Or have we morphed into the Worrier Nation?
When I tell people (tete a tete) what I am up to, they invariably (and, I believe, subconsciously), take a step back. I can almost see them thinking "How dare you? How very dare you question anything? We are, after all, the last bastion of civilisation!".
I hope not. I truly hope not. Because if we are, then we are deeper in the mire than even I imagined.
Once upon a time in the long ago, we were an arrogant, belligerent, feisty race of people. And why not? After all, we dared to roam, we dared to seek, discover, and ultimately, conquer. We were good at it. Yes, we subjugated half the world, we had them bow down to our will, and in return we exported (mostly) that which was the best of the British race. Roads, sanitation, order, dignity, courtesy, respect, calm, authority, and erm, tea.
But as I say, that was a while ago now. Most of those who were subjugated unsubjugated themselves. In the name of independence and progress, they threw off the yoke of Britishness and ploughed their own furrow. For the most part, it has been a dismal failure, at least, for the Anglophile nations in Africa. This is not a bold, unsubstantiated claim, because I have witnessed for myself their regression. When we got there nothing functioned well, so we "sorted it out" and when these nations were granted independence in the late fifties and early sixties it has mostly been a race to see which country could regress the fastest. Back, they went, to the same old, same old. Corruption, cronyism, disruption and decay.
Again, why not?
All they needed to do was to look at us, in the old country, for an example of how the wheel turns.
Anglophile nations looking to us now will see themselves mirrored almost perfectly. They will see self-serving "leaders", politicians, authoritarian doctors who say we must do as they wilt, a police force that allows for convicted criminals still to serve in the ranks, and worse, at higher and higher levels. They will see scientists sell their souls for the next research grant. They will notice that a free people needs to be observed, constantly, by almost five million cameras. They will see bad banks go unpunished, or even rewarded for abject failure. They will see failed politicians welcomed back into the fold following a brief period in the hinterland.
They will learn, as we all do, that corruption pays. That promises made can be unmade and barely anyone will notice, far less complain. They will see that police brutality is condoned. They will see that police incompetence goes unremarked. They will learn from us the art of the cover-up. They will learn, from our country's "finest", how to blame the innocents for their own failings.
One thing they learnt long before we did: elections (unless completely rigged), are utterly pointless. There are 56 nations in Africa and for the most part, those who were "elected" post-independence, sit in the same chair still. If not them, then family members, or members of their own cadre, the cadre of the greedy.
We have yet to learn that voting, signing petitions, asking MPs for assistance, or assuming fair play from a bobby or a judge, is pure insanity. We trust almost anyone with a title. Or a degree, or indeed, anyone that merely claims a superior learning. We believe them. We are children. We give these people far more credence than they could possibly deserve. God help us, but we trust them.
And why is that?
Because it was ever thus.
And it is unlikely to change. We want these people to run our lives. We ask them to ban stuff, for our own good. We even pay them to run our miserable lives. We pay them to punish us. We pay them to tell us what we should eat, drink, smoke, or otherwise do with our bodies. We secede control of our bodies and our minds. We think the way we are
supposed to think. We assume that things will never change because if we wanted change, we would vote for it. We would take a good, hard look at the MPs we have voted for in the past and we would think, "What if?".
What if we voted for someone who had our concerns, our worries, our problems? What if we elected someone who actually cared? What if that person with the bright rosette actually had our interests at heart?
We don't. We tend to stick to those parties Mum/Dad/Uncle Fred/Aunty Jean voted for. We stick, rigorously, to class. Makes sense, right? If we are working class, we vote Labour. If we are middle- to upper class, we go with the Conservatives. If we have no clue whatsoever, we vote LibDem.
We do this because we have changed. We have changed from Warrior to Worrier.
We worry that if we picked an independent, or someone that someone, somewhere in the family might disapprove of, we would be castigated. We worry that if, as a working class chump, we didn't vote Labour, we would somehow be betraying our roots. We worry that if some party with radically new ideas got in, ideas that worked, or
didn't, we would be to blame. It would be our fault that the country failed.
Except that the country has already failed.
Take this sentence, received today in my inbox as part of a wider discussion:
"Indeed so, but we are now only
permitted to live here, it is no longer our country so we have no say in how it
is governed. The people decided to give our country away by tacit consent."
Ask yourself: is this the country I want for myself? Is this the legacy I want for my children? For their children? For their children's children?
If the answer is yes, then I have no idea what to say to you. I do not know how your thought processes work. I do not know what you would eventually settle for if what you have today does not disturb you in the least. And don't go comparing our country with others. That is a pointless exercise. We are (supposedly) in charge of our own affairs. What others do, in this context, is neither here nor, indeed, there.
If your answer was no, then there is hope. It means that you will dare to vote for someone other than red, blue or whatever colour the other lot wear. Or, even more radically,
you will not vote at all. You won't vote because you already know that it is an exercise in futility. You know that the next lot will be the same, or worse, than the last lot.
Forget, if you can, the threat that the EU actually is. Or that Common Purpose, or the Freemasons, or the Bilderburgers, or the fabled NWO direct it all. Forget them, because if we were truly motivated, we could destroy these groups in a heartbeat.
Worry, instead.
We need to be a Worrier Nation.
We need to be because everything seems to get systematically worse than before. Year on year. I do not want to take my last breath and think that I did a good job. I do not want to kid myself that I left a good country for my children to inherit. I didn't. I can't.
We can't.
Unless we do some radical things. Like switching off the telly. Like not buying the newspapers. Like thinking for ourselves. Like assuming that the system is corrupt beyond anything we have ever known. Like learning to say no. Like learning to question absolutely everything.
We need worriers.
We also need warriors.
If we can find a way to combine them both, there may be a chance that we can do some good, you and I.
CR.
