I hate you and I hope you die

Raymond ponders on what is racism, and I ponder it too. Yes, in relation to the whole hoo-hah over Jade vs Shilpa. Yawn, is mostly what I think about the former, and unprintable-with-possible-children-around stuff about the latter. Come on, Shilpa is severely hot. But the relative merits of how a random collection of atoms has come together to make two very different looking female forms isn’t what I am going to ponder over. (Aside: Surely to goodness it isn’t racist what was going on there. Has no one ever worked in an office with more than two chicks? Don’t you know what bitchiness goes on? Pur-lease.)

But I want to take a different slant on it. You see, when we lose control of language, you know what happens. It has been shown before, written about in famous novels, and agonised over by philosophers. And now me. In this odious regulatory State we live in, you can’t say certain things, and we are perilously close (if not there already) to not be allowed (even having it illegal) to think certain thinks.

Andy mentioned, whether in jest or not, on #cabal, that the new term for this is covert racism. The definition being that when a white person says anything, it is racist whether it was or not. Yes, if we go back to language again this can be proved to be true. Language was used to degrade and control, to keep them in their places, be them the blacks, the Asians, the Catholics, whatever. Power corrupts. Power wants to feather its own nest, make sure it is safe, and protect its own.

But how dare the State try to dictate what I think. I await the day when I post something here and the shadowy forces from the bloated Public Sector melt out of the darkness with their clipboards and tick off boxes proving I am wholly unacceptable to be allowed in (their) Society, because I have thoughts not condusive with the public good. My head is my own domain, and if I want to discriminate in there, plot murders in there, take any flight of fancy, no matter how dark, that is absolutely nothing to do with them. Now, if I overstep the boundries of my mind, and go on a machete rampage, then that is different. But they cannot lock me up, proscribe me in any way, for holding whatever views I want. It can’t be healthy to deny your thoughts. I am sure I hold some viewpoints that are a total anathema to others. Some of them I am allowed to say, some not. I have intoned many times on the incitement laws, and I don’t intend to do it again.

Therefore on to discrimination. Listen. We all discriminate all the time. Everyday. Did you leave it to the State to choose your friends? Did you leave it to the State to decide which foods you should eat? Did you leave it to the State to do your thinking for you? Is it racist for a group of lads growing up in Norn Iron to hang with an exculsively white peer group? (It would have been hard, if one of those lads were me, to have had it any other way. These days it is different.) Using my eldest as an example, his peer group, those he counts as his friends, those he hangs around with, is a mixed group. He doesn’t understand why you would discriminate on any other grounds than those he can get on with.

Most (hah!) of those who still read me have some titter of wit. Do any of you, in your immediate peer group, have those who you don’t get on with? For whatever reason? (Intelligence, mostly I would have thought, given the middleclassness of my readership.) Yes, we all fall out now and again, but that isn’t what I mean. Those I mooch around with are all cleverer than me, so perhaps I shouldn’t run with this. Those whose weblogs I read are all cleverer than me, and much more interesting to read than my paranoid witterings. But it is a self-selecting group. If I were shunned, I would find another group. I wouldn’t complain to the State that I was being discriminated against. My friends are my friends because of who they are, not what they are. (If I was wittier, I would write some pistasche on I am not a racist/sexist/wee-daftie-ist because… but I amn’t, so I won’t.) Wee dafties, though. That makes me laugh every time. In fact, I stopped typing there for a chuckle to myself.

I despise big government, controlling and regulating government. All this infringes upon my freedoms. The State is not your friend. Why, oh why, (reprise) do people feel the need to have to have government tell them what they are, and are not, allowed to do? They treat those in power as their manager, not as their servant. I had a discussion yesterday, and it always ends up with me saying the State is not your friend. Their contention was the State is evil, but I wouldn’t quite go that far. At least, I don’t think it is intentionally evil, but I could be presuaded otherwise…

Me, I got over my white middleclass handwringing guilt a long time ago.

To end with a bit of sexism (*rolls eyes*), even though I mentioned at the start that Shilpa is hot, some of us prefer Rani. See, is it sexist to say a chick (*snigger*) is hot? Oh dear, here come those Agents Of The State with their clipboards, again. (In my head, these Agents Of The State move like the nun in the Blues Brothers, sliding in and out.)