Politics and Perception

And with that ominously pretentious title a new blog post begins. Perception is everything. I often say that [abstract noun] is everything, and not to break rank, I'll continue with that. Continuity is everything.

I'm going to be very specific here, and talk about the police. People complain about the right wing media showing biased news, then proceed to treat the police as if they're all fascist robots, based on what they've seen of the police as shown by the media. It's a circle. I have a cousin in the police, and he certainly doesn't have a steel plate for a ribcage, he's a down to earth, reasonable guy. I'm not saying that police brutality doesn't exist - I've seen the police charging into stationary rioters in London, just that it's a minority, (or at least I percieve it to be a minority) and when people (yes, the police are people) all get tarred with the same brush, isn't that prejudice the exact same thing the police are accused of possessing? Yes they make mistakes, somebody shoots a black person on a subway, in the head, but is that one person representative of the whole country's law and order. Maybe I'm wrong here, maybe I'll change my mind when I experience it first hand, but from my perspective, in my comfy little bubble, there is no black and white.

Of course there's mostly black when you look at the government. David Cameron and his covenant are the real bad guys here. They're the bastards who are building a brick wall around the classes, those damn mobile class walls - let's change that, let's make sure the poor know their place. I even have a friend who advocates the tory party's budget cuts. He thinks it's the only way to climb out of the well of debt. He's probably right, but it's like saying the only way to solve overpopulation is to kill all the jews and blacks: it might solve overpopulation but that's one BNP manifesto Hitler signed and sealed himself. The greater good is rarely without evil.