This Country

I’m not the sort of person who jabbers on about what this country has come to, or anything like that. For what it’s worth, I think we live in a pretty cool place, with, mostly, great people. And there’s a brilliant mix of people, of different religions, political views, sexual orientation, colour, race et al; that’s why the world’s a cool place.

Seeing shit like this, where you could potentially have to deal with the police BECAUSE OF YOUR POLITICAL VIEWS, is just plain wrong. Call me naive, but surely there’s a difference between an anarchist and a terrorist. (Then again, you’d have thought there was a difference between a Brazilian chap going about his business on the tube and a suicide bomber. Others might disagree.) So, while this is happening, in our wonderful democracy (where the leaders of it are only that because of a man who controls a hugely influential chuck of the media, allegedly) we’re also invading other countries and forcing it on them. The hypocrisy and the arrogance is both staggering and sickening.

My question is, how long are we going to put up with it?

I mean, we’ve marched and we’ve protested and we’ve signed petitions and we’ve been ignored. We’ve been ignored by the people who we’ve voted into a position to represent us.

And they are not (not all of them) representing us.

Is that not really, really wrong?

So what happens next? Who else will we have to tell the police about? The communists? The socialists? Marxists? Gays? Jews? Muslims? Anyone who has the nerve to openly disagree with the government? Anyone who simply THINKS something they shouldn’t be thinking?

And where are they planning to send us? Camps perhaps? Or maybe they could put us to work somewhere.

I honestly feel that letting this slide will lead us all down a very dark and very dangerous path. And, I’ll be honest with you, that scares the shit out of me.

And thus ends my rant.

***

ADDED…

 it ‘could have been better worded’ apparently. Doesn’t that say it all? Link here.

Published by

nikperring

Nik Perring is a short story writer, author, teacher of writing, and editor from the UK. His stories have been published widely all over the world. His books include the widely celebrated Not So Perfect (Roastbooks 2010), A Book of Beautiful Words; and Beautiful Trees; and he co-wrote Freaks!(TFP/HarperCollins, 2012).

6 thoughts on “This Country”

  1. Sentiment and fears agreed with. I love this country, for it's history, traditions, quirkiness, cheek and multiculturalism, and yet….Freedoms are harder to regain than give up. It is all to easy to think we are doing enough to protect those freedoms when we probably aren't. It worries me that this is becoming a country that we can no longer be proud of, and no longer love.

  2. I don't love England particularly, but I love these islands we live on/in. Anarchy means a belief that we could do without the state? When our elected state representatives hire without proper security checks men who may have connived at law-breaking and reuse to comment until forced to, when they break election pledges, when they thumb their noses at struggling, hard-working people and make life worse for the poorest, and weakest, among others, I wouldn't mind betting there are a lot of 'anarchists' out there. 'Anarchist' seems to mean 'anyone who isn't our gang'. And my goodness what a dangerous state of affairs.

  3. Thanks Jose. Yes, I do think there's much to love about GB (the people who rule it and the disgraceful part of its history aside), and you're absolutely right – freedoms go easily and they're bloody difficult to get back.What worries me, now the Met have done a complete about turn on this, is that it seems as though it was planned to be that way all along. It's as though they were testing the water, seeing what they could get away with. I hope I'm wrong.

  4. Well said, V. I couldn't agree more (though I would say, those examples aside, there is a lot about GB that's good – a lot of its people(s) mostly). But yes – the idea that either you're a with us or an enemy is scary and it's wrong. Though I'm perfectly happy to say I am VERY MUCH NOT WITH THEM.

Leave a Reply to Nik Perring Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.