I was reeling from the murder of Renee Good and the response by Trump, Vance and MAGA. I found it disgusting. A mother was callously shot three times in the face. She was described as a lesbian and called a domestic terrorist (as if her sexuality had anything to do with anything). I was shocked by the mocking and gloating that subsequently took place. She deserved it. She was peacefully protesting the lawful operations of ICE – as if that deserved to be shot three times in the face. What is going on in this horrendous tribal division where all humanity is lost. In the heated cauldron we seem to have lost all compassion, humanity and truth.
Then I found myself typing out a section written by Roy back in the late 80s and thought it pertinent:
This attitude manifested itself to me whilst shopping in the supermarket yesterday. Upon seeing a woman who was about to load up with ‘Cape’ apples, the lady I was with said to her ‘those are from South Africa, you know’. The woman smiled and put the apple she had hold of down, but I watched her because I was naturally interested in someone who would buy an apple with South African written all over it (Nb. the anti-apartheid boycott of South African goods was at its height in the late 80s). As soon as she thought that the lady I was with wasn’t looking, she went back and picked some up and continued on. I wasn’t surprised but I was annoyed and said to my consort ‘she bought them you know’. We passed her later on and I guess my friend couldn’t stop herself. ‘So, you bought them then?’ she said. The woman just said ‘Yes’ and walked away completely unconcerned, a statement in favour of apartheid, of absolute complacency. Careless in the extreme of how other men and women on the planet are being made to suffer. Just another partygoer.
This little true story is perhaps generally indicative of the manner in which humans treat each other and the world they live in at the moment. While I’m not a very public-spirited person myself, I’m of the opinion that the majority of my ‘leaders’ leave me standing when it comes to aloofness, greed, selfishness, vanity, megalomania, cowardice, pomposity, pretention, improbity and the like. I’m not in the same race. The stable door has been bolted ……… etc.
To my mind, permanently electing these kind of people to public office is tantamount to social suicide.