What saddens me is the lack of nuance from the British electorate. Brexit was a debatable issue good or bad, but you would have to have real balls to talk about it that way at the time. Much easier to either get on the big red bus or start bizarrely worshipping the EU. The success or failure of government is a massively complicated thing, it can directly kill people off at the bottom of the ladder or destroy business interests overnight. So it makes absolutely no sense to ‘support’ the Prime Minister or a political party like it’s a ** football team. They don’t give a fuck about us, that’s not something to despair about it’s just the way it is and we should be forever on our toes. It makes me genuinely depressed to see the amount of people in communities, industries, even families that have been abandoned by this government and its wreckless ineptitude still support and try to defend the PM and cabinet. They will respond to any criticism or negative story with a sort of vomit-worthy ‘not our Boris’ narrative.
Don’t get me wrong, I was at Glasgow uni through two general elections, an independence referendum and the brexit vote, I’ve had to listen to a lot of delusional people on the left as well. People who want to talk about what they would do to change the country but never give a second of thought to how they would actually win an election.
But nonetheless it boggles me how people of all political creeds, in today’s discourse, seem to approach politics like a national sport with two teams. It’s not sustainable for the long term good of the country that people already know whose side they’re on before they’ve evaluated the facts in each case, and most nowadays don’t read past a headline - I even catch myself doing that sometimes, regurgitating a news story that I didn’t actually read!
We’re all very aware how toxic and manipulated social media and handheld devices are to our connection with reality, and yet I find people sort of over the age of 40 tend to think because they grew up without it they’re immune to the negative side effects. Where the absolute opposite is the case. More and more older people spend mad amounts of time on FB, commenting on news articles, online shopping, giving all their data away without realizing it etc. Etc. And they don’t want to accept that doing all of this without checking yourself is literally signing yourself up for brainwashing from the highest bidder, which in most cases these days is either Moscow or one of the two main political parties in any western democracy. And it goes beyond politics, hundreds thousands of companies know exactly what time of day *you* as in *just you* are going to be relaxed and thus responsive to advertising certain products, or stressed and thus responsive to advertising holidays and medicines.
This is literal, proven fact and yet whether it’s indyref or brexit or tory sleaze or a general election or whatever most people mindlessly accept whatever information is presented to them, it is mind blowing sometimes how people don’t hear themselves just regurgitating exactly what Cambridge Analytica or whatever successor big brother company need you to regurgitate. Getting angry with faceless profiles and using threats and calling names, not realizing at all that they’re just in a state of road rage basically because of the amount of negative shit being expertly injected into your emotional sensitivities.
Especially in the case of places like Blackpool, completely and increasingly ** neglected and turned into a social landfill slowly but surely with imported mental health demographics. Why oh why can the community not come together and say fuck off to the labour and conservative councils that have consistently done nothing but spend money on needless shit to protect their budgets for years and years and ** years. Wasted countless golden opportunities to save what precious little magic remained from our very proud, beautiful local history. Why do we still vote for MPs, again from both sides, that are not even from our wonderful town and do not know the first thing about what it needs. Cunts who are literally, obviously on a mission to dilute our individual strength and autonomy and replace that with more Westminstralisation. Most people, red and blue, will go along with it if it’s their ** ‘team’ despite the fact nothing ever changes. It may as well be X Factor or I’m a Celeb they’re voting in honestly for the way they perceive it.
And everybody just gets more nasty, less willing to listen, and they respond to what they perceive as hatred from the opposition with just more hatred. Imagine going to the pearly gates and having to watch that shit back, it’s embarrassing! “Yeah well Labour supporters nerrr nerrr ** nerr” or “Well all tories are evil cunts and it’s not even worth talking to them”, this shit is rife, it’s the status quo, and it’s so so so so dumb. All these tories on here whose arguments in support of Boris start with the word “Labour...” and Labour supporters who when asked why they are voting for Keir Starmer start their answers with ‘well Boris Johnson...’. These privately educated pricks are laughing at you as you umm and ahh over which one you would rather to get shafted by.
Engaging in political discourse on social media is like having a philosophical debate in the middle of a traffic jam at 8:45am on a Monday morning. You’re not gonna ** get anywhere with it. Next time you’re tempted to go ape at somebody, ask yourself what compromise you might be able to reach in an ideal world. If there isn’t one, then why burst a vein over it? Leading to both of you just leaning more on your convictions and failing to actually think with a clear mind? People really need to wake up and realize that this status quo is destroying us and our communities.
