I am a bit of a chump. Be honest, you’ve had your moments too. And the truth is, chumpdom is part of the human character.
So when some of us say we want to stop a chump from doing this or that in the current maelstrom of ‘fake’ lunacy in Western media, I’m in no position to point fingers, in a general sense of my fingerpointing having a leg to stand on. A chump like me doesn’t know how to inspire everyone to beat their swords into coffee mills, and he isn’t likely to brave the cold relentlessly to make a difference.
But this might be the point. Ordinary whoevers are perhaps going to need to stand for whatever they really think in the current unstable social climate. I’ve not been challenged to do so like this ever before. But if those who enjoy ‘genres’ because they’re fun, but understand that ‘it’s all music, man’ ARE in the majority in modern times in the UK, the US, Europe, perhaps everywhere – then we need to look and sound like it. Love where you’re from, but remember you’re basically from Earth. Is what I would say. But it may turn out that I am truly in a minority.
Which begs the real question of our times: How do we treat our minorities?
A little peaceful show of political anger and solidarity like this does no harm. Perhaps it is the beginning of rather more people who don’t normally wave placards and are terribly sensible types joining in with public shows of beliefs, instead of public postings of nastiness from behind closed doors. The UK could do with it. Standing up for ideals that might bring more people together to build something, not demolish something or, more insidiously, simply continue to neglect something.
Monday’s 200 souls or so made the local paper, and in a lazily conservative town like the place I grew up, anything vaguely lefty can get told quickly to go get a job. Similarly regular comments from the hundreds who posted kept trying to explain to the feckless protesters that President Trump isn’t president of the UK, and he was democratically elected, and that no one would take any notice and it wouldn’t change things. So far, so traditional vaguely left v vaguely right. People.
What I found depressing was, firstly, how many comments percollated through as all-but inciting hatred. Barely veiled, there they popped up. And secondly, mystifyingly, how many people seemed to be beginning to defend President Trump. One woman bravely and a little characterfully turned up on her own to brow-beat the protesters. All on her own. And she said the President of the US is “a wonderful man”.
To remind ourselves of the basics, protesting, challenging and questioning things is democratic, not anti-constitutional; it’s not the important ally of the US or the office of US president I personally want to stand against, it’s the person currently in that office and what he represents. Because he is doing a chaotic, distraction-heavy impression of someone who would happily dismantle democracy and seek to have it topple like dominoes the world over if it suited him. But, the truth is, an awful lot of people like him, and love that he’s upset the apple cart by getting elected. Part of me certainly thinks this is an opportunity of some fearsome kind, but I admit to being baffled – stumped – by the optimisim many feel for Trump. What is the vision of the future under him?
It may indeed be a time for ordinary psudo-Greeners like me to protest more. But it is surely a time for real conversation and listening. Shouting at each other across the gap seems to be widening the divides among us.
The question facing this chump, and all of us, is: What will make us stop sitting around. And what might we do?