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We are obsessed with things being either black or white. There's an acceptance that there has to be two conflicting sides to every issue, usually passive versus aggressive. In reality it's far more complex, but I think it's easier for the mainstream to consume when it's boxed up in simplistic fashion to aid with squeezing in some ad revenue whilst fear-mongering with carefully edited content. All news is practically a distortion of the truth and we can rarely handle it regardless of its format. When presented with something that is impossible to dismiss out of hand, you're more likely to see agenda driven statements off the back of it rather than compassion first.
We are conditioned to take a side before being able to form an opinion. The opinion has to be left or right. No middle ground, no in-between complexities that truly need to be dissected and discussed for us to understand it completely. Be it a resolution or judgement. Which is how politics gets traction for people that have selective interest or don't have the time to be educated on everything (let's face it, nobody is unless it's your job to be educated).
Politics in particular exists on so many levels in terms of gains that it's impossible to truly know (or prove) the agendas that finance so many government initiatives. Society is so fractured and contradictory, so lost in defining what is right and wrong that it forgets about fixing things that are broken because the ambiguity of decision making leaves everyone screaming expletives at each other.
We are so conditioned to process news that we do so with blind bias. Say, blaming one specific thing for a problem created and then not acknowledging we caused it in the first place. Then we don't acknowledge that we're using the problem to push forward with new ones whilst ignoring the very same problems elsewhere. Why? Mostly because of money and business. People then march against things that they think will make a difference, believing they're doing the right thing when in reality they've been distracted (again).
In amongst it hypocrisy festers deep. Take a look at the left in any given US campus/university, a place where you're meant to test your intellect and ideas. Instead they repress to the point of parody. Watch them on a demonstration, attacking someone with a differing standpoint because it's okay to smack 'the enemy' if they don't agree with you. Self-appointed young men and women talking on behalf of a generation/race/religion that has its own voice drowned out by their organised verbal mayhem. Freedom of speech unless you're deemed not free to speak or others take away the responsibility with vocal arrogance.
Don't fret, on the other side over on the right, we have the antithesis. With their over the top rhetoric with elements of logic and pragmatism sprinkled in there, if you look hard enough. But the delivery leaves some listening detached thanks to the zero tolerance offered. Many welcome it because they're fed up with the alternatives and just think, 'f*ck it, chuck a grenade and let's see what happens'. There are far too many paradoxical plays in the world of politics and the people zone out and refocus on something tangible they can associate with it's not always necessarily a tidy perspective. But then there probably is no such thing.
Watching on the sidelines are the social commentators that mock with honesty and comedy and also analytical splendour, telling us what we already know but with flair and style. How everything is broken. But we're rarely treated to a fix. They just point out the hypocrisy and laugh and we laugh with them.
It also suits any given impact to have a strong perspective on something rather than appear understanding of the intricacies to any particular problem (which can dilate the single headline that remains pivotal to any given argument). You can shout louder this way. More people will listen if you are concise, even if you skip the all important details. Why bother with the other stuff, the political conspiracies that we know are playing out in the world, if they don't actually stop you from buying your £200 kicks or brand new smartphone.
What the internet has managed to do is shackle us with information, to the point where we are positively empowered to know pretty much everything. We're overdosing. We can't quite control the constant influx. We are spoilt. Yet important things are buried below the mundane and we are still obsessing with the simplistic rather than daring to dive deep into the complicated. The answers are there, we're just too busy arguing with each other to notice them.
No conclusion. No big philosophical reveal. Just an incomplete rant that would have clogged up my timeline on Twitter if I attempted to break it up into 140 characters a piece. I suppose some of this can be tied back to football. Or in particular the comments section down below. Seasoned regulars will understand.
Peace out and don't take a huge bite out of the hypernornalisation, you might choke.
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This was written back in January during the maddening hype of Trump's inauguration. It's not about the Westminster attack. Although it felt right to finally push it out of my drafts. If there is anything that isn't complicated, it's a fundamentalist brainwashed by his own extremism, getting into a car and attacking and killing innocent people. Removing the politics and religious aspects, this type of randomised terrorism (although arguably it's not) is hard to police. Unless of course you revoke citizenship and deport anyone (British or otherwise) that threatens our way of living, preaching hate and inspiring others to do so, before they commit a heinous crime. If there's intent, then there's guilt. Another grenade for the left and right to pass to each other, pin still in.
I guess I do have a conclusion. Religion, for the most part, was our knee-jerk to understand life and the cosmos. An evolutionary reaction to science before we understood what science was. It's renaissance was to control any given population. A tool to divide and conquer. It's not changed for centuries. Money and war and a singularity of followers that fear to live without the constraints placed upon them by thousand(s) year old scriptures. Religion is corrupt abused ideology, especially in the case of those that seek to murder in the name of a God. Whether it's a single lone wolf on a suicide run or a more organised attack as part of a cell or commissioned act. It can also be a military drone dropping bombs over a village in the Middle East, not caring about the collateral damage because of the greater good it will achieve by wiping out the targets in amongst women and children.
We're basically f*cked because there's too much noise, too many echoes. But we'll get on with it. With every day life. By tomorrow we'll be back to moaning about the weather. Or having to play our games at Wembley next season, switching over from the channel covering a disaster in some far flung country to a preferred soap. Unless you lost loved ones in Westminster.
