Time To Stop Fighting?

Radio and TV presenter James O'Brien - loved and loathed by different parts of the electorate - once wondered who would get the blame when the right wing press and the vehement Leave faction had run out of other people to blame? Once we've been out of the EU for long enough and can't blame them for all our ills, who would be turned on as the reason for all our woes?

Our press demonises whenever it feels like it, so blaming 'Remainers' for their lack of optimism and their insistence of 'talking the country down' will obviously be high up on the list of people to blame. I'm amazed that we haven't had more civil unrest and vigilantism aimed at all the groups of people the Daily Mail has blamed for all the horrible things that have happened in the last 40 years, given the hate pouring from them and other right wing press. It isn't going to be long before women are blamed for something because they're getting far too much say in the fairness of society; that'll be clamped down on my the Mail. Women! Know your place!

I couldn't be conceited enough to think some bloke who occasionally gets 1000 people reading his blogs is going to become a target for the kind of people who feel abuse is now allowable, especially if you disagree with them. It has made me begin to realise some unpleasant things about the current situation we're in sociologically, and that the simple fact that while I don't want leaving the EU to happen, it will and therefore economically we will all pay a little bit more for everything (as a least worst case scenario). Popular people with dissenting voices will get a steady rise in traffic. It'll look great the begin with, then the comments will start and you'll realise that half the audience are frothing at the mouth wanting to castrate the writer with their own filed down teeth and the world will start to look a little less safe and people like me might start to think twice about publishing our own blogs or opinions on social media.

The thing is, I believe I am on the side of the rational, even if those not on the side of the rational will feel they are. Logic disappeared a long time ago, replaced by faith, belief and feelings. The EU referendum and subsequent months that followed has shown quite clearly - for those who want to look - there are divisions within society that have not only been uncovered by the vote, but have reached a nadir - a situation where families have fallen out; friendships destroyed and mutual respect has evaporated. I could (and have done) sit here and write a list of all the things that economists, political analysts and experts in many fields have stated will be irrevocably changed - for the worse - by the Brexit vote. However, it would do no good because, for starters, you are already mainly converted, and if you are one of the people I know who did vote Leave, you're not likely to be reading this (yet).

There isn't an easy fix and I understand the problems all political parties have at the moment at an almost atomic level. Even if this vote had been 49.9 against 50.1 it would have been determined as a will of the people, simply because enough people want out. Anyone with any sense will have realised that the Leave nutters outweigh the Remain ones by a considerable margin; we have to self harm ourselves in an extreme way to quell future unrest. Can you imagine what Farage and his band of swivel-eyed 'At All Cost' wankers would be advocating if Maybot did a sensible thing and simply told the country we can't leave the EU because it would bankrupt the country?

I am also aware that people on the right side of politics would have a field day with my suggestion there would be civil unrest because we should all be aware that the left wing are as bad, if not worse, than all the would be Nazis lining up to declare Ingerland Uber Alles. "It's always the bleedin' lefties saying there'll be riots in the streets," is usually the retort or words of a similar meaning, badly spelled. You could argue with these people that you only ever see anti-government protests when the Tories are in power, but to them... whatever...

Right wing politics brought you Hitler. Left wing politics brought you weekends and holiday pay. People who aren't fascists do have evil thoughts; some swear occasionally and many broke the habit of a lifetime by wishing Farage had died in his plane crash. I accept there are left wing people who will be offensive to right wingers and help destroy the argument of holding the moral high ground. I would like to think this is born of frustration rather than a conscious desire to inflict anything untoward on someone else. People who view themselves as left wing usually don't think of themselves as soviet supporting communists; however, a lot of right wing supporters look and/or sound like Nazis.

Then there's the 'Freedom of Speech' argument, which seems to be a catch all reason for allowing people to be hateful. There is something slightly rational about attempting to explain to people why something might not be a good idea and something slightly irrational, in fact borderline bonkers, in the way the right wing think it's totally acceptable to viciously insult anyone who they don't agree with. Once upon a time I'd argue that the nutters are only on the internet and you wouldn't meet this kind of cretin in a pub or at the bus stop; the problem is it's a growing army and it's fuelled by offshore billionaires who, I presume, think a worldwide civil war based on opposing opinions will be good for business?

The thing is, there's an element of futility in all of this; like the rational people seem to think that by being rational it will change the tide. A sort of anti-Canute thinking, where instead of acknowledging the tide is stronger than one man or a thousand men and their beliefs, you have to hope that it - hope - is stronger. That's how slightly weird and wonky the world has become. I can make the tide turn. I can because it is the will of the people!

A world where one serial sex offender is vilified all over the news, while another is President of the USA. A world where someone reading the above sentence will be marking my name down in a book, without a hint of irony, and mentally executing me until the revolution when he can do it legitimately and preferably in a big town square in front of a baying crowd who hate Social Justice Warriors as much as they hate 'niggers' 'Pakis' and 'faggots'. I'm sorry, but this is designed to shock. This country isn't going to miraculously wake up in the morning and be some utopia we inadvertently mislaid behind the sofa.

I heard someone on the radio recently ask the aforementioned James O'Brien if he seriously thinks he or other people who explain the detriments of Brexit in articulate and [ironic] simple ways have any hope of changing the minds of people who believe that it is the only way forward; that it has to be achieved, without compromise and regardless of the human cost? The answer to that has to be a resounding NO and simply because it's difficult enough to change rational Leave voters minds - You know Born Again Christians? That's your average Brexiteer. The problem is the Brexit version of the Westboro Baptists is about as bad.

If you had the opportunity to have a captive leave voter giving you their undivided attention and you could get them to look at every shred of evidence you have to prove they did the wrong thing; that the reasons they voted were bullshit. Do you know what their answer would be?

"Yeah, but..."

There wouldn't be anything else. 'Yeah, but' is the answer. Some of the more extreme ones will even take self-harming to a new level by saying, 'I don't care.' There's one of them in my own family (and I managed to have 45 minutes on the phone to him last week without once getting angry).

People talk about democracy like they even understand it and apply our archaic First Past The Post version to the referendum, like they think that we'll get another chance to decide in four or five years, like it was a General Election. David Cameron allowed a vote to take place that became a plebiscite on something else entirely and now a lot of angry people want it to happen as fast as possible because when it does it will solve all of our problems and everything will be fantastic again. Obviously when that doesn't happen there's going to be a lot of very confused people out there.

You ask all these people to name you an EU law that has buggered up their lives or this country and they usually quote something that isn't even true. Bananas is a good one, especially as there are no banana growing EU states, to my knowledge. Fish is another, until you realise what the EU were doing was protecting fish stocks so that your grandchildren and their grandchildren will be able to buy and eat affordable fish; they were not trying to drive hundreds of hardworking fishermen out of business. The problem we have with the fish scenario is people who aren't fishermen will argue that we should be able to strip-mine our seas and when our seas are barren we should be able to go and do the same to everyone else's seas, mainly because we're British and we should be allowed to do whatever we want because we invented football and telecommunications and won a few wars, on our own, and never with any help from anyone else, ever...

The Daily Mail would argue that this is a rational and totally valid argument. The Daily Mail thought Herr Hitler was a thoroughly decent chap.

So why fight? Especially if the fighters are going to be the next targets? Why make the bullseye bigger and easier to hit?

Yes, I understand that the main fear for anyone who didn't want us to leave is the fear of the unknown and the fear that everything you have will be reduced to worthless shite and by not resisting you will end up condoning it by your inactivity (look at Germany in the 1930s, not for the Nazi analogy but for the lack of action from the majority that led to extremists prospering); but it's got worse in the last 16 months, not better. There is a wee bit more resigned indignation from the more realistic Remainers and there's a whiff of even more swivel-eyed jingoistic bravado from the Leavers (Hate crime is up 29% since the Brexit vote; that should make them all proud that they're achieving what their motives spelled out); we're settling into a gradual degradation of civilised Britain and once all the unnecessary foreigners have been kicked out, Remoaners will be at the top of the new list, along with Muslims and black criminals - it will their fault and when they've all gone it'll be someone else; maybe dog owners, or people with Volvos.

The only way to make Britain truly great again, it would appear, is to get rid of all the things that make it a great place. It needs to become a deeply nasty isolationist state that trusts no one else and only deals with the things it needs to. That will make the like of Rees-Mogg and Davis happy; then they can rule their fiefdoms while kicking shit in the eyes of their staff. Huzzah!

I'm not completely sure we're a million miles from something like a Ministry of Patriotic Brexit, along the same lines as any fascist (or communist) state has had in the past, where people begin to be sanctioned if they speak negatively about Brexit - Belittle Brexit, Belittle Britain. So it might be worth just watching from the wings, gauging the mood, keeping quiet, not drawing any attention to myself from the Internet & Thought Police and preparing my garden to grow enough fresh food to save me money to stay warm...

Hate! What is it Good For?

Hate is a bit of a vile word in certain contexts. I mean, I hate [insert vegetable name here] is a strong way of disliking something, but we've all said something similar and no one really bats an eyelid when someone says, 'I hate cabbage'. If however that person says, 'I hate Muslims' then the word takes on a different tone.

I heard someone on the radio this morning actually say, "I don't care about the Muslims who died at Grenfell, I only care about the people of other religions who died."

A little earlier this month, I heard Rio Ferdinand talking about the amount of on-line abuse and vile nastiness aimed at him after his wife died of breast cancer. It doesn't matter if you don't like the man, his career as a footballer or anything else about him; but to be nasty, hurtful and vile about his wife's untimely death makes me wonder what kind of human we're breeding now?

The right wing press has championed the hate of Islam, and has essentially picked a fight with an entire religion and wants you to tar them all with the same brush it paints nasty pictures about. Ironically, the right wing press turns a blind eye to Christian fundamentalism, which has probably accounted for more death and violence in the last five years than anyone else (Yes, USA, we're looking at you). But, the right wing press are essentially all Christians and we know how truly Christian Christians are, don't we? They are selectively Christian and will be decidedly unChristian if what they need to be Christian about is also something or someone they find morally reprehensible. Believing in 'our' God gives you the privilege of being a twat about others and their own gods.

Our right wing press pour over the Quran (a word which my US created spell checker doesn't recognise, by the way) as much as nutty Islamic fundamentalists, attempting to construe something from its texts to allow them some kind of justification in propagating their hate; yet they can conveniently forget the words of Jesus when they want to demonise the poor, the unemployed, single mothers or someone who says 'bum' on the telly... In a sensible world Jacob Rees-Mogg would have been vilified and castigated for any of his recent comments, instead he's being championed as a future leader of the Tory party. That is basically how mad the world has become.

I blame the Internet, which is quickly challenging Margaret Thatcher as the major blame of all ills. It appears whatever Thatcher didn't manage, the Internet has been used to achieve it. I've been writing an article about a hobby I had and was involved with the fan-promotion of during the 1970s, a thing which still exists in the 2010s but has more divisions and disparity than probably existed in the entire world in 1970. Of course, the 1970s were rife with racism, sexism, homophobia and bigotry but it somehow felt slightly safer for everyone, probably because vocal arseholes had very few platforms to spout their shite and skinheads were as rarely seen as examples of Trump integrity. Hate wasn't commercially viable back then so it was left to the actual nutters and not just anyone who lives on a British street or road who can log on to the hate machine.

I actually hate the fact that we've allowed our education system to ignore educating people in areas we probably need more education. I still see 18 months after the turkeys voted for Christmas idiots spouting utter bullshit about the EU and how our extrication will welcome a flood of rainbow-shitting unicorns to bring joy and happiness; a world where everything will be cheaper, easier to find and there won't be any foreign-speaking drains sucking the life out of our country. Even some right wing papers are admitting it isn't going quite as smoothly as many believed and others are hurriedly lining up people to blame for its failure.

If it isn't the EU, it's us Remoaners (for being soooo negative), or it's certain Conservative MPs (not Boris or JR-M), or it's experts (Ha!), or women (the next target?), or people with pugs dressed as Christmas elves... You do realise that because the right wing press is already looking for scapegoats, they're subconsciously admitting it is going to go to shit and it can't possibly be their fault, so someone needs to be blamed?

This week, I've seen examples of nasty ignorance that actually had no basis in reality. Attacks from rabid Brexiteers at Remoaners for proving their arguments are rooted in fantasy and getting verbally violent about it; another little bit of me dies inside whenever I see ignorance being worn so blatantly. If one thing has really boggled my mind in the last two years it has been the mistrust people over 40 have about 'experts'. The obstinate way which people are now dismissing actual fact in favour of how they 'feel' not only leads to madness, it will probably end in violence.

I really hoped that moving to Scotland - a considerably more tolerant society - would have helped me, even if it was just to ignore it more easily. The problem is... is it even a problem? I suppose, in a way, it is because it has actually polarised it for me. The fact I live in a remarkably tolerant area, despite years of neglect, just makes things that happen south of the border worse. When I see wilful ignorance, stupidity and hate spewing from the mouths of probably people of a similar age to me, I get almost as angry with these twats as they do with the lie they're allowing to ramp up their blood pressure. I want to point them towards all of the proof that blow their twattish words out of the arena; but it isn't about that. People hate being proved wrong, so proving them wrong will just make them more angry and if they get angrier then the desire for violence increases.

If we fail to educate people. If we do not encourage evenhanded freedom of thought. If we allow the media to lead us down a very unpalatable path without recourse. If we have politicians who won't condemn the acts of the hateful then what kind of future are we giving ourselves?

Ask yourselves some questions. Where do you see it all ending? Can you see a happy ending, anywhere? After Brexit, will you feel you are more or less isolated? What can we do if nothing works out well? And what will the uneducated bigots, racists and arseholes do when their arguments become ludicrous and meaningless words?

We need some sense or we're all fucked.