The term 'remoaner' has been coined by the British press to describe anyone who hasn't wholeheartedly accepted the Brexit (another made up word) vote. Politics now seems to be so peculiar that the press have to make up words.
I have been wondering if I'm remoaner because I am still cross that the public were asked to make a decision about something without being told what that something actually was. It was like offering someone a chocolate cake when you don't have a chocolate cake and having no idea how to make or get one. I'm not one of those people who blames the general public because, well, who wouldn't want real chocolate cake but I do think there was some deliberate misleading going on. Personally, I have struggled to see how people couldn't have known how difficult it was going to be to leave the EU, even if it had been a huge majority decision to leave, it still would have been hard. However, I don't blame people who thought and still think leaving the EU is an answer to all the ills and hardships. They still might be proved to be right.
I'm also aware of the I'm with Her hashtag on Twitter, which is being used to blame Hilary Clinton's inability to be elected on sexism. This is something that I agree with. During the campaign, I noticed that anyone who said anything bad about Trump prefaced it with, "I'm no fan of Hilary but.." I was confused. She seemed to have been a very successful Secretary of State, helping Obama to implement some of his most brilliant social change policies. She was in politics a long time and although she couldn't work out which email account to use (who can?) her biggest crimes seemed to be things that wouldn't have mattered if she was a man. She was blamed for things her husband had done, she was slightly cold, she didn't wear nice clothes, she looked old, she told business people what they wanted to hear. So instead, they vote for a man who is the same age (but looks older), has a wife no body is quite sure of, tells all people what they want to hear but has no experience of public office and is probably going to be charged with fiddling of a financial and sexual nature. Women seem to need to be perfect for people to think they are any good, or they need to stay hidden and work behind the scenes.
When I first started to write this blog, I blamed everything on boredom. "Let's shake it up a bit," people cry. "Life has been too good, too dull. Let's make our politicians do something they don't want to. Serves them right for being good at their job." However, this that didn't feel right.
I had argued with my son, who felt that Hilary wasn't a good candidate. I told him it was sexism and I wasn't prepared to listen to any other argument and then I thought about it. People hated Gordon Brown, who had been quite good at his job but was grumpy and dour and he was a man, so maybe my son had been right and the ancient by more smiley Bernie Sanders would have been a better candidate.
Thinking about whether I was a remoaner or not I thought that I don't approve of the people who take every dip and difficulty as an opportunity to make those who voted to leave the EU feel stupid. The social media commentators who write something like, "Breakfast cost me 20p more this morning. Hope you're happy Brexiteers," make me very uncomfortable. It's so dangerous to try and divide the world in two. A them and us policy can only increase tension.
I was struggling to publish the blog because I knew something about my anger and frustration was wrong. I knew it wouldn't help. I thought about a taxi driver we had in Boston who said, "It's funny, America is supposedly the most free country in the world yet people are too frightened to be honest about who they are going to vote for."
Yesterday, I saw a rant doing the rounds on social media, where Jonathan Pie was talking about the American election.
He blame us. The educated guardian reading liberals who shut down any discussion. We tell men that they can't have an opinion of feminism or sexism, refuse to allow people to say they are distrustful of people with a different skin colour, tell people who vote for something we disagree with that they are stupid (or bored). We do this with an air of superiority and shut the discussion down. We lose an opportunity to change an opinion and instead people shut down, frightened of talking about their views. We have to be right at all costs. I still think that there was misogyny at work in the election but he has a point and it's worth watching.
So I will carry on remoaning about political issues but I'm not trying to tell anyone what to think and I'm absolutely fine if you disagree with me because it might turn out that I am wrong after all.
No comments:
Post a Comment