No, Harry, it’s what you spout that is bonkers

Harry and Meghan’s great lesson to us all is that privilege and ignorance are ubiquitous ills of millennial wokeness.

Prince Harry might soon rival the great philosophers of our time. He would be too modest, of course, to make that claim for himself, and he is unlikely to pen and publish a lengthy treatise to guide our thinking.

But it is his example that provides the lessons and delivers the cut-through insight. The commoner-by-choice, formerly-known-as-royal, might not even be aware of how he helps we commoners-by-birth to reassess the meaning of our existence.

“I’ve got so much I want to say about the First Amendment as I sort of understand it,” Harry said in yet another media appearance last week, in which he complained about media attention, and showcased his ignorance at the same time. “But it is bonkers.”

Sure is, Harry, who gives us a millennial twist on that famous maxim attributed to Voltaire. In this case, we would need to say: “I know you do not even comprehend what it is that you are trying to say, but I defend to the death your right to try.”

Perhaps the last accidental philosopher to deliver such a powerfully inadvertent life lesson was that underrated Antipodean genius Strop — surf lifesaver and sidekick to the eponymous star in The Paul Hogan show. In one illuminating skit, Strop was recovering after confronting some mortal danger, the specific threat escapes me now, but upon survival he was visibly relieved. “My whole life passed before my eyes,” said Strop, before pausing contemplatively and adding: “God, it was boring.”

Ever since, I have endeavoured not to waste a moment. Carpe diem — thanks Strop.

Likewise, in more recent times, Harry’s antics have helped me, at a much later stage in my life, come to grips with what passes for political or moral posturing from the millennial masses that so dominates our public debate. Harry and Meghan’s great lesson to us all is that we should ignore it all; none of it means diddly squat.

After all, if you can confront media intrusion by baring your soul and detailing your most intimate family traumas in a multimillion-dollar exclusive television interview, then no paradox is off limits and none of your causes can be taken seriously. Hypocrisy matters; like living a life of inherited privilege and then claiming victimhood, campaigning to reduce carbon footprints while taking holidays in private jets, escaping the insularity of the monarchy to find refuge in the bubble of Hollywood, or lecturing the world about sharing wealth, while living from the proceeds of empire.

Let us not be too hard on Harry. He served his country, in uniform, and he lost his mum in a tragedy he and many others still try to blame on the shallow media she courted. But his public pronouncements provide a salient lesson on the pitfalls of woke pontification in the age of the millennials.

Born after the internet, discovering iPhones before puberty, and knowing more about the Kardashians than they do the Cold War, the activist millennial cohort mistakes hashtags for virtue, posing for committing, and retweets for respect. Like Harry, they have strong opinions about quandaries they do not understand, spout slogans about documents they have never read, and frame their positions on issues according to what others will think it says about them.

So, we need to take a deep breath, eschew agitation, and trust that their predilections will come to nothing. It all will pass. Like pet rocks. And smashed avocado.

When the millennials have a brush with mortality, Strop-like, their lives of social media campaigning will pass before their eyes. “God, it was inane,” they might conclude, before resolving to become small-government conservatives.

Dare to dream.

The underlying dilemma here is an undeniable disconnection from reality. The great divide in our society now is not between rich and poor, city and country, or male and female; the gap is between the real world and the digital world, the productive world and the political world, the constructive workers and the woke pontificators, or again, the mainstream and the political/media class. Politics is becoming increasingly irrelevant to those who have a job, a business or a life. It is the purview of the digitally obsessed, activist engagers and publicly employed, whose views are reinforced in a circle of affirmation, devoid of contact with the productive elements of society.

Politics has become part of the service economy, dominated by virtue-signallers like the major consulting firms. Gaia help us.

This week we had a spokesperson from animal rights group PETA suggest that catch-and-release would have been the way to nip the mouse plague in the bud. We might have a greater chance of catching and releasing her neurons. Had she ever seen a mouse? Caught one? Been to a farm? Dug a hole or mended a fence?

Her mouse plague comments attracted widespread derision, but we should not be too surprised. This intervention only marked the point at which a constant stream of absurdist policy positions suddenly became too bizarre for even our superficial public debate to tolerate.

Animal rights group PETA suggested that catch-and-release would have been the way to nip the mouse plague in the bud.

In recent years, have we not been bombarded with claims from activists, politicians and even some scientists that if we reduce our greenhouse gas emissions in Australia we will be saved from catastrophic bushfires? How is this any less scientifically or practically impossible than relocating a mouse plague?

The only difference is that the media and politicians go along with this climate alarmist inanity, refusing to familiarise themselves with the science or the facts for fear of interrupting the narrative.

It is the gesture that matters in this sort of political theatre, not ­reality or outcomes.

Most of the media and the political debate this week focused on an International Energy Agency report that said coal and gas would need to be phased out in order to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. They relayed this as if it were a fait accompli but ignored the finding, in the same report, that revealed the technology to deliver half the desired emissions reductions does not yet exist. A telling omission.

There is pretence over probing, everywhere, on crucial issues. A surgical mask in a park on a sunny day is a gesture against the pandemic, a sign to others about commitment to communal action, but it does nothing to minimise chances of infection.

Sometimes the virtue-signals and the gestures get out of hand. Remember how they destroyed the entire greyhound racing industry overnight, thanks to a bit of media manipulation, digital campaigning, and political cowardice?

Had anybody involved in the criticism or the decisions ever been to a greyhound racetrack, spoken to a breeder or trainer? Perhaps the greyhound owners are not easily found on Twitter or Instagram.

The cattle export industry suffered a similar fate. It is amazing what you can achieve in an inner city edit suite, with footage supplied by animal activists, a good social media campaign, and complete disregard for the strangers who rely on the industry for a ­living, or on its exports for their protein.

I guess there are not too many jackaroos on Twitter either. Or Javan village mums.

The divide — the disconnect — is great. And it extends from university seminars to corporate boardrooms. The activists’ grip on the real world seems no stronger than my toddler son’s on a farm trip a few years back — we had been teaching him about the differences between dairy and beef cattle, and when we helped load some animals onto a truck, he asked if they were going off to be milked. When we told him no, he replied knowingly: “Are they going to be beefed?”

Beefed indeed. The digital millennials would not know where their iPhone batteries come from, so how are they expected to know how we get the fish into their sushi, electricity into their beard trimmers or corn into their vegetarian tacos.

The activists are targeting horseracing next. The animal campaigns keep them amused during lulls in their battles against coal, gas and conservatives.

If they had their way, the largest sector in our economy would be social media influencers, powered by renewable energy. Let them eat kale.

They face too little resistance from a political/media class that already has forgotten the lessons of the “Convoy of no consequence”. When the activists actually ventured into the real world, reality won out.

We have premiers now who are happy to close state borders on a whim. It looks easy on Google maps, and they work out later what it means for people whose families are split by previously invisible state borders, companies whose workforces are spread across the same meaningless boundaries, or for people in Broken Hill who run on South Australian time.

Given the influential anachronism into which he was born, it is perfectly understandable that Prince Harry is out of touch with real issues and practical concerns. The scary thing is that the poorly considered views he reflects and amplifies are endemic in generations of people who have experienced the world mainly through smartphones.

The devices are often cleverer than their owners. Wise people ignore all this and engage in serious discussions elsewhere. But how long must we wait until most of our politicians and media come to this same liberating conclusion?