You won’t believe what happened to me. I was sitting reading some current affairs Blog, when I came across a horrific story of oppression and Human Rights abuses. The writing was very powerful and soon got me whipped up into a political frenzy. Not like me I know, but what can I say? I’m a sucker for good writing.
The piece told me of a small group of people from an ethnic minority who were facing a bit of trouble over their choices of where to live. They had been persecuted throughout the ages, and, at times, genocide had been exercised against them. The article accepted that other people from their group had been naughty at times, but you can’t hold that against them forever, right?
This particular group had beaten all the odds to get themselves a bit of of land, but had used it illegally. Not a big deal really, but they had held onto it, ilegally, for quite some time as they had nowhere else to go.
Everyone from the surrounding regions were completely against them, and were all actively tying to get rid of them. Eventually, even their own government had taken legal action against them, and had prepared to remove them from the homes that they had made for themselves. I got all liberal and upset and started to get myself in a right old leftie tiz about it (why couldn’t they just leave them alone to live in peace? A bit of illegality never hurt anyone, did it?).
I felt absolutely compelled to defend these people, but I couldn’t think who would help me. I knew most of my friends would be completely against the ilegal use of land, so I decided to get the lefties on board and went to find them. I looked in all the usual places, beatnik poetry clubs, anarchy groups, world music record shops, and vegan cookery lessons. I spoke with hundreds of them, but couldn’t find a single one who was willing to come with me. I was completely shocked.
I got very dejected about it, concluding that it just wasn’t that important after all. I had really just assumed the liberals would be up for it.
I suppose that they thought it'd be too hot to travel to Israel at this time of year.
In any event they all had prior engagements watching Emmerdale Farm, in Basildon or something - probably completely different thing to be fair, not connected in any way, not even associated to the same prinicples involved, and certainly not coming to a completely different conclusion about it.
In the end I gave it up as a bad job.
No comments:
Post a Comment