What you're thinking?

“He’s saying what we’re all thinking!”

You’ve all heard it, possibly from your own lips. Sometimes it is muttered amongst audience members of a show by the latest (or perhaps most archaic) risqué comedian. But it is most often heard within a crowd lapping up banal rhetoric, igniting the primal hostility that has existed within the species since year dot.

To my mind though, there is a conflict between how the comment is intended and how it must be perceived. In context, it is nearly the exact opposite of a compliment.  

It is meant as a salute to the speaker’s insightfulness, his wisdom at pointing out the common thought shared by the crowd. It also has a wider aim in attempting to unite members of the public and therefore bring some suppressed opinions out into the open. The phrase is a passive rallying call to the simpleminded out there who wish to have their simple minds ignored no more. Not only this, but they have now found a spokesperson to articulate their inner passions.

I will list an example just for clarity’s sake. It is a hypothetical one but I’m sure it will resonate with some of you:

“I, for one, find the sight of two men engaging in passionate kissing disgusting. I’m only saying what people are thinking.”

Make no mistake; they are saying what some people are thinking. I myself have been among the slightly offended retorting with, “Well it’s not what I was thinking”, but they do have an audience. Of course they have an audience. British society is built upon 2000 years of an intrinsically homophobic religion. Our global society is built upon tribal conflict that has always marginalised minorities. I’m sure only the hibernating among you would disagree that they have a massive audience. The problem is that the message is usually not worthy of even being debated, let alone admired intellectually.  

Now, to my point. The fact a man is saying what you are all thinking probably means he is not revolutionising modern philosophy, or forging a new path for Western democracy. He probably isn’t redefining our future, or quantifying the past.

When Jesus remarked, “He who is without sin cast the first stone”, people weren't already thinking it; they were stoning people.

Voltaire wasn't preaching to the converted when he expressed the most powerful demand for free speech ever uttered.

A great orator can redefine your world view in a few simple words. Their power can occasionally even change a hard set belief. The late Christopher Hitchens once said, “That which can be asserted without proof can be dismissed without proof”. It gave a damning answer to the previously unanswerable question: “How can you prove there isn’t a God?”. That is what a talented thinker/speaker can do.   

It is premature and naive to hold someone up in high esteem simply because he is saying what you didn’t want to say yourself. If you harbour racist thoughts but have made them dormant out of your own judgement, then what right does an overpaid, underachieving politician have to change that? Or why pay to see a comedian who merely reels off insults that you were mentally aiming at a group of asylum seekers fifteen minutes earlier? Why waste your money?

It is tremendously easy to drum up the irrational, inner hate in the public. 1939 and many other four digit numbers are monolithic temples of proof as far as that is concerned. It takes exceptional people, however, to say what we should be thinking. Not in a dictatorial way, but in undeniable prose that slices like a cleaver through the stupid, erroneous and mundane.

We visit the cinema to enjoy films we can only aspire to make. We go to concerts and galleries to see artists we consider worthy of our total attention. We go to school to learn from teachers who know things we don’t. Why do we then manage to summon up the arrogance and ignorance to idolise charismatic demagogues who are simply telling you that they think in the same way as you. Why give them a round of applause? You could sit in front of the mirror and have the same experience. At least then you wouldn’t have to put up with a bloated, asinine and, ultimately, incredibly square individual yelling at you for his allotted time. Not to mention the saliva confetti that seems to be a permanent fixture of such events.

To be put it more succinctly: Don't be silly when choosing who you idolize. Make it Socrates, John Lennon, Martin Luther King, I’ll even give you David Beckham. Just don’t let yourself down by applauding a larger than life thug who has simply developed one talent that you haven’t: Public speaking.

Not rocket science.