On this wall someone has written a message condemning Dominic Cummings, the former advisor to Boris Johnson. The message is clear to see, stating that Cummings is a 'blind old cunt' (apologies), but the writer has not identified herself. The view, or what it intends to imply, is widely accepted by a vast majority, I would think. And certainly those opposed to Brexit. It offers nothing beyond a statement of opinion, but behind the message, I have to imagine a person with thoughts and impressions and a particular purpose in writing this rather than something else.
Cummings made himself a persona non grata not just by his use of Cambridge Analytica during the Brexit campaign but by breaking lockdown rules in the summer. I don't know when this was written or which it refers to or if the writer was being a generalist about Cummings.
Cummings, strictly, is not blind or old, or indeed a vagina. He has a particular vision and seems to be intelligent, eccentric, highly motivated, ruthless, courageous and, judging by the lockdown breach, both self-interested and overly certain of his own inviolability.
I panned across the message in video-mode and sent it to various friends whom I know didn't have any positive feelings at all for Cummings (I could have chosen almost anyone I know to fit that category) and whom I was pretty sure would find it amusing. Mostly men - in part because of the word 'cunt' and in part because more men than women seem to have strong political likes and dislikes. Though I may be being sexist there. I am not especially political - although I have likes and dislikes - and do not really know enough about politics to regard myself as anything other than 'disengaged'.
If I lived another life, I think I would invest time and study to politics. I'd like to understand the theories and the belief systems and, perhaps more importantly, the practicalities.
How can it be possible, for example, that someone can be a patriot and have a strong sense of the greatness of their nation, but at the same time want to limit taxation? Surely their strong feelings then are not for their country as a whole, but only for 'people like them' who can afford a life without any form of welfare or shared communal goods. What it seems that they love is an ideal of the nation, not the reality of a nation, in which there are real people who might need help and support. They love a chimera.
How can a person value their own ability to 'rise from poverty' and praise in themselves all the fine qualities that battle took and nurtured, but then insist that their own children should have the benefit of a huge untaxed inheritance?
We seem all to live my myths that allow us leeway - to break lockdown rules, say - but secure us an unimpeachable belief in our own ongoing rightness.
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