beings. And it is these cyclical temperature changes, as indicated by real science uncorrupted by United Nations agendas, that influence CO2 levels, not the other way round. The temperature changes in turn are determined by solar activity.”
– Certainty is hard to find in this world, least of all in the field of scientific inquiry, but thankfully we have Perigo and his ilk to brush aside the need for detailed study. Like Inspector Clouseau he has led us straight to the culprit – a big surprise here – it is the Sun. Go about your business now, keep consuming. The mindless corporations are protecting your interests – believe it – only lefty politicians subvert real science. Rest assured, greed is a good thing.
5. On Personal Attacks
“What a feeding frenzy the smelly Saddamites have had with my “Death to Islamo-Fascism!” articles! How characteristic, their clamour for censorship! How intellectually and morally bankrupt, their attacks on my sexuality, weight, hair loss, etc.—anything but the argument!”
Anything but the argument? Hmmm… now that seems familiar from somewhere…
6. On Educational Standards /’Good Writing’
“…Bludge-scum doesn’t really want taxpayer-funded children, since they interfere with his taxpayer-funded drinking, and kills them. Nazi-scum says it’s the fault of taxpayers who smack. Nazi-scum bans smacking. Bludge-scum keeps killing kids anyway. Nazi-scum, via Comrade Kiro, proposes to send its Gestapo into every home with kids.”
– This quote is naturally in an article on declining educational standards, presumably by way of illustrating the extremely poor journalism that comes with such a decline… Can you sense the flecks of spittle around Perigo’s mouth as he rants here? Later in the same piece he quotes another writer at length; suddenly the article becomes coherent.
7. On Religious Illusions
“’We love the truth, but we love our fantasies even more,’ might well be man’s epitaph. His stubborn refusal to put aside childish beliefs will probably be the death of him. Ours is the Age of anti-Reason, whose logical endpoint, barring a second renaissance, is destruction.”
– He is, of course, referring to the spiritual traditions here, but ironically he could just as easily be referring to beliefs such as consumerism and in the ‘free market’…which reminds me of a quote from John Ralston Saul:- “The free market may be a good, bad or insufficient idea, but, in any case, it is just a crude commercial code. Now it is regularly equated with, or given credit for, or even precedence over, the freedom of man. But the freedom of man is a moral statement on the human condition, both in the practical and in the humanist sense. To equate it with a school of business is to betray a certain confusion. An unconscious unease.”
8. On Ayn Rand
“On October 10, 1957, Atlas Shrugged was published by Random House. Thirteen years in the writing, including two years on the novel’s key philosophical exposition, Galt’s Speech, Atlas instantly alienated all elements of the establishment. It still does. Yet according to an oft-quoted 1994 US Library of Congress poll, more respondents were influenced by it than by any other book apart from the Bible.”
The reference to the bible here is indicative…As one of the cult followers of Ayn Rand, (referred to as Randroids, for their ideological interpretation of every issue) he exhibits many traits in common with her – including lack of awareness of his own emotional filter on reality.
Freud lists ‘projection’ as one of the most common forms of psychic defence mechanisms. When one repeatedly accuses others of certain behaviours, often with little or no evidence, it is likely to be a projection of uncomfortable truths from within one’s own psyche.
For an illustration of the undercurrents to Randian philosophy, the BBC documentary The Century of the Self is recommended.