In defence of Sam

Twenty-year olds, particularly the males, are almost by definition uncooked. The hope always is that by thirty, perhaps even twenty-five with a bit of luck, they will emerge from the oven of life well-baked, their bottoms echoing hollow when tapped. Some are born wise and firm, some will be soggy idiots for the whole of their lives.

Never shy of stating the bleedin' obvious, I wrote a piece on this theme about five years ago, centred as it happens around Aristotle's opinion that the young lack the wisdom for political science.

I know my readers will find this difficult to accept, but I, too, needed a good while in the oven before I was finally done – some alleged friends would say that the process has still some way to go. Whatever.

Fortunately for me, in those days when I and all my friends were young and stupid, there were no CCTV systems, no smartphones with audio and video recording, no social media platforms to expose your stupidity to a waiting world. But, more importantly, there was no justiciable concept of 'hate speech' or a legal definition of 'offending someone'.

When we idiots said, wrote or did something stupid, it usually evaporated immediately. Even if your stupidity made it into the local paper, that, as everyone knows, was only one step away from wrapping fish and chips. We had space and time to 'jump over our own shadows' as the Germans say (über den eigenen Schatten springen), to 'come to our senses' (sich eines Besseren besinnen).

We might do this on our own, or some person we respect might take us to one side and gently explain our idiocy, or, usually, some woman would point this out forcefully (expletives not deleted). In contrast nowadays, one stupid statement or action becomes the curse ('vile!'), Lady Macbeth's irremovable stain, the inexpungeable error in a Greek tragedy that pursues the cursed one with Nemesis and the Furies.

Good luck, Sam! You are going to need it.

Three years ago we discussed Friedrich Nietzsche's advice on achieving happiness: forgetting. As we pointed out then, we are living in an unhappy, disaffected world in which nothing is forgotten and in which whatever we say or do could end in disaster as the woke forces of social order – the cops, the courts, the media and social media – jump on us one after the other with their audio and video recordings, their interview protocols and all the apparatus of condemnation. We acquire a shadow over which we can never jump.

Samuel Williams is an idiot, uncooked, but for his fifteen seconds of public idiocy he may become a lifelong pariah. We shall see whether he will be able to continue with his degree; if he sticks on the political track, his current idiocy will always be held against him and in any other field, what employer will take a risk on employing a noted antisemite such as him?