Not a traitor.

We’ll start with a Final Jeopardy question:

The irreparably corrupt convincing the (mostly) uninformed to demand the incompetent deliver the impossible.

Answers on a post card.

It was intimated to me not so long ago that not wanting to leave the EU meant that somehow I was a traitor to the UK, siding with the enemy. I suppose the first point is that when did the EU become our enemy? Secondly, I have long established my dislike of obsessive patriotism, how it’s little more than mild racism, and how one of the best things for us as a species in the long run would be to stop allowing lines drawn on a map dictate where we can and can’t go, drop this infantile tribalism and just, you know, treat each other as fellow humans rather than allowing the country of one’s birth or one’s parents’ or grandparents’ birth inform how worthy we think people are of basic respect.

Feeling sad while posh twats cheer a person declare an end to free movement with a smirk on her face does not make me a traitor.

Thinking it's bizarre that said person seems really pleased about introducing an 'Australian-style points system' under which her own family would have most likely been denied entry to the UK doesn't make me a traitor.

Feeling bereft that my children and their children (if the species lasts that long) will be denied the chance to work, live, love and settle in nearly 30 other countries as easily as getting on a train does not make me a traitor.

Wanting to be part of a larger international community working together to achieve positive outcomes, and not wanting to retreat to a more insular existence looking to a rose-tinted past does not make me a traitor.

Being worried about people I know having to deal with uncertainty regarding their right to stay in the place they’ve lived and worked for years and years does not make me a traitor.

Pointing out that the vote of 17 million people out of a country of 66 million doesn’t really give anyone carte blanche to do things that will take decades to recover from doesn’t make me a traitor.

Disagreeing with the assertion from the Daily Express that the said 17 million have been ignored, because the past three years has been almost nothing but an attempt to deliver this impossible thing you think you want does not make me a traitor.

Pointing out that about 1.5 million of them have died in the 3 years since, and that millions more now have a right to vote, making the original result somewhat out of date doesn’t make me a traitor.

Thinking that it’s strange that those in positions of influence advising we go ahead and leave without a deal stand to make £8.3 billion from their hedge fund speculations betting against the performance of UK companies because they know the country will be negatively affected isn’t reported more widely in the press doesn’t make me a traitor. (Eat, and I can’t stress this strongly enough, the rich.)

Feeling depressed when thinking about the sheer amount of good that could have been done year after year if dickheads didn't obsess over stupid shite don't make me no traitor.

Finding it hard to understand how non-racist leave voters don’t think that the massive level of support from racists and the sharp rise in racist violence the day the result was announced isn’t cause for concern and possibly a rethink doesn’t make me a traitor.

Pointing out that precisely nobody voted for no deal, which in fact highlights the profoundly unworkable nature of the original referendum, cursed from the outset, does not make me a traitor.

Being afraid for people who are dependent on drugs imported from other EU countries does not make me a traitor.

Saying that if you’re surprised that the ‘plan’ to take us out keeps falling apart when it comes up against the cold light of reality and long-established Parliamentary law means you’re not getting enough actual fact in your tabloid-fed bullshit does not make me a traitor. (As a starting point, try supplementing your red-top nonsense by following actual legal expert David Allen Green, if you can stand the hellscape Twitter has become.)

Thinking that ripping up over 4 decades of social, legal and economic integration without anything to replace it with is highly likely to cause recession, anxiety, social unrest, violence and the collapse of institutions and arrangements dependent on this integration (like, say, the NHS or the Good Friday Agreement) doesn’t make me a traitor.

Feeling impotent fury watching an old colleague’s record store go from a growing business to a stagnating one, barely afloat in the years since the referendum as stock imported from Europe rises steadily in cost due to a floundering and uncertain pound, and punters find themselves with less disposable income does not make me a traitor.

Repeat after me: NONE. OF. THESE. THINGS. MAKE. ME. A. TRAITOR.

Losing their grip.

The press are losing their power to sway opinion. That’s the clearest and most overwhelming feeling I got from the recent election. It’s always been a cliché that you shouldn’t believe everything you read in the paper, but, if that paper is re-enforcing an entrenched opinion then readers will generally lap it up, regardless of whether or not said paper is spouting utter bullshit.

The right-wing press certainly tried their best to ensure the complete and total victory of the ruling party, by spraying an astonishing amount of vitriol, most if not all of which is completely untrue, at the opposition. I would like to think that this is cause for hope. Might people finally be calling bullshit on Murdoch’s empire of hate?

There’s some way to go yet – just recently the Sun suggested that socialism will lead to mass graves and the ignorant kids don’t know what a vote against rampant capitalism will mean for them. I think the Sun continues to be full of shit and that perhaps the kids can see with their own eyes where rampant capitalism has led us and want something a bit fairer. I could be wrong, but I still hope.

If you read a paper I want you to challenge yourself. Read two, ensuring the second one is of a different persuasion. They’re not newspapers, they’re opinion pieces, and some are backed more by facts than others. Get out of your own filtered bubble. If you read the Sun, firstly, my condolences. Secondly, pick up a Mirror as well. Mail or Telegraph? Try a Guardian or Independent as well. See the other side of the story. Get a more complete picture.

Then, and this is the difficult part, refine your opinion based on what is actually true. Then, when it comes time to vote, choose based on manifestos (not the papers’ versions of them, but the actual manifestos), and not on how you’ve always voted before. Maybe then we’ll find the Magic Money Tree (clue: it’s offshore and in a computer). Maybe then we can prevent fucknuggets like Farage from dropping the whole country in the shitter and somehow being proud of it.

New occasional feature: Ending with a song relating to the post:

The Jam: News of the World: “Little men tapping things out, points of view, remember their views are not the gospel truth."

Another species?

I’ve sometimes been feeling lately like I’m a different species from this sapient race I keep reading about and hearing about that, faced with an oncoming cliff edge, rather than trying to apply the brakes or even swerve, have elected to accelerate. I’ve still only heard one remotely sensible reasonable explanation for voting to leave the EU, and with the election of President Fucktrumpet over the water, it just seems that we are absolutely determined to burn our world down around us.

While some people have been celebrating these things, other people have been trying to make excuses for them and still others have been watching them unfold with a horrified look on their faces. We’ve heard lots of people giving their own opinions on who is to blame. Jonathan Pie thinks the left are at fault. Others blame the voting public (and the non-voting public). Yet more blame media bias. Something to me seems obvious – this clusterfuck has been brought on by a combination of all these things and more.

It’s true when you tell a pro-lifer they’re stupid and full of shit they tend not to want to debate you. It’s true if you call someone worried about unchecked immigration a racist prick it is unlikely to change their mind, or even make them stop to think. It’s true we need to engage with people who think differently. The problem is I’m not sure evidence and facts really work as well as they once did. Lies are told blatantly and repeatedly by the press and the powerful, but they don’t seem to care because by the time it is inescapable, they’re already on to the next lie.

But. While the best thing for the press in all its current forms would be to piss off up its own wretched arse, it is only partly to blame. Farage, Trump, Murdoch and co are only partly to blame. You can’t have a proper democracy without an informed and engaged populace. It is undeniable that some people are wilfully ignorant and purposefully deaf to attempts to engage. People that can be presented with hard evidence of climate change and claim that it’s just a Chinese hoax and that burning more coal is obviously the answer (seriously, America, what were you thinking?) It is every person’s responsibility to ensure they are aware of all sides of the debate, to at least make an effort to see the other side. To be open to the possibility that just because you’ve always voted one way, it doesn’t mean the current incarnation of your party has your best interests at heart. If you ensure your only source of news is the Daily Mail or the Guardian because they fit best with your worldview, then you are part of the fucking problem. Stop being part of the fucking problem and get yourself a balanced view of the world from multiple sources that aren’t just interested in reporting events through their own distorted ideological prism.

It isn’t really a case of left and right – few politicians have turned out to be quite so Tory as the warmongering, bank deregulating Blair and Brown show, and Hilary Clinton was so far up Wall Street’s arse she probably couldn’t smell her own rank hypocrisy. If you want a genuine change, this is not what you vote for. Of course, the change that President Fartfeathers represents is entirely the wrong sort, and, given the choice, I’d take the more of the same that Clinton would have been and the minimum wage that Nu-Labour introduced over the legacy of needless austerity we’ve been living with recently any day.

I know it doesn’t do you any good to spent lots of time stressed and anxious about what you can’t change, but this year it has been particularly hard, and I can’t really see things improving much any time soon. Maybe I can find a way to move to a little town overlooking a mountain lake or something. Maybe the people who are more like the species of human I remember are all hiding out there.

New occasional feature: Ending with a song relating to the post:

Pixies: Caribou: “This human form, where I was born, I now repent.”

The UK press: Still awful.

So certain dark corners of the UK press published some articles about British people who had sex on holiday. Can you believe it? Yeah, me too.

You can almost imagine the kind of conversations that took place in the office of the rags that ran with the non-story:

Hack: Hey, Jimmy! Guess what?

Jimmy the intern: What’s that, sir?

Hack: British people go on holiday and sometimes have sex while they’re out there!

Jimmy the intern: Yes sir. Happens quite a lot I’d imagine. You seem surprised, sir.

Hack: Well, jealous mostly, son, but you’re missing the point!

Jimmy the intern: The point, sir?

Hack: This is a perfect opportunity for some good old fashioned slut shaming!

Jimmy the intern: Um, sir?

Hack: Well, take this one girl who apparently sucked off 20 or more men, all for one cocktail! Don’t you think it’s worth using up our front page in an attempt to ruin the rest of her life?

Jimmy the intern: It seems to me sir, that if she wants to do that, she has every right to. Could be, sir, that she did it for the experience, rather than the cocktail. The distressing thought also occurs that she considered agreeing to have 20 or more penises in her mouth at that time was preferable to being beaten and raped by 20 or more frustrated dude-bros later on, sir. An executive decision, if you will sir.

Hack: Jimmy lad, no bugger’s going to read a story about that shite. She should have gone with the rape option, at least then we might have had some sympathy for her. Although we’d probably still have made it her fault; shouldn’t be out drinking, wearing the wrong thing, that sort of thing.

Jimmy the intern: But sir! A man has a choice – to rape or not to rape! Regardless of what the woman wears or how she acts!

Hack: Quiet Jimmy! You can’t talk like that here. Before long, you’ll have people thinking we should teach boys not to rape rather than teaching girls how not to be raped. For shame Jimmy; who’s side are you on, anyway?

Jimmy the intern: Side, sir?

Hack: And then there was that other girl, the one who had a threesome on stage in a club! Allegedly. We even have a picture of her face! Her whole life is ruined, just for indulging in a sexual experience that isn’t really all that rare! Today is a great day to be an arsehole journalist, Jimmy!

Jimmy the intern: Hmm. Sir, clubs like that have been using live sex shows as a holiday season climax for quite some years. It really isn’t anything new. I feel like I have to ask sir. Why no judgement of the men involved in this? No photos of their faces? No childish attempt to ruin their lives?

Hack: Son, I’m beginning to wonder if your heart’s really in hack journalism.

Jimmy the intern: I’m beginning to wonder if you have a heart at all, sir.

Hack: No, we’re not going to judge the men. That would suggest the possibility that a man can be faced with a vagina and do anything other than fuck it.

Jimmy the intern: Oh, bravo sir! You’ve now managed to insult both genders. Well done, sir, well done indeed!

Hack: Jimmy, I get the distinct feeling you’re mocking me.

Jimmy the intern: Not at all sir. I’m so filled with disgust and disdain for the putrid festering sore that is your outlook on life that mocking you would suggest I think you capable of change. No sir, I only wish for your death, for the sooner you and anyone who shares your views are dead, the better it will be for all of us. Good day sir. Don’t expect me back tomorrow.

Hack: Hmm. He’s probably gay. At least I know our editor will love this stuff.

Dear Tabloids, please die in a fire. Yours, me.

Addendum (30th July 2014):

It turns out that the tabloid front pages that I scanned in my local newsagents may not have told the whole story. Shocker. It may be that the whole thing started when the woman involved in the multi-fellatio incident may have been promised a free holiday. Undertaking her task she then discovered ‘holiday’ was the name of a cocktail. This means that some of the imagined conversation above may have been even wider of the mark than it was originally. What that has done is kind of illustrate the point about tabloids even more strongly – if they’d have gone with that angle, then it would have been information worth reporting – anyone involved in that sort of distasteful trickery needs to be taken to task – if that stunt isn’t illegal, it damn well should be. But good old Mr Red Top decides to lay into the woman. And only the woman. How can these shitrags call themselves newspapers when they lie so much? I think I might stop even scanning the front pages.