Pride and Prejudice

Ignore the haters. We all have plenty reasons to be proud.

It’s been a busy couple of weeks, and we’ve lost some giants.

Boris Johnson resigned as an MP. He flounced out of parliament complaining he was subject to a witch hunt and trial by a kangaroo court. And to be honest, he wasn’t far wrong. In his valedictory message Boris moaned that Britain’s taxes are too high, Brexit has been wasted, and the voters have been betrayed. Again he is correct, they are all big problems. If only he’d been given the opportunity at some point, to do something about them.

I’m a no one, and Johnson was once the self appointed ‘World King’, but I won’t envy him that moment on his death bed, when he looks back on his life, and considers all he has squandered.

Nicola Sturgeon has been arrested by the police, and then released. Like pond life thrown back by an unimpressed angler. I’m no fan of Nicola. But you have to admire her resilience. Her pinch faced sanctimony continuing to shine through, even as she sat grimly defiant on a booster seat in the back of a polis car.

Silvio Berlosconi has gone to the great Bunga Bunga party in the sky. The final challenge of his uniquely priapic life will no doubt be how to close the lid of his coffin. They all hated him at the G8 of course. (Is it still the G8? I lose track.) All the other leaders pretended to look down on him, and I suppose they did. But the main driver of their contempt was clearly simple jealousy. All our pygmy bosses might imagine themselves as tyrants, Caesars and kings, only Berlusconi had the actual balls to live like one.

And Pip Schofield has made a dignified exit from daytime TV. In the most excruciatingly self defeating BBC interview since Prince Andrew, Phil revealed both a boundless store of self pity, and a penchant for puffing on a vape. Which if it isn’t already a euphemism, really should be.

Was he the victim of homophobia, or simply a growing intolerance for men who seem to use positions of power to secure the sexual favours of young, impressionable subordinates? You decide. I’m torn exactly where I stand. But no one likes a queue jumper.

Should I add Trump to this list? It doesn’t look good for the Worst Ever Man in History Ever Ever (tm). Usually he can just shrug off the odd indictment or two. This time, I’m not so sure. Whatever happens- strap in. It’s going to be a wild ride.

As hard as I looked on the 6th June. I didn’t see much to mark the 79th anniversary of D Day. I guess 79th isn’t much of a benchmark. So it’s no wonder that its passing was pretty much overlooked. Forgivable even.

But when it’s the 79th anniversary of the largest logistical undertaking in human history, the last great push of a years long European war, the first blood soaked step in a titanic, gruelling battle to rescue an entire continent from tyranny. You’d think that maybe in our nazi obsessed culture we’d be encouraged to celebrate the coordinated attack on some, you know, actual Nazis. Or at least deem it worth a mention. Seems not.

In compensation we have got plenty of Pride flags. They’re everywhere! On the front page of every news site, emblazoned on the side of every building, co-opted into the logo of every corporation, fluttering from every child, and unaccountably, overlaid onto what used to be every central London zebra crossing.

We’re the gayest country since Dorothy arrived in Oz.

I’m not by any metric anti gay. Far from it. I fully support gay rights, and gay marriage. The journey that gay people have been on, from illegality to equality is rightly to be celebrated.

But I don’t feel I need to be reminded of someone else’s sexuality every time I buy a bagel, catch a bus or visit the bank.

I remember back in the early 80s my mum excitingly announcing to the family in shocked tones of theatrical disapproval that she had just found out her cousin was gay. She seemed to think this news was earth shattering, transformative and mind blowing. My teenage sister and I simply shrugged with indifference and went back to badgering Dad for a VHS recorder.

My attitude to other people’s sexuality hasn’t changed much since then. I believe in freedom. Yours as well as mine. So do whatever, and whoever, you like. Have fun. But please don’t assume I’m in any way interested. And definitely don’t send me any pictures.

We are still encouraged to consider gay people in Britain, and most of the western world as an incredibly marginalised group, in constant danger of genocide and erasure.

This, as anyone who has ever turned on the TV, read a newspaper, used the internet, walked down a high street, or even visited a school, will know, is simply not true.

Of course homophobia exists, because you know, dick heads exist, but despite what some want us to believe, it is not endemic in our society, promoted by our media, ingrained into our institutions or even ever expressed by most people.

Besides the real threat to homosexuals doesn’t seem to come from boring old straight people.

It comes from within a tragically dogmatic section of their own ‘rainbow community’. Which as far as I can see as an outsider, wants to deny the very existence of gay people as ‘same sex attracted’ in the first place.

Even in her pomp, Mary Whitehouse, or the Tory Clause 28 gang never had the front to claim that gay people weren’t real. And that the real reason why some teenage girls fancied other teenage girls was that they were actually men.

Over the last couple of years Pride has seemed to have morphed from a camp and fun party into a cynical marketing opportunity for rapacious banks, corporations and arms manufacturers (yes really). So they could pretend to actually give a monkey’s about love, freedom and equality. Not in their Middle Eastern territories of course, they’re not idiots.

Is this hijacking a big deal? I don’t know. Two faced corporations gotta corpo I guess.

Pride has also become a kind of multi coloured bulwark against the tsunami of intolerance which supposedly threatens, at any moment, to submerge us all under an unstoppable wave of ‘hate’.

Hate for foreigners. Racial groups. Sexual orientations. Hate for women. Religious movements. Disabled people. Hate for fat people.

According to some, our country has become a bigots’ Paradise, a Xanadu of discrimination, a Wonderland of intolerance.

But that is not how I see it. Maybe I’m living in a bubble. But I don’t think so. Sure I’m a middle class, middle aged (and the rest) white guy who can only report back on my own ‘lived experience’.  But that lived, is mainly experienced, in practically the most central part of central London. So I see and interact with a multicultural, multiracial, multi religious and multi sexual version of Britain every single day. And I don’t witness hate. Far from it. Most people seem to rub along just fine.

I’m not denying racism, homophobia, sexism and the rest exist. Of course they do. But I think it’s disingenuous to say we’re a society drowning in a sea of bigotry.

And that’s not just my opinion, survey after survey, poll after poll shows Britain to be one of the most tolerant and open minded countries in the world.

But of course that doesn’t suit some people, so they simply ignore the evidence or come up with some nonsense excuse that people might claim to be open minded citizens who actually like their work colleagues, friends and neighbours, but are *really* lying, duplicitous bigots.

In fact if you follow the last link you’ll see that the Metro’s report on the Kings College findings in this particular survey was followed by a number of people explaining that it was all bullshit, and it didn’t matter what people said in a poll, we are all horrible racists anyway. *sigh*

This desperation to constantly detect the merest whiff of intolerance in the hearts of regular people hasn’t improved our lives. Instead it has led to the empowerment of an entire class of moral arbiters.

These self appointed busy bodies infect our media, have taken control of our businesses, run many of our schools, have taken the reins of every international institution, and have of course colonised social media like a joyless hatchet faced, pearl clutching cancer.

They set themselves up as our high minded, righteous betters, ready to censor our speech, regulate and restrict our access to information, rewrite our books, eradicate our history, and police our very thoughts.

But people are not beasts, their basest prejudices held in check only by the constant vigilance of a tiny brotherhood (whoops sexist) of enlightened Twitter users alert to the smallest micro aggression, ever poised to pounce on the tinniest slip of the tongue, to punish each offender with a mob driven, online public crucifixion.

I grew up in the 70s. Prejudice really was a part of everyday culture back then. Now. Not so much.

I’m not saying we should rest on our laurels and say the job is done. But equally, maybe it’s time to acknowledge how far we’ve come, and take the win.

These days when I do witness hatred, that genuine spittle lipped, vein popping incandescent venom of the truly hate filled. It isn’t targeted at minorities at all. It is usually being directed at regular people whose only crime is to challenge, or even simply question, the main stream progressive narrative.

We are told we must stand shoulder to shoulder against bigotry, to take the knee against predjudice and post instagram flags to defeat the intolerance of others.

But counterintuitively, we are actually encouraged to hate all the time. Usually by those same people who claim to be on the side of diversity and kindness.

They actively encourage us to hate entire swathes of society. Including but not restricted to: All Tories (simply evil), some women (terfs), Christianity (conservative and right wing), anyone who voted for Brexit (literal Nazis), all white men (where do I even start?), old books (racist), black people with the *wrong* views (brainwashed), science (as opposed to The Science), anyone with money (predators), and absolutely anything that happened in the past (all of the above).

It seems our elites are doing most of the hating. And what they are often hating, is the rest of us.

They hate that regular people still have the rights to eat what they like. Drive cars. Access what they please on the internet. And choose to Whatsapp each other without their personal conversations being supervised and scrutinised for Wrong Think.

But most of all they hate dissent. The fact that many of us have the temerity to look at our world, but dare to see it from a different perspective to them.

This, they can only conclude is the result of brainwashing. Stupidity. False consciousness. Or Russian interference.

You really need to take a long hard of look at yourself and your values if you cannot comprehend any rational reason why someone else might disagree with you.

It’s weird, they claim to value diversity, but cannot abide difference. Every crease, ruffle or wrinkle must be ironed out. Every thought homogenised, every utterance standardised. That’s globalisation after all. An entire world where we think the same. Act the same. And eat delicious insects the same.

And of course, along the way we have stood back and even allowed them to rebrand free speech as hate speech.

And that’s a genuine tragedy. One of the only reasons we have Pride in the first place is because thanks to free speech, those early pioneers of gay rights could not be made to shut up,  or be shut down.

Back to D Day and the men and boys who gave away their futures on the beaches of Normandy seventy nine years ago. Today we seem embarrassed by their sacrifice. Because these days, dead white men can supposedly only be slavers and colonists. Unenlightened exploiters, cultural vandals, thieves and rapists. Never heroes.

But they were heroes. And we owe them so much. We should ignore the real haters, and learn once more to be proud of them, proud of the freedoms they fought for, and proud of the way of life their self sacrifice secured. At least up to now.

So let’s ditch the self loathing,  join with our gay and lesbian friends and come together with a sense of pride. After all, when you consider our country’s reputation for tolerance, its amazing mix of people and our rich history of fighting real, genuine tyranny, we really do have plenty to be proud about.

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