What abuse?

So what if I tried to explain what it was like being this miserable?  I wouldn't know where to start.  As I sit here trying to conjure up some overview, some perspective, some relevant, meaningful, significant aspect of what it is like being me I keep hitting one brick wall after another.  There is, of course, one very pertinent fact;  It is designed this way - that is why it is so paradoxical.

I came across a new word to me the other day; misanthropy.  It means a hatred of all people as opposed to the 'half as bad' misogyny or misandry; both of which are at least only half the human race.  I listen to Radio 4 regularly and I listen to any number of people commenting on all sorts of subjects.  There are two main types of people.  Well to be more accurate there are two main attitudes exhibited by the interviewers and interviewees.  There are people who seem to have a positive attitude and those who don't.  But it is not as simple as it seems.  You may think, reading this, that I have a negative attitude but I don't.  I have a positive attitude insofar as I have positive values and am dismayed at the inhumanity and apparent self imposed ignorance out there.  In other words it is precisely because my genuine expectation of humanity is good that I am so shocked.  I don't expect ants to be good so when they eat each other I see it simply as what they do.  It is often the case that an apparent negative attitude is actually spawned from a positive one.  And then there is the worst case of the sanctimonious 'do-gooder' who sounds so thoughtful and considerate but their true negativity can almost be felt emanating from the radio.

We have serious problems in our culture and I don't know if I can either come to terms with them or understand them well enough to illustrate them but a major issue for me at the moment is the 'abuse' issue.

There are thousands of examples but the Jimmy Savile affair is a good illustration of abuse and societies reaction to it.  Then there is the recent issue with Gerald Scarfe and his cartoon in the Sunday Times depicting Benjamin Netanyahu building a wall with the blood and body parts of Palestinians.  The outrage expressed by the Jewish community was so disturbing to the establishment that the renown rogue Rupert Murdoch actually apologised!  What for?

I really don't feel like writing reams to explain this.  I am left almost speechless with the feeling that if people need this explaining then they won't understand because they don't want to.  But to put it simply you cannot, on the one hand, be surprised that Jimmy Savile got away with multiple cases of abuse because no one would listen to the victims complaints and then try to silence a perfectly reasonable observation of the abuse of the Palestinians.  Do 'these people' really not understand the connection.

This would require a serious tome to explicitly illustrate all the various complications and paradoxical issues but I am not doing that now.  There is, however, a clear correlation between the two issues.  On the one hand Jimmy Savile was abusing young people and, although they complained on numerous occasions, they were not taken seriously and Jimmy Savile not only got away with it but ironically was given more and more privilege enabling more and more abuse.  I have grown up in this culture and I am not going to feign surprise at how 'we were all fooled by him'.  It seems obvious to me.  If you criticise someone in a position of power (and fame, money and public image, are all power) the knee jerk reaction by the majority is to shut you up.  "You can't say that sort of thing" and before you know it all the wonderful things the person does come out as if to nullify any bad thing they may be accused of.  It may be a slightly over used analogy but even Adolf Hitler was nice to his dog.  That is no reason not to listen to complaints about a few Jews being gassed.  Netanyahu himself only announced in December last year that Israel plans to break international law by building more settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.  Apart from the fact that this is blatantly illegal there is the controversial issue of Israelis blockading of the Palestinians and making it all but impossible for them to survive.  Whether or not the Israelis have good reason for what they are doing they are still doing something that from a broader perspective looks very much like the isolation of Jews in ghettos prior to and during the Second World War.  It is perfectly legitimate to question the humanity of Israel's behaviour.  How much objection was there to Scarfe's depiction of Margaret Thatcher biting off John Major's head?  No, the objection is more similar to the Islamic fundamentalists issuing fatwa's against cartoonists depicting Mohamed in a less than complimentary manor.

We all understand that criticism against people causes upset.  But the serious problem we are  facing is that we (as a society) are objecting to criticism of the bully precisely BECAUSE they are a bully.  We are less vocal when the consensus is that the people being criticised are less influential or powerful.  But if we are afraid then we mustn't criticise.  The reason this characteristic exists in our culture is because it is exactly how we bring up our children.  By telling them that they MUST respect authority and do as they are told or suffer the consequences we are creating an abusive culture.  We are actually teaching them that bullying and covert abuse are the tools of survival.  Ironically they are not but the greater consensus appears to be that "That's life".  "It's a cruel world".  "Survival of the fittest!"

We are living in a fundamentally abusive culture and it is all but impossible for abusers to "see" the abuse.  Teachers believe that if they didn't maintain discipline the children would run riot.  It is only true BECAUSE they are oppressing them.  It doesn't matter how many scapegoats like Jimmy Savile we lynch in retrospect the only real consequence is that we kid ourselves even more that we are nicer than we actually are.  If the expressed shock and disgust at the revelations about Jimmy Savile were genuine then we would not tolerate the claims of anti-Semitism against Gerald Scarfe.  There is nothing remotely anti-Semitic in his cartoon.  But if you get anywhere near criticising Israel you will soon find yourself being demonised as a Nazi, Jew Killer, Jew Hater, Anti-Semitic or any other similar false claim.  This, of course, gives Israel a special license to get away with murder... or do I mean killing bad people which we don't call murder.

In Britain today we are becoming even more right wing and inhumane.  We keep wondering how the Germans ever did it and so, whilst 'blaming' someone else, we are insanely dancing to the same tune to the same destination.

The reason I am so furious is because my life, and worse still, my daughter's life have both been ruined because the 'responsible' authorities did not step up to the proverbial mark when it was their responsibility to do so.  It was far worse because there was an effective conspiracy of sorts to keep us down.  As individual members of society we are not supposed to take the law into our own hands and so we are not supposed to bash the bully back.  We are 'blamed' if we do.  What we are supposed to do is report the offence and the authority will act responsibly and maintain at least a semblance of justice.  But NO; That is not what happens.  What our culture protects is money and possession.  We have been railroaded and persecuted until from a perfectly reasonable life we are refugees in our own country living in someone else's attic and a future that is likely only to get worse.  But does anyone care.  NO.  They pretend to care but they kid themselves that "No one starves in Britain today".  They kid themselves that we are a caring society.  They think every one of the cascade of examples of deception and abuse are 'exceptions'.  And they NEVER stand up for justice or against injustice.  Why not?  Because they are afraid they might get picked on.  It might cost them something.  They might lose a bit of their precious privilege afforded them by the bullies.  Our culture is a culture of cowardly bullies and it disgusts me.  What disgusts me profoundly is that it pretends to be a Christian culture.  OH POOR LITTLE BABY JESUS GOT NAILED TO A CROSS.  We just love humanity so much that that sort of thing is not acceptable.  Not acceptable to the point of elevating the poor chap to the status of a GOD for God's sake.  But do they give a monkeys backside about the BILLIONS of children being abused, raped, tortured and starved - NO.  They carry on with their own little lives alleviating their pathetic egos by donating to charity and weeping at scenes of devastation and cruelty piped into their living room for their own entertainment and ego-massage.

Who? Me angry?  No - surely not.  If you are not outraged you are not paying attention!

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wrote "We do not have to visit a madhouse to find disordered minds; our planet is the mental institution of the universe."