I woke up this morning to a number of messages and emails from distant friends - apologising for the news I hadn’t read yet.
I’ve been wondering if I should write anything at all for a few days, or if I should bury my head in the sand. Who am I to make any sort of comment about the people of a country half a world away?
Maybe that’s the point.
While our two countries share the same language, it’s easy to forget that almost everything else about our cultures and values differs considerably.
I read an incendiary post on Threads earlier today - somebody contemplating the realisation that over half of their friends and neighbours had been exposed as sexist, racist, bigoted, and homophobic. Someone countered that not all of those that voted red were any of those things - and were met with an immediate “but you voted for somebody that brazenly exhibits all of those traits”.
Their defence centred around the cost of groceries - which was met with a horrible truth; “so you value the price of groceries over human rights, or any vestige of morality?”
Deafening silence followed.
It’s no better here of course.
Our last government was voted for largely by those more interested in holding on to what they have than helping anybody else. During their disastrous final years in power the very same people that had voted for them filled the social internet with all sorts of vitriol. Having now voted for change, the same people are now complaining about their current leaders.
Nobody ever wins.
While watching the news this evening, moments were re-played of both republican and democratic gatherings during the evening. Something struck me. At the republic gathering the crowd was entirely white - the democratic gathering was filled with all colours, creeds, races, and ages. Some will claim the news coverage did that on purpose - manipulated by “the man” to tell a specific story.
That’s what happens when poorly educated people are fed a diet of bullshit by commercial news networks, controlled by billionaires with a vested interest in feeding lies, fear, uncertainty and doubt in order to push the tiller in a direction that suits their monetary interests.
It happens all over the world, again and again.
People never seem to learn.