Incoherency Manifest: Clarksonian Dialectics

The common oaf (europous oafus) is a lesser known species of primate found throughout the world, believed to originate from the British Isles, largely concentrated to locations in posh neighborhoods or near to regional pubs. Oafs are characterized by a lack of intelligence, bumbling idiocy and a healthy diet of pints. The oaf has mixed with human populations for generations now, producing mainly males, and lives among us now, with several famous historical oafs including Jeremy Clarkson (former presenter of the program Top Gear), Boris Johnson (politician), Robert F Kennedy Jr. and many others. Due to their presence in modern live, the stupidity of the oaf often bleeds into our own lives, often impacting them for the worse.

To unjerk now for a moment, I want to discuss a term that I find applies more often than I’d like when it comes to modern politics, clarksonian dialectics (CD). Clarksonian dialectics is a name that came to me months ago during a high fever and has stuck since, named after the previously mentioned Jeremey Clarkson, a celebrity, “small business owner” and a man who shoves himself needlessly into politics more every day. The reason I want to discuss it particularly is that, now that the American election has finished, along with the Brits during the summer, we as Canadians find ourselves approaching our own election where oafs are becoming increasingly prevalent in the political landscape. Owing to the fact that these people, these oafs, are somehow completely hive minded together by internet rot that was probably shown to them by an algorithm devised by an engineering grad, no matter where you find yourself in the global north, the oaf and their ideology, clarksonian dialectics have become increasingly present. And yes, I know that dialectics are not an ‘ideology’ typically, while for example, dialectical materialism, which underlines the contradictions of class internally. This is not to say that their ideology is not in itself a complete contradiction, if anything CD is by its very nature a serious of contradictions which have started to choke our world.

Let us examine the origin more thoroughly, Jeremy Clarkson, and illustrate how the term has come to present a unique social archetype of the oaf with other contemporary political examples. For those somehow unaware of Clarkson, he started his celebrity career as a motor journalist which evolved into the vast majority of his fame, and crucially one of the first points of CD, his staying power. It is key that this staying power is somewhat independent of our oaf in question. For example, RFK Jr exists originally in the public consciousness due to his father and the Camelot period for the Kennedy family, the several year period where JFK was president and RFK Sr was the attorney general of the United States. Both Top Gear and Camelot are engrained into public and social history, and most often not for bad reasons, with immense staying power for the oaf. It is not wrong to enjoy Top Gear or to find JFK hot. The issue arises because we subsequently positively associate to our related oaf. You may well have a good impression of Clarkson if you are disconnected from international news, especially British news. RFK Jr for many years in the 80s and 90s succeeded in an activism career (bizarre right?) for river and waterway pollution in the US because if nothing else, he is still very much a Kennedy, one of the biggest names in the family after the older brothers died. A similar American example, incoming Vice President JD “couch fucker” Vance. Before an accelerated and heavy push to esoteric Nazism and the New Right (a political ideology largely characterized by right wing victories after the first Trump win in 2016), Vance was a relatively ‘normal’ republican, even calling himself back in 2016 as a never Trumper. He used this never Trumper position and the success of his memoire on growing up in a poor white rural town (this is fun fact entirely fucking fake and complete BS, I wasted days reading this book) to launch a political career that landed him a senate seat for Ohio. Fast forward past his staying period, he is now a guy who regularly flirts politically with the likes of Nick Fuentes or other neo nazis.

This brings me to another key point of clarksonian dialectics, that even during a period of staying power, the related oaf will OFTEN make comments or do things that are questionable, newsworthy or generally problematic. In the case of Clarkson, a large chunk of the jokes he specifically cracked during the course of Top Gear have not aged well at all, even to the point of language that was offensive at the time it aired. This is opposed to the two others, not oaf, hosts of the show, who’s humour and jokes aired on the show have largely aged fine. The oaf is a problem publicly, it might and often is kinda funny, they are still a shit disturber for the worse sometimes. Often times this is brushed off as the oaf is “one of the good ones” – my mother probably. Clarkson was eccentric man who liked things his way to an extreme and made good TV in the process, while still regularly hitting and beating his producers (E&A Article 35648682 by the BBC). RFK Jr. had a really weird thing with dead animals even back in the 60s and 70s. Reading contemporary accounts of Robert, classmates at his private school for troubled boys (which he was put in after his father was merked) consistently talked about how he used his pet hawk to hunt mice in a carcass pit of dead cows (“RFK Jr” by Jerry Oppenheimer). Returning to one of the other famous British oafs, Boris Johnson, Bojo, he came to prominence as a reporter for EU politics in Brussels where he would regularly lie and be racist towards some members of the European Commission legislative body along with being implicated in an assault plot against another reporter (“UK’s Johnson suggests he left journalism because he was always abusing people in print” by Reuters, “‘A couple of black eyes’: Johnson and the plot to attack a reporter by Simon Murphy for the Guardian).

There is also, a crucial 2^nd key to these oaf’s fame. That is a resurgence with extremely elevated levels of bizarre, out of touch political beliefs that do nothing but to hurt others in their respective political landscapes. Clarkson, after the success of Top Gear, continued to work in television, in The Grand Tour, and more notably Clarkson Farm. In Clarkson Farm, Jeremy attempts to become a true man of the country and start a proper farm, which it becomes clear that even to his best efforts, he is an absolutely useless sack of shit at, and only succeeds thanks to other individuals who are distinctly not oafs and know what they’re doing. Leveraging other people’s success for himself against his already established brand and identity from this period of staying power, Clarkson like most prevalent oafs, is hugely successful and has a second coming in the public conscious. People are talking about him, and now are ok to ignore some if not all previous issues as they can enjoy or take agreement in the actions of the oaf. Another example of this, is Doug Ford, who I have been avoiding mentioning for purely the sake his name makes me seethe with rage. While not exactly the same, Doug was able to leverage his brother, Rob’s, original fame and staying power, even regardless of the crack and Doug’s own history of being a hash dealer (Article 12153014 by Greg Mcarthur for The Globe and Mail), along with a more recent, and positive, resurgence in his brother’s name after his brother was diagnosed and later passed away from cancer (obviously cancer is not a positive thing, but you can find many articles from the time forgiving Rob for his failures as mayor), into a successful run for the premier of Ontario that we are still stuck with. At the time, you might not have cared much about Doug, but the public felt bad for him and took a stance of agreement with him carelessly.

The final aspect to the oaf ideology and the origin of clarksonian dialectics themselves is that after his resurgence in popularity, Clarkson started to take an increasingly large presence on talk shows, news segments or articles, giving his opinion on various topics that are related to the ‘common man’. In the case of Clarkson, he is now so heavily involved in the workings man, that many people often forget he comes from extreme wealth. The oaf has dressed himself as a skin of the working man in a mix of true idiocy and evilness. This where the dialectics aspect comes in, whereby its very nature dialectics is about contradictions. Clarkson, RFK Jr, Ford and Vance among all other oafs, they are rich. Filthy rich. These men ally themselves with common folk only to make easier wins for the rich. That’s the real truth behind their ideology, that they are all only in it for themselves, because they are too stupid to understand compassion and get away with it all in the same breath because of that same idiot imagery.

Remember kids, don’t trust beef tallow.