Triggered

I’ve been working from home today. And some neighbour (who doesn’t know what he’s doing with ‘that thing’ according to my Dad) has been cutting grass all feckin day. I want to punch his lights in. I’ve never liked him and after 4 hrs and 30 some minutes of this intermittent whining drone I now despise him.

Who cares about the grass. It’s fucking wet anyway. It’ll be like hacking at bamboo with a teaspoon. 4 hrs and 30 some minutes and he’s covered a patch no larger than 6 car parking spaces.

Idiot.

Anyway.

I need to look on the bright side. I am nearly finished my employment notice period. The kids are back at school – Jamie having achieved a brilliant set of Higher grades. And my racist Father is now too ‘warned’ to consider even mentioning the words ‘Brexit’ or ‘immigration’ or ‘swamped’ within a mile radius of me. So I’ve not had a screaming match – with him at least – since before the holidays.

The hassle? That the dark side is almost 10 trillion miles bigger than the bright.

1. Brexit. David Davis. Theresa Walking Dead May. Boris Fuckwit Wankstain Johnson. Fuckingfarage.
2. Fucking arsehole 60yrs+ white Englishmen whose fucking main topic of conversation with French folk in the queue for the ferry was fucking WW2 – like they saw France and all they could think of was ‘we won the war and youse lot should be a bit more grateful’. FFS. Every single fucking one of them. ‘Blah-blah WW2 blah-blah’. Somebody needs to tell them it was the US wot won it.
3. Trump. Bannon. Mercer. American Nazis. Christian Nationalists. Fascists. White supremacists.
4. The Telegraph. The Express. The Daily Mail and The Sun.
5. Fucking Alnwick Castle and the whole GB ‘aristocracy’ and me. The castle because I think it’s a Disneyfied fraud of a place – still privately owned (which disgusts me) and a piss poor (imho) custodian of the past. Them for their arrogance and the hideous stench of entitlement and superiority. Me – because I joined the queue and paid the entrance money (I thought it was National Trust – honest).
6. Repeat any combo of the above. Ad nauseum.

They have formed a major crust (for GoT adherents think Greyscale) that I am permanently engaged in picking.

So I find myself trawling social media comments sections and examining the profiles of the hate-fuelled (largely) confederate or UK flag wielding noody-noddies – and wishing dark misfortunes upon them.

I am not tolerant of their intolerance. I am the triggered snowflake liberal of their ludicrous memes and bile filled rhetoric. I am the living breathing embodiment of Popper’s paradox.

R and I have debated the limits of freedom of speech off and on our whole together life. His own threshold is somewhere a bit further on than mine’s. So he’d happily invite a white nationalist to a televised debate – because he says nobody destroys them better than the cold light of day – that they condemn themselves most effectively from their own mouths.

I agree. Mostly.

I remember encountering a couple of educated US South’ners a few years back. On a blog. Polite. Entertaining. One was a multi-talented man. Someone I felt a genuine fondness for.

But they were intent on mythologising their South’ren past. Of making martyrs of those lying in confederate graveyards.

Sure – those poor bastards were pawns in a game played by the powerful. But don’t pretend to me that slavery had nothing to do with the Civil War. That it was all just about seccession.

Bottomline? That I don’t give a rat’s flying arse about the alleged or actual nuances – of an event that took place nearly 200 years ago. I am more concerned about what it symbolises today – about what young white men think it means and why they will kill for it.

So, by all means, embrace your past. Own it. But don’t fucking pretend that your ancestors were fucking saints. And don’t use nostalgia and a sense of blood-loyalty for your fallen kin as the excuse for your now-today (this-very-fucking-day’s) support for statuary that was erected by racists of the 1910s and 1960s and for flags that mean white supremacy.

No. These blogsters, their kin were like my much-loved maternal grandmother – supporting UDA and UVF gun runners. Steeped in Unionism. Staunchest supporter of ‘the Crown’ and of a Northern Ireland that would forever be bound to Great Britain.

She and they – creatures of their time and of the prejudices of their day.

But whilst I loved my grandmother deeply, I am not obligated to adopt her beliefs nor to be their apologist or protector or modern day proponent.

Neither are they.