Misery loves company

There’s a bitter worm which dwells deep in the heart of humanity, a worm which thrives on envy and malcontent and feeds on the bitter tears of perceived unfairness. A well-fed worm excretes a bile so potent it can make an ordinary human being feel hatred enough for two ordinary working, well-adjusted people. A good proportion of the population are immune; a balanced life of work and play, looking after your own first and minding your own business denies the worm its succour. But some are so susceptible that once infected will attempt to spread the disease as widely as they can.

It is not enough to disagree with a point of view, or a policy. You must join with them and condemn it with every irrational fibre of your being. You must accept without question every black ‘fact’ no matter how unlikely it may seem on closer examination. And you must absolutely and viscerally reject every action by anybody on the vile ‘far-right’ which for convenience is anybody more inclined to conservatism than, say, Diane Abbott. Left is right and right is just wrong and there’s an end to it. You are either with them, or against them and agreeing to disagree is just not an option.

This may go some way to explain the utter incomprehension of a significant number of those on the left of the social and political divide that anybody could possibly support Donald Trump. Or Margaret Thatcher. Or express admiration for the twenty-year crusade of Nigel Farage. Because, in their wormy heart of hearts, only they can be right it astounds them that others do not share their certitude and in their opinion must therefore be variously, insane, depraved, indoctrinated or just plain evil.

It leaves them in some contrary positions – such as denouncing both the Jews and the Nazis in the same breath and endorsing terrorists, so long as they are the right sort of terrorists. It allows them to insist on equality and democracy while supporting wholesale bias against the majority. And most prominent of all it allows them to fiercely defend free speech, so long as you say only what they want to hear.

Now don’t get me wrong, there are those on the right who are dangerously deranged and seem to hate certain groups with a fervour that is deeply disturbing. But there are only about a dozen of them, they are clearly recognisable by the swastika tattoos on their foreheads and the knuckle tracks they leave and they tend to be incapable of forming and holding together any coherent movement. Although threatening, they are in such a minority we can effectively ignore the real far right for all meaningful purposes. Except that those with the leftists disposition seem to imagine, with their knee-jerk labelling, that we are all like that who don’t subscribe to their membership.

As if to justify and account for their own loathing of ‘the other’ and because they can’t grasp that most of us simply don’t hate anybody at all, they tell themselves that we might not scream and spit and hold demonstrations, but that is only because we plot in secret to exterminate humanity. The stench of fear and loathing is particularly pungent around election time as they rally and screech and concoct ever more outlandish reasons for why people would vote against them.

A nice cup of Labour tea...

They genuinely don’t understand the real concerns of ordinary people – that real people actually don’t want very much governance at all. That ordinary people want law and order, a decent education, jobs and opportunities, but most of all not to be told what to do and what to think. So while the hosts of the worm want you to vote for hate and division, you just vote whichever way your head and heart tell you. It will confuse the fuck out of them.