WORDS: Belinda Messenger

Im really despairing for people at the moment, the delusion has reached dangerous levels and it feels like the world has gone mad. Think of the smartest person you know, not the 40hrs a week full time worker who has only an hour a day to peruse at leisure a few articles that pop up in their news feed, but the hungry minds that consume everything. 

The ones who have time to read and watch and consume everything that’s happening, do you even know those people? They work in the media so it’s their job to know what’s happening in the world, or they don’t work yet because they are still in education or studying for their professional qualifications; or they don’t work any more, but an enquiring mind doesn’t rest off watching soaps and other mindless drivel. So think of the most informed person you know and ask yourself if they would agree with your opinion on Trump/ Brexit/ Corbyn? Insert your social or political hobby horse here. 

When the Mueller report states unequivocally that a hostile foreign government attacked the USA’s by benefiting Trumps campaign this should tell you how destructive the man is, but people who voted for him break out their MAGA hats a cheer:

 “fuck yeah! America! 

   Make America great again. 

   Trump was innocent, it was Russia,

   they are bad, Trump is good. 

   Hell yeah”

The unreality that grips us here in the UK is just as bad with a vast unwavering mass of people on Britain’s streets today know that Brexit is fucked, knowing they were sold a false promise, and that as bad and broken as things are, they are about to get even worse for them: BUT THEY WOULD STILL VOTE THE SAME WAY ANYWAY!?!

Proof positive of a departure from reality, given the illusion of being informed asked to make life altering decisions that will change our political and industrial landscape FOREVER. Now given that responsibility and that choice, people begin to emulate the characters they see on TV: belligerent Boris’s and jokers like Farage all over the place becoming either immediately hostile or evasively jovial about the inevitable catastrophe.

This is like wilfully driving yourself and your family over a cliff edge to “show them”. “I’ll show the clever people”.

Show us your ignorance yes, show us your frailty, show is all how easily led and committed you are to being wrong. We will pity you, we will see your poverty and hunger and lack of opportunities and we will despair for you. But we can not help you, you can not hear us calling you back from the cliff edge. We will hold you, and more and more of us will come to stop you falling but eventually, you will take us all down with you. 

This wilful ignorance, wilful embrace of your own demise is a symptom of how toxic our world has become. And the rest of us will be ok in the end I suppose, when you have sacrificed yourself .

Brexit, Trumplestilzkin’s America wasn’t designed to support you and your kind, the cogs that keep the machine working. It won’t just be your first born you will sacrifice, it’s all of you and yours. But those of us, the thinkers, the philosophers, the creatives, the wealthy and educated will figure out a way to survive.  We will become the cogs, until another generation comes along to shake us loose and replace us.