Rage, Political Rage
I had a really bitter and angry thought yesterday, “I am glad my sister is dead.” For context, my sister was heavily, heavily disabled (she died in my early twenties) and I write this about a week after the general election which has seen the Tory party returned with a majority.
It shocked me, as it is a pretty dreadful thing to think however you frame it and it is not something I actually do think beyond the split second it happened, it was a snap internal reaction not so much to the election result and who won but to what the next five years will mean to families similar to mine -or how my family once was. If I was sixteen years old now, still living at home, contemplating college and university, with a heavily disabled close relative my future would look completely different as of this week.
Growing up, after my parents divorced money was tight, I was aware that a lot of the random expenses of the household were paid for by my sister’s various benefits and care allowances as much as they were by any maintenance payment. Whilst I could and can take many shots at my father over his conduct in the past, I cannot criticise him for the job he had or the amount he earned (there is only so much money available to pay maintenance with). I was lucky enough to have an LEA that paid my fees to go to university, and grades good enough to choose somewhere relatively close by to home so as to minimise a lot of the costs of travelling and avoid being in a pricier part of the UK.
I am also aware that after some pretty dark conversations with my mother that she contemplated a lot of awful scenarios and had spoken with my aunt about my brother and I going to live with my cousins in the event of her death if we were still teenagers. I know that a lot of the cuts over the past few years would have hit my family very hard if we were still in that situation. If my sister was still alive, I am genuinely not sure how my mother would cope, I am pretty confident I would have to contribute some money to help my mother at the very minimum. Again, it is not so hard to imagine that scenario but with me and my brother both unemployed and unable to help her and our sister.
A lot of people inevitably have experience of caring for someone, often elderly or “just” for a few years because of an illness like cancer. This divides class boundaries and income status. Occasionally in the news a reminder comes up about David Cameron’s son Ivan who died of the same conditions as my sister, relatively recently this has been because someone has accused him of making political capital from it regarding the NHS. I don’t think David Cameron does make political capital out of his son’s death (though I do think it is very easy to see why people believe that he does), whilst I do consider him a heartless bastard in many respects you would have to be a truly inhuman creature to use your dead child in such a way and for all the easy left wing jokes in the world I do not think that he does this. It could be said I am using my dead sister to promote my own political position so let me make it clear, my views do not have any greater legitimacy because of my experience or background, ultimately these experiences are anecdata and I am posting to get this off my chest because I am angry and upset about what I think the election result means rather than because I am sad a particular tribe of politicians won or lost.
One of the first things we do is to teach children to share and to think of other people, this is true of secular and religious upbringings, it is remarkable that such attitudes do not carry over and endure into adulthood. I think one of the darkest things about the cuts and austerity is that a recession and period of wider lack caused by the banks and an out of hand financial system has in the end resulted in a greater proportion of people voting for politicians that will penalise the weaker and more vulnerable parts of society. There is a lot of nonsense about Blitz spirit and British values in popular culture which are clearly utterly false as the election result shows. I think partially it is because a lot of people have not experienced the reality of that sort of life so find it hard to relate or indeed that statistics and figures are not very human looking and that one of the first things people do to statistics of any kind is to challenge them and accuse them of being made up. I will say nothing of the lack of government action over tax avoidance by large companies whose due amounts would cover the benefits budget several times over…
I strongly doubt and would indeed hope that no one voting Tory is doing so because they think disabled people and their families deserve to be punished or for them to be made to suffer -though that is the reality of the cuts. I do think it is wrong to tear into Tory voters on facebook just because they are on the right hand side of politics. I absolutely do think however it is right to challenge them on why they voted Tory and why social conservatism, general fiscal prudence, better deals for higher earners, Tory tribalism and whatever the other reasons they voted blue trumps concern for others at the most basic level -and indeed the absence of concern for others within the measures of the cuts.
I also doubt that Tory voters and passionate party members are callous enough not to believe that there are exceptions to cuts that should be made -so where the fuck are the Tory voters who are pissed off with Cameron and co about this and other things but who generally approve of other Tory policies and values? Ultimately how can people across the political spectrum care so little about people who are exactly the same as them who are suffering. Is it really such a case of “I’m alright Jack”? Austerity has stopped being a left/right issue and is surely a basic decency and human empathy issue by now.
People speak about the politics of hope and fear and it really does seem to be that the politics of fear have won. We are one of the biggest economies in the world and the Red Cross is distributing food in the UK? Why? The notion that we should stop poor people being poor seems to be heard in some people’s heads as we should stop the rich being rich. This seems to be confused at a basic level with what and who counts as being rich and poor, how aspiration differs from reality and also how economies should work and serve the people who support them. People label the Tory party as the nasty party, historically they have been the party of the few with Labour supposedly the party of the many. I find it baffling that so many people can be happy to vote against the interests of their friends and neighbours either wittingly or unwittingly.
In a calmer and more lucid frame of mind, I think I would make a point about a really interesting human geography thesis I read a few years ago about the phenomenon of the frequency of murder of suspected witches in Africa in the present day -and the relationship between these statistics and drought, unrest and famine related measurements in the same area. Essentially making a connection between a group’s hardship and the search for a scapegoat who was not contributing economically to the society. Parallels with the idea that witch trials in Europe were associated with old women without much social support -though obviously there are many, many other issues like gender and sexuality to consider as part of any study like this and of course European statistics of witch cases were not limited to elderly widows.
Anyway, I am very angry about how disabled people of all sorts are going to be treated, but the same arguments with little variation can be made for a lot of other groups.
I think it is also an important point that governments should be trying to govern for all their constituents not just those who elected them never mind not for whatever special sectors they would like to represent.
“I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government.” Thoreau
Basically human beings are atrocious bastards and I hate an awful lot of them right now.
It shocked me, as it is a pretty dreadful thing to think however you frame it and it is not something I actually do think beyond the split second it happened, it was a snap internal reaction not so much to the election result and who won but to what the next five years will mean to families similar to mine -or how my family once was. If I was sixteen years old now, still living at home, contemplating college and university, with a heavily disabled close relative my future would look completely different as of this week.
Growing up, after my parents divorced money was tight, I was aware that a lot of the random expenses of the household were paid for by my sister’s various benefits and care allowances as much as they were by any maintenance payment. Whilst I could and can take many shots at my father over his conduct in the past, I cannot criticise him for the job he had or the amount he earned (there is only so much money available to pay maintenance with). I was lucky enough to have an LEA that paid my fees to go to university, and grades good enough to choose somewhere relatively close by to home so as to minimise a lot of the costs of travelling and avoid being in a pricier part of the UK.
I am also aware that after some pretty dark conversations with my mother that she contemplated a lot of awful scenarios and had spoken with my aunt about my brother and I going to live with my cousins in the event of her death if we were still teenagers. I know that a lot of the cuts over the past few years would have hit my family very hard if we were still in that situation. If my sister was still alive, I am genuinely not sure how my mother would cope, I am pretty confident I would have to contribute some money to help my mother at the very minimum. Again, it is not so hard to imagine that scenario but with me and my brother both unemployed and unable to help her and our sister.
A lot of people inevitably have experience of caring for someone, often elderly or “just” for a few years because of an illness like cancer. This divides class boundaries and income status. Occasionally in the news a reminder comes up about David Cameron’s son Ivan who died of the same conditions as my sister, relatively recently this has been because someone has accused him of making political capital from it regarding the NHS. I don’t think David Cameron does make political capital out of his son’s death (though I do think it is very easy to see why people believe that he does), whilst I do consider him a heartless bastard in many respects you would have to be a truly inhuman creature to use your dead child in such a way and for all the easy left wing jokes in the world I do not think that he does this. It could be said I am using my dead sister to promote my own political position so let me make it clear, my views do not have any greater legitimacy because of my experience or background, ultimately these experiences are anecdata and I am posting to get this off my chest because I am angry and upset about what I think the election result means rather than because I am sad a particular tribe of politicians won or lost.
One of the first things we do is to teach children to share and to think of other people, this is true of secular and religious upbringings, it is remarkable that such attitudes do not carry over and endure into adulthood. I think one of the darkest things about the cuts and austerity is that a recession and period of wider lack caused by the banks and an out of hand financial system has in the end resulted in a greater proportion of people voting for politicians that will penalise the weaker and more vulnerable parts of society. There is a lot of nonsense about Blitz spirit and British values in popular culture which are clearly utterly false as the election result shows. I think partially it is because a lot of people have not experienced the reality of that sort of life so find it hard to relate or indeed that statistics and figures are not very human looking and that one of the first things people do to statistics of any kind is to challenge them and accuse them of being made up. I will say nothing of the lack of government action over tax avoidance by large companies whose due amounts would cover the benefits budget several times over…
I strongly doubt and would indeed hope that no one voting Tory is doing so because they think disabled people and their families deserve to be punished or for them to be made to suffer -though that is the reality of the cuts. I do think it is wrong to tear into Tory voters on facebook just because they are on the right hand side of politics. I absolutely do think however it is right to challenge them on why they voted Tory and why social conservatism, general fiscal prudence, better deals for higher earners, Tory tribalism and whatever the other reasons they voted blue trumps concern for others at the most basic level -and indeed the absence of concern for others within the measures of the cuts.
I also doubt that Tory voters and passionate party members are callous enough not to believe that there are exceptions to cuts that should be made -so where the fuck are the Tory voters who are pissed off with Cameron and co about this and other things but who generally approve of other Tory policies and values? Ultimately how can people across the political spectrum care so little about people who are exactly the same as them who are suffering. Is it really such a case of “I’m alright Jack”? Austerity has stopped being a left/right issue and is surely a basic decency and human empathy issue by now.
People speak about the politics of hope and fear and it really does seem to be that the politics of fear have won. We are one of the biggest economies in the world and the Red Cross is distributing food in the UK? Why? The notion that we should stop poor people being poor seems to be heard in some people’s heads as we should stop the rich being rich. This seems to be confused at a basic level with what and who counts as being rich and poor, how aspiration differs from reality and also how economies should work and serve the people who support them. People label the Tory party as the nasty party, historically they have been the party of the few with Labour supposedly the party of the many. I find it baffling that so many people can be happy to vote against the interests of their friends and neighbours either wittingly or unwittingly.
In a calmer and more lucid frame of mind, I think I would make a point about a really interesting human geography thesis I read a few years ago about the phenomenon of the frequency of murder of suspected witches in Africa in the present day -and the relationship between these statistics and drought, unrest and famine related measurements in the same area. Essentially making a connection between a group’s hardship and the search for a scapegoat who was not contributing economically to the society. Parallels with the idea that witch trials in Europe were associated with old women without much social support -though obviously there are many, many other issues like gender and sexuality to consider as part of any study like this and of course European statistics of witch cases were not limited to elderly widows.
Anyway, I am very angry about how disabled people of all sorts are going to be treated, but the same arguments with little variation can be made for a lot of other groups.
I think it is also an important point that governments should be trying to govern for all their constituents not just those who elected them never mind not for whatever special sectors they would like to represent.
“I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government.” Thoreau
Basically human beings are atrocious bastards and I hate an awful lot of them right now.