Good manners...

I suppose I should have better control of myself by now, but I still get innappropriately and rudely furious about the willful obtuseness of the rather too comfortable. I get angry very quickly sometimes. I can be offensive and overbearing. I know, it's not big and it's not clever and I wish it were otherwise. But anyway...The "why don't you just f*ck off a live in Russia/Tehran/Havana/Glastonbury" brigade are still alive and well and performing well paid proffessional and responsible duties somewhere near you. Somebody who- politics aside - it has been my habit to like and respect actually said to me today that the invasion of Iraq and threatened assault on Iran were/are "all about Freedom". You could have knocked me down with a cursory overview of modern Middle Eastern history. Arguement is futile. The pat dismissal of all (that's ALL) views outside the left/right fudgings of sound-bite infotainment is indulged without a trace of contextual reflection. Views arrived at through the triangulation of a range of information sources are derided as mono-cultured brainwash by those who only access mass, commercial media. "The telly (proudly sponsored by Omnicorps) tells me that you're mad/bad/mediaevel to question the telly (proudly sponsored by Omnicorps)." It is uncomfortable to question the basis of one's own privilege
OK. People will believe what they want to believe and history will teach us nothing whilst we never open the books.The comfortable will continue to claim all the justification they can for the continuation of their comfort, even in the face of overwhelming evidence that it is bought with shame and pain and sudden blood repeated over generations and enshrined in unspoken prejudice. Who can blame them? The poor? The oppressed? The doomed? F*ck 'em!
However. Good manners, as they say...