Disturbia

It seems to be based on what is left of a bombed out building as you can see what is left of some of the floors of what was once, I guess, a tower block. Now, destroyed, a Syrian artist by the name of Tammam Azzam has, with the addition of some other bits of rubble, turned it into a forlorn version of the Statue of Liberty. A statue of liberty in war torn Aleppo, Syria. Who knows what liberty there is there as people use weaponry against each other fighting for... well, I'm not sure what they are fighting for. Power? Land? Resources? Ideology? Does anyone actually know?

                                           Tammam Azzam's Statue of Liberty

Meanwhile, in Calais, France, a migrant (or refugee) camp known locally as "The Jungle" is about to be broken up and got rid of by French authorities who have tolerated its existence for well over a year now. Many in this camp are from Syria. Others are from Afghanistan or other places. They want to get to the UK. Who knows why? Maybe they have family or friends there. Maybe the UK's historical influence in their homelands makes it a natural magnet for those seeking escape from their own private hells. I would be surprised if many of them realized the country they were coming to though. It is a place lately marked out by hatred, division, rhetoric and ugliness. I admit, though, that it has not yet turned into Aleppo although, as I emerged from my sleep last night into a waking state once again, I had a half awake, half asleep dream in which people showing compassion for foreigners were sentenced to death and shot. 

You might find this idea a bit extreme. But I think its a logical conclusion from some of the thinking I am seeing now openly spoken, thinking which, in more restrained times, was whispered amongst like minds or spoken of only under rocks. Lately, though, those with such views have become emboldened. They have found leaders who at least wear the veneer of respectability even if it doesn't go very far down. In the UK, Nigel Farage became the voice of several million closet racists with his advertisements which were barely disguised Nazi propaganda. His task was to blame everyone's problems on Johnny Foreigner and he seems to have surprised even himself that he did it. Before the Brexit result was announced he was already conceding defeat. But he won. There were more old folks with a fond remembrance of empire and younger people with nothing being rounded up by the vitriol of tabloids owned by billionaires than he had realized. Farage is a key player if you're American too. Donald Trump sees Brexit as the model for his own, very similar uprising and hosted Farage at one of his rallies. "The victory of the ordinary guy over the elites" they see it as.

Of course, its not this. Its the victory of hate over hope. Its the victory of division over unity. Its the victory of self over community. Its the victory of a few self-interested people over everybody else. Nigel Farage and Donald Trump don't care about the people who support them. They care about themselves. They care about living in the world they want in their heads. Everybody else, well, they are just those that can be used to hinder that ideal or bring it about. What Farage and Trump have shown, along with a compliant media especially in the UK where newspapers still hold some influence, is that hate for someone who doesn't look like you can indeed be nurtured and grown. A number of tabloids here in the UK have been consistently and often virulently anti-foreigner, anti-refugee, for years. Those chickens were always going to come home to roost. And they have. We see today in the UK white supremacist groups, defence leagues for Englishness (whatever that is) and an increasing number of incidents against people of other races and nationalities. This isn't coincidence. Its the pay off for the investment the hatemongers have made. This stuff doesn't exist in a vacuum. Nor does it just disappear.

Now in America, a land riven with racial angst and hatreds as far as I can tell from across the water, this is coming home to roost too. Trump has himself been sowing hate and discord during his campaign. He suggests the elites control everything and that they will rig things to fix the election. He says he might not accept the result unless he wins. He says there are more murders now than ever (a lie he continues to repeat). He demonizes non-Americans as reprobates looking for a free ride. Now Trump is characterized by many as a habitual liar with no concern for the truth at all. The message is what matters. For he knows that some already want to believe the things he says. So if he just repeats lies over and over again the effect of this will be to engrain these things in people's minds. Many of his supporters now see the press as the PR wing of the elites they've been taught to despise. They chant "Lügenpresse" at the press corp, a chant that Hitler used against the German press in the 1930's. He boldly boasts in private of sexual assaults yet when women come forward to say he indeed sexually assaulted them he claims that everyone is a liar. Even though he has himself admitted he sexually assaults people. His supporters shrug it off, unable to link his own words to the accusations of others. Trump seems to threaten to sue someone else 10 times every day. It is a mentality in which Trump is always right and everyone else, especially the elites and foreigners, is out to get him. Trust no one but him is his campaign message. Yes, you should trust a habitual liar who is clearly one of the most irresponsible and self-serving people alive today.

The way these demagogues have risen to such dizzy heights is similar. Both have played off the powerful, who, of course, they are not in this rhetoric, against the little guy, the ordinary person with nothing. That is, the ordinary WHITE person with nothing. In the UK we might call this the working class. In America it seems slightly different in that it is the hard pressed blue collar guy who is the backbone of this body of resentment. In each case, however, these respective men sought to radicalize these naturally quiet people who, in normal times, would just struggle along with their daily lives with a grumble. What Farage, Trump and their media partners such as Rupert Murdoch have done, however, is play on the fears of people like this and tell them that everything they think is true. Other people are getting stuff for free. Other people are getting an easy ride. Other people want to kill you. Other people are making monkeys out of you. The rhetoric is constant and quite deliberate. But these people are being played. Would Trump, Farage or even Murdoch, given a chance, actually make the lives of these people better? No way. Its not even genuinely in their minds to do it. These people are entirely negative in their motivations, driven by what they are against as opposed to what they are for. And I genuinely believe these people are racist at their core. 

Sometimes the supporters of these people and the positions they espouse speak more clearly and sensibly than they do. After all, Trump and Farage must at least pretend to appeal to more moderate people. Farage cannot say he wants a white England. But some of those who support his views do. This week in the English press I've read quite genuine comments from people who want a white monoculture in the UK and who think compassion for refugees is "Anti-British". People talk of those wanting compassion for the refugees as "traitors" and as "treacherous". Some bright spark actually started a petition to make talk of wanting to stay in the EU or rejoin it again a matter of treason. Another, an MP, wanted refugees teeth pulled out and tested to determine if someone was under 18 and thus a child worthy of help as opposed to an adult not worthy of it. "The foreigner" has become a very contested notion in the UK. In America it is even more scary due to the gun laws there. I have read accounts of people who intend to intimidate people of other creeds and colors and it seems many are convinced that people of certain colors or who speak certain languages are out to kill them en masse, terrorists in waiting. Such is the rhetoric, for example, regarding "Islam". The situation in the USA is also more febrile because there is already a historic background of racial injustice deeply woven into the fabric of the country's history. The American Civil War may have sealed the fate of slavery but one hundred years later social justice causes were still being fought for and needing to be won by those like Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King. Even 150 years after this war there is still need for campaigns such as Black Lives Matter and American police departments continue to gun down black individuals at a rate much higher than those of other ethnic groupings.

I have come to refer to this age we are now living in as "Disturbia". The world of my experience, white, English-speaking, does not seem safe anymore. The dissonance, anger and hate cannot be blocked out or ignored anymore. It is horrible to live in. It is deeply ugly and being made deliberately so by charlatans who want nothing more than their 15 minutes in the bright lights. These men are morons who just want to poke the wasp's nest with a big stick and say "Look at me!" They do not have the wit or intelligence to see what permanent damage they are doing or how their stupidity will change things for the worse for many years to come. They are men who have not recognized, as most sane observers have, that the post World War 2 prosperity that many have shared in was due to shared aims and common goals across nations. Trump, Farage, even Murdoch, are not internationalists. They are small-minded nationalists. They buy in totally to the Ayn Randian notion that for me to prosper and survive then you must not. For there can be only one winner, right? Look at how Trump avoids his civic responsibility by avoiding federal taxes and then laughs in his supporters' faces and suggests it just means he's smart. What if everyone decided to be "smart" like Donald? You see, its always the have nots or the can nots that will pay the price for this kind of self-seeking "smartness". The irresponsible will always be happy for the responsible to pay. And then call them dumb for doing it. By their actions they willfully seek to create disconnected people and disrupt both bonds of compassion between us and any ideas which encourage togetherness. In its place they create a white tribe of disaffection as if its somehow us who have been exploited.

I cannot foresee how any of this plays out. But I don't think it can be good. I live in a country now where a compassionate comment said in good faith about those with nothing leads to many days of press coverage calling for the speaker to be sacked from his job. (Google "Gary Lineker".) I live in a country where the compassionate tears of a singer (Lily Allen) for children living in squalor are mocked and vilified. I live in a country where if you are under 18 we might grudgingly help you but if you are so much as a minute older we will denounce you as a lying scrounger seeking to deceive and defraud us. I live in a world where people are denominated by nation and this label then determines whether they are worthy of help or not. (Although if you're not white you might need to go to the back of the queue.) I live in a world where "looking a bit foreign" is enough to regard you as a danger to me and as completely other. It didn't get to this by accident. Its been done on purpose. Its every bit as insidious and deliberate as was the agenda of the Nazis less than 100 years ago. Indeed, its telling that the overt Nazis and racists, so emboldened of late, openly support the Trumps and Farages of this world. I don't know about you but if it were me being supported by such people I'd want to take a look in the mirror and think again. 

Now I am a white man. I cannot help this for, like everyone, I was born what I was. Some may say that this shields me from the real horror of our current situation in the world. But I am not blind and, unlike many people of all colors, I do not simply accept the agendas I am handed. Neither should you either. I fear for those who are not white in the world that is before us. As the power and influence of the Trumps and Farages rises it changes things for the worse for those who are not white and for any who speak up for them who are. And it doesn't even matter if they win. Brexit has passed here in the UK and the future is uncertain. We have deliberately been goaded into an act of self-harm. In the USA, even if Trump loses, as is now increasingly predicted, the hate he has sown will remain. The lies he has sown will continue to bear fruit. And its not as if Obama himself was that concerned about droning random foreigners anyway. All this hate and division will play out in a thousand acts of unknown ugly consequence reported by victims and their families sporadically as the price is paid. The uglification of the world by small-minded people who cannot think past their own grievances will continue. And my problem is I cannot see how you stop it. "Where good people do nothing there evil will flourish" is how the saying goes. But as I think about this and survey the scene it seems to me as if it is a never-ending war. Victories are won for fairness, equality and justice but the war rumbles on anyway. You come to the conclusion that its perpetual war. 

So then you turn and you ask yourself whether what matters is not who wins but what you stood for. There are reasons to suggest this matters, not least that you can look yourself in a mirror. But is it enough? Anyone can only make a difference in the here and now, that is for sure. A worldwide peaceful co-existence has not yet been known on our planet and what reason do we think exists that there will ever be one whilst there are people in the world who actively define their success as someone else's failure? I guess those who fight social justice causes must have a reason why they do and maybe this is simply as simple as not wanting to accept the station others in life would give them, to live a life not dictated by others.

"People are people so why should it be you and I should get along so awfully?" sang Depeche Mode.

What's the answer?

Are You Going To Be One Of Them?

The ultimate demonstration of the fact that there is no god of any kind is the fact that you and I exist. For what all-powerful super being, with knowledge of all things past, present and future, and limited only by the workings of their eternally infinite mind (which is to say not limited at all) would create the human being? I am a human being and I am daily reminded of my fallibility, stupidity, frailty and complete inability to do anything but wallow in the absurdity of an existence in which many of us will quite happily do down our neighbours, friends and even family for even the smallest perceived advantage on our part. I ask you what self-respecting deity would create that being and I reply to my own desperate question by saying "None". No deity would, if there ever was one. Therefore, no god exists.

You may wonder why this blog today starts off with theological musings and I must reply that this is because this blog is written as I emerge from an early "after sleep". An "after sleep" is the term I use for that period after your main sleep when you wake up too early, say 6 AM, but after which, happily, you fall back to sleep again. You then exist in a sort of half awake, half asleep kind of state in which various thoughts run through your mind quite lucidly. The most prominent thought in my most recent after sleep was the opening paragraph of this blog. This was closely followed by a very erotic dream the details of which I will not burden you with at this time. 

Instead I'll return to the theological musings. Now I've already infallibly demonstrated that there is no god and we humans are the proof of this fact. So then it comes as something of a surprise to me that so many people alive today would insist, to the point of shoving their gun in our faces, that there is a god. And its not even always the same one. Several million Yahoos in the United States of Americaland, each of them god-fearing individuals who laud the existence of someone whose son they somewhat ironically call the "prince of peace", believe in the Christian god. But they are simultaneously utterly convinced that the best response to armed crime and the threat of some stranger entering your home is to arm yourself with a military grade machine gun called the AR-15. This is despite the fact that, so I read, no domestically held firearm has been responsible for ending a mass shooting event (defined as an event where more than 4 people are killed not including the original assailant) in the last 30 years. In those 30 years there have been literally thousands of such events and tens of thousands of deaths. If you read the pronouncements of the NRA, which I read is a very politically powerful pro-gun organization that buys off elected representatives, you might find this apparent statistic strange because in their literature all you will find is the single idea that if you want to stop yourself being shot along with several of your friends you should have a gun yourself. But many in the NRA also believe in god and he doesn't exist as I've shown. So why should we believe them on this either?

But let's be fair. Its not only (mostly) white folks who think its still the 18th century that we should criticize. In other places there are, for example, violent muslims full of hatred for the West and what they see as its infidel ways that we should criticize. They chop people's heads off and fight wars in places we (if we aren't Americans) only see on a map. Some of them come over to Europe, the birthplace of civilization, and try to commit terrorist atrocities against us. This, of course, means, at least in the minds of some, that anyone of vaguely Arab complexion is as equally as guilty for such crimes as they are. For a man claiming jihad or shouting "Ali Akbar" who tries to kill other people is merely a representative of every Arab-looking person or a cypher for Islam in general. If a muslim kills some people it is because Islam itself calls for the death of every white person who likes apple pie in the world. And, no, I know what you are thinking. This is not the same as saying that if a white man kills someone then, somehow, all white men are the same or equally responsible even though it seems true that two thirds of mass shootings in America are committed by white men. (The only two UK-based mass shootings I can think of, in Hungerford and Dunblane, were also committed by white men.) No. This rule only works for muslims. As we all should know now if a muslim kills someone its because of his bitter and twisted Islamic creed. If a black person kills someone its because black people are base human beings with deadly and criminal urges. If a white person kills someone its because he is, sadly, mentally ill.

This narrative was followed perfectly to the letter here in the UK in this last few days. An MP called Jo Cox was stabbed and shot to death in the street (it is alleged) by an extreme right wing man called Thomas Mair. Cox was an MP who was interested in bringing diverse peoples together if the history about her that is coming to light now in the wake of her tragic death is anything to go by. Mair was very much associated with a quasi-fascist right wing group of bully boys who get their jollies from intimidation of peaceful muslims and others. Their creed appears to be "Get rid of everyone not like me or with whom I do not identify".  Mair's apparent allegiances were demonstrated when a picture of the alleged murderer at a demo came to light and when he gave his name at his first court hearing as "Death to traitors, freedom for Britain". 

Many newspapers in the UK found this tragic and horrifying event quite embarrassing since we here in the UK are currently nearing the end of a period of self-flagellation that has been a campaign to decide if we will choose to remain within or leave the European Union. A number of papers are owned by individuals whose interests are not best served by a pan-European body who, frankly, they have no influence over and so, of course, they are against. The alleged murderer Thomas Mair is also against it and its alleged he was so motivated against it that he killed someone who was, more prominently than most, in favour of remaining. However, many papers did not print Mair's apparent views on the subject straightaway. Indeed, if Mair had not been determined to make sure no one was in any doubt where he stood at his first court appearance maybe they never would have. So for these papers Mair was a "crazed loner" or a person with a "history of mental health problems". This may or may not be true. What we can be sure of is that if a muslim immigrant had shot and stabbed Boris Johnson or Nigel Farage, prominent leave campaigners, then all we would be hearing about now is the evil that stalks our land, its dangerous violence and the foreigners who wish to storm Britain and submit us all to Sharia Law. Luckily, however, the alleged killer was white and so he is just one more mentally vulnerable human being. And its not as if his racist mates want us all to submit to their ideas of how the UK should be, is it? Oh, wait..

Most of the above is served to you today with a heavy layer of sarcasm but there is a serious point behind it or, to be more accurate, probably several serious points. Even the things I have mentioned above are but a small if persuasive sample showing that human beings are very fucked up. The referendum campaign I mentioned above has brought to the surface in the UK the harsh reality of a very ugly scene and I suspect my American readers would recognize it from their own country too. David Cameron, the Prime Minister here, turned over a stone when he decided to have the referendum, which he didn't need to do and which was a matter of self-motivated political expediency on his own part, and now all of us in the UK are finding out what vermin crawl about underneath that stone, usually in the dark and unseen but now exposed for all to see. Part of this ugliness is that racism is as real as ever it was. Part of this ugliness is that some people are more than happy to blame foreigners for anything and see no good in them whatsoever. Part of this ugliness is that people cling to notions of identity forged in their own fevered minds rather than the realities of the world. Jo Cox, now tragically murdered, gave a speech in which she said that what unites us is much more than what divides us and, if you read this blog regularly, you'll know its been a constant theme of mine too. But its not something that everyone wants to believe. There are people, people prepared to use violence and political power to support their beliefs, who want to divide, who want to concentrate on differences and not similarities. They are more than happy to sow hate, provoke trouble and inject as much poison into public life as they can. They think it is in their interests to do so.

It is often the dream of idealists and the utopia of forward-thinkers that the ideal world would be one of both peace and harmony. "The lion will lie down with the lamb" is one poetic expression of this belief indicating that the supposed prey in that scenario need have nothing to fear from the predator. And yet all around us our world is full of prey and predators. You will know from previous blogs that I do not buy into the idea that human beings are basically good. I buy into the idea that they are inconsistent and opportunistic and that not even they can always say why they did something. There is no rhyme or reason. It might also be argued that I'm hardly the best person to talk about the good of humanity since in the past I've written some pretty nihilistic things. I take these charges on the chin, as I must. But its not the end of the story. For when I see a drowning child on yet another boat crossing the Mediterranean Sea or some brown people hunched in the back of yet another truck what I see is desperate human beings not crazed killers or agents of a violent creed. And my instinct is to help people in need rather than to tag and label them first and then retroactively decide if they are worthy of my help or sympathy. 

Now I appreciate that not everyone is like me in that respect but I think they should be. The mentality that asks whose apparent side someone is on before declaring they are worthy of help or, in many cases, even of life itself, is what I regard as an inhuman one. And I would very much like to promote what I regard as a human one, humanity at its best. Jo Cox's alleged killer was affiliated with a group called Britain First. But I want to say fuck Britain first: human beings first. If lines on a map are reason to discriminate against people then those lines have outlasted their usefulness and deserve to go. Yet another plank of many utopias is that people are all regarded equally. Peace and harmony cannot exist unless people are equal, can they? Yet since so many seem not to want either peace or harmony I suggest this can only be because they see some selfish advantage in their opposites. And this is what we together as people must always fight against, the vested interests, those who would put selfish gain over common good. The common good is called the common good because it is always meant to be common and never reserved for someone regarded as privileged or special. Countries, power bases, economic blocks can all be ways to lock in vested interests. We must fight against them all and work for a radical equality in which everyone is always equal and none of these things are ways to privilege some over others, marking some as worthy of certain things and others not. 

Some have argued that Britain's European debate is about this. Some claim to "want their country back" much as, over the ocean, some claim to want to "make their country great again". These narratives are separatist narratives, narratives that regard some as special and some as not. They want to privilege and create insiders and outsiders. I reject them. When I look at the map of the world I see the countries artificially marked on top of the land masses but even more than that I see that everyone is just in the same place: Earth. The world's problems today are not defined by lines on maps, borders and which passport you hold. People won't stop starving or drowning or fighting or believing in various gods just because you pulled up your drawbridge, built a wall around yourself and said "I'm alright Jack". Its all still going to be right there exactly where it is now. People are still going to see bright lights and go towards them if where they are is plunged in darkness. It is in the nature of the human being to try and survive. What kind of person would you be if you blamed people for that? Of course, some will say that its a finite world. Not everyone can win so its better if I do than if someone else does instead of me. I view this mentality as incredibly small. There is more than enough in this world for everyone - if it was organized properly at a level above that of countries (even if by agreement of countries). But it will never be solved if we are around 200 competitors all fighting over the same things. We'll just kill each other interminably. Forever.

In the end my argument here is simple: we need to be the best people we can be rather than succumb to being the worst people we can be, egged on by those with their own agendas of personal enrichment. This won't be easy because being selfish and nasty is incredibly easy. There will always be those who say "Look after number one and to hell with the rest". 

The question is, are you going to be one of them?