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All views expressed herein are (obviously) my own and not representative of anyone else, be they my current or former employers, family, friends, acquaintances, distant relations or your mom.

Friday, June 13, 2014

Proud of the wrong things.

A lot of people are pretty angry with the state of things at the moment. So, led by Brand the wrong even fewer people are being arsed with voting. UKIP recently had pretty decisive victories with about 35% of the vote. Trouble is, only about 35% of people are voting. My math skills are genuinely terrible, but I don’t think that means they speak for the majority. Also THEY HAVE NO POLICIES. Besides mooning Europe and tax breaks for the rich, that is. It’s worse across the rest of Europe with worrying gains by the far right.

Let me put it as clearly as I know how. If you think a group of people are less worthy of respect because they are browner than you then you are wrong. If you think that some folks are not really people, but something less because they fall in love with people of a gender you think, somehow, isn’t the right one, then you are wrong. If you think someone deserves less consideration because they happen to have tits you are wrong. If you think sharing Britain First posts about D-Day isn’t a disgraceful show of ignorant disrespect for the people who died to protect us from the very fascism they promote you are very, very wrong. If you think someone who believes in a different collection of superstitions to you needs to be shot you are wrong. If you think the UK isn’t better for a history of immigration but rather worse, then you are wronger than a wrong thing. If you think having the cheek to be born on the wrong side of a line on a fucking map automatically denies a person the right to try to better their circumstances you are wrong. If you think the best way to measure something or someone’s worth is in terms of money, then you are a fucking idiot. And wrong.

If you are proud to be British or, Jeebus save us, English, then you are proud of the wrong thing. Built a house? Be proud of that. Raised children that don’t grow up to be awful human beings? Definitely be proud of that. Written a book, play an instrument, run a marathon? Be proud. Hell, I’m even proud when I unlock tricky achievements on Xbox. But why oh why are so many people proud of the random circumstances of their birth? It’s not like as a floating unborn consciousness you had the choice of where to get born and thought I know, there. You had zero input into where exactly in the world you came out of your mother, nor did you get to choose her nationality. So what exactly have you accomplished to justify being proud of being British? Splitting the world up by drawing lines on a map is an idea so against my sensibilities it ranks alongside ‘I reckon everything was made by an invisible sky-wizard’ or ‘Let’s measure the worth of everything using metal or paper’. I mean I think it was a bad idea, if that didn’t come across clearly.

Gah. Humans? Fuckin’ keep ‘em.

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