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Or are we already past the brink?
Is life now a non-stop carousel of Katie Hopkins’ horrid ‘everyone’s thinking it’ soundbites/Johnson’s kerfuffles/Donald ‘Send them back’ Wotsit Hitler/Brexit til it hurts/Piers red-faced bursting bloodvessel angry Morgan/ political correctness gone mad / Love Island/ Fake News ‘winning’/ free the journalist Tommy Robinson/ Weinstein misogyny/ Jeremy ‘What Brexit?’ ‘What anti-semitism’ Corbyn and remoaning lefty snowflakes?
Or are we still alright? Can we back away from the edge? Or has the climate emergency already done for us? Are we just stuck arguing about what door to get out of the house whilst it becomes an inferno around us?
Can we still choose diplomacy over gung-ho jingoism?
Or do we now all need to pick a side? Do we need to stand up for what we believe in?
Has life got that ridiculous?
Is it all fake news?
The short answer is ‘I don’t know’ and nor does anybody else. What was ridiculous four years ago is now more real than it ever has been.
Elvis could suddenly reappear in a Tesco wearing a Tiara riding Shergar shouting ‘I shot JFK and then I faked the moon landings’ and no-one would be surprised. Not nowadays.
And here’s us British. The stiff upper lipped ‘rational thinking’ British willing to set the United Kingdom on fire for no good reason than ‘it’s what we voted for innit?’
We’re meant to be the cold emotionless sensible lot who always see every side of the argument. Us British don’t go screaming down into the abyss shouting ‘Brexit means Brexit’ but we do. Nowadays.
Bugger the consequences. Bugger the backstop. Bugger everything.
We want Britain back. We want it like it was before all ‘dese foreign’ people came here and took our jobs, stole our futures and injected chicken tikka massala into our mouths like it was crack for the masses.
We want it back to when it was just us. No-one else. Who cares about some IRA bombs? Those explosions happen to other people and not us.
And what the billy heck is going on with Iran? Are we now picking up the pieces left by Donald Trump wanting to see the world burn or will we be fanning the flames ourselves?
Are we now a country run by the angry ‘capitalised badly spelt’ voices of social media?
This country. Our countrymen who have been beaten round the head with austerity for so many years that we are left bruised and bloody and looking to blame anybody else for our misfortune.
“It was benefit cheats.” Say our leaders.
“It was them immigrants. I saw them do it.” Say other leaders.
When in fact it was our leaders who went and done it. It was them with their policy after policy launching a wrecking ball through the poorest of our society knocking us all down like so many skittles.
But we are all to blame as our country turns against us making us all into extremists when we were all mostly moderates before.
And it is moderation that we need again. Rational arguments. Facts over feelings not feelings over facts.Can we still shut the populist pandora’s box of the far right and the far left? Or is moderation now out of reach. I just don’t know. No-one does.
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