Category: Politics

By Any Means Necessary

I decided to write this not just because it fits today’s Fandango’s One Word Challenge of begrudge, but also because it is something I have been thinking. I deliberately try to keep my FOWC as brief as possible, but this one is a bit longer. I’ll try to keep it as short as possible but I usderstand if you want to skip.

I’ve been reading several posts lately, they’re all prompted by the recent events in the US. Not just here, but in the general media. The tone of them is basically, this situation is unacceptable and I want it to improve.

That’s fine, as far as it goes, but for my money, it doesn’t go far enough.

If it were me, I would go more along the lines, I want to be treated with equal rights, and by the way, if you don’t want to give me equal rights, then I will take them anyway.

In other words, This can happen the easy way or the hard way, but either way, it’s gonna happen. Give me equal rights. If not, I’ll take them. No dicking around.

I think we should be grateful that the last few generations of Civil Rights activists have been so nice about it, I’m not sure that future generations will be.

A Bit of Tolerance

I apologise in advance to non-UK readers, as this post will have no relevance, and even less interest, for you.

I caught a post the other day. It alluded to Brexit supporters being brainless morons. I know, you thought Brexit was done and dusted, but it still rankles here. This particular one has been a common refrain for the last five years.

If your politics is to the right, some very prominent people supported Brexit. Even somebody like Margaret Thatcher came to want out of the EU. Somebody like Enoch Powell (as right as they came) argued against the EEC way back in 1975. Plus of course, many Conservative MPs of the recent past have supported Brexit. In the same vein, Major, Cameron, Heath… all of them wanted to be inside the EU.

And if your politics is to the left, again, people Like Michael Foot, Tony Benn, remember Eric Heffer? They all wanted out. Far from being “extremists”, out on the edge, Foot actually became Leader of the Labour Party, and Benn came within a cat’s whisker of being elected Deputy Leader. If you think Brexit was about immigration, these people had sounder views on immigration than you or I!

And ex-Labour PM Tony Blair, not to mention current leader, Keir Starmer, have both been vocal supporters of the EU.

I mean, many of these people, far from being brainless morons, actually played a large part in shaping their respective ideologies. So, before anybody condemns people as idiots, they should find out the various reasons which made these people think as they did. So it cuts across the divide.

Whatever their view, some people are idiots, no doubt about it. But on both sides of this argument, there are reasoned principles. We should be tolerant of people who might not agree with us. It’s kind-of an easy refrain, but I think when we uttere it, it shows us to be the idiots.

Talk about Provocative…

Just seen a trailer for what looks like an excellent programme on tv.

A class in a school. They separate out the white kids from the black kids, and ask them what it means to be black/white.

Needless to say, the black kids come up with a list as long as your arm, on what it means to be black.

The white group. however…what does it mean to be white…”nothing”.

For me, that says it all in a nutshell. Being white gives you the ability to take things for granted. Same as being male. Same, frankly, as having wealth or an education. Now, we can’t do anything about the body we were born into, except to realise that we might have automatic privileges.

So if you fancy pondering something later, I can think of worse things.

It’s tempting to knock the education systems these days but when they’re doing things like this, I applaud them.