I do usually like to think of myself as the bigger person. Sure, I’ll occasionally make daft jokes about people who may not entirely deserve it but, most of the time, I really do try to be broadly morally decent. To quote Dan Miller, the leader of the opposition in The Thick of It: “I like getting on my high horse! I look good on it.”
It’s not always easy to try to understand the other side, and put prejudices aside in order to attempt to understand what people mean, or how they may have got to where they are now, but it is often worth it. Not every opinion is worthy of respect, of course, but why not at least give your fellow man the benefit of the doubt? If nothing else, it’s a good way to keep your faith in humanity at least vaguely intact.
The only problem is that – well, the other lot really haven’t made it easy lately, have they? The Conservatives have long given up on any effort to even pretend that they care about progressives and centrists who could potentially be convinced to switch sides. The Labour Party seems perpetually mortified to exist in its current shape, and longs to shake off its electoral coalition in order to acquire a better, more reactionary one.
Anyone on the populist right not only dislikes the centre and the left but actively despises them, and lives only to poke fun at them, and be as vindictive and uncharitable as possible. Often, the media doesn’t help.
A racist and misogynist is merely someone with legitimate concerns about immigration, and a person for whom progress is going too fast. Anyone daring to actually be in favour of immigration or muscular green policies is an extremist who should be sidelined.
While the former is courted by most of the political spectrum and assumed to be unchangeable and true, the latter is an embarrassment; an inconvenient part of the country that no one wants to take seriously. It is, in this context, quite tough to keep trying to turn that frown upside down, and refuse to unceremoniously dish it out as we take it from everyone else. Sometimes, it may lead us to break, at least for a little while.
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That’s what I’m telling myself anyway. The other day I was chatting with friends in one of our WhatsApp group chats, and I just lost my rag discussing British ‘expats’ (aka migrants) in Dubai. Not one penny of my taxes, I said, vehemently though not wholly seriously, should be spent on repatriating these selfish, stupid, incurious, tacky, boring, greedy people. Not one penny! I just didn’t care what happened to them, and it was their own fault for choosing to settle where they did.
What happened after that was excruciating. A dear friend who happens to be in that chat soberly pointed out that actually she did care, as her childhood best friend, her husband and their children live in Dubai. For several minutes after that, I worried that I would never be able to uncurl my fingers or my spine again. Somehow, I was so mortified that I would just remain stuck in a tight little ball forever.
Eventually I grabbed my phone again and apologised. My tax money, I typed, could be spent on bringing them back. I’d write to HMRC to make it clear, I joked. My apology of sorts was accepted and we all moved on with our lives. Well, I did and I didn’t; the incident did make me pause, but I realised a few days later that it actually hadn’t changed my mind.
I really do sincerely despise British ‘expats’ in Dubai. I’m sure some of them had good reasons to move, and it’s possible I’d even get along with at least a handful of them, but as a group I just can’t help but roll my eyes at their plight. There’s something so incredibly soulless about deciding to move to a place with no taxes and little crime, yet either not care about why that is the case, or decide that it doesn’t matter.
Sure, I think it’d be nice to live somewhere safer and more affordable than Britain, but there is no world in which “an underclass of indentured servants keeping the place running” is acceptable in order to make it happen. I love the sun but there is no amount of year-round warmth that would make me move to an authoritarian regime with harsh, dubious rules for the women born there.
Now, does this mean I’d be happy to watch those ‘expats’ get blown to bits? Good heavens, no. That would be unspeakably awful. Will I keep laughing at the smug, very much alive twats realising that “geopolitics” isn’t actually something you get to opt out of if you’re white and have a western salary? You bet your bottom dollar I will!
I know it’s puerile and small-minded but listen, sometimes it feels great to get off that stupid horse. Everyone else is doing it anyway – why can’t we?
