Manifesto

[batbat]

One thing that annoys me about being politically conscious or aware in British (and probably Western) society is that there are basically only two 'packages', sort of like different set menus in a Chinese restaurant, with everybody subscribing to one or the other. So, either you read the Guardian, like contemporary art, are pro-choice, pro-

Comments

[alsoname]

I hate the nuts who are on "my" side. Not that I fully align myself with a certain side, but I'm sure people who knew a few superficial things about my politics would lump me in with all that. For instance, they find out I'm vegan, which is perceived as nutty enough in its own right, but then I get lumped in with the alternative-health people, and it is assumed that I also believe in auras and homeopathy and vibrational healing (whatever that is) and magnetic vortices and whatever else ...

But then I realize that the "other" side also has its own special brand of nuts who probably are a source of embarrassment for everyone else in that camp.

I probably fall mostly in the lefthand side of the spectrum, but there are some areas where I don't. For instance, if the first thing someone found out about me was that I was against affirmative action, they might conjecture that I'm a racist rightwinger. When in fact I'm against affirmative action because I don't think it addresses the root of the problem of racism, nor is it actually very helpful at all for that matter. But many people wouldn't even bother to find out my reasoning; they find out my stance on one issue and then feel they can safely assume what my reasoning is. When my reasoning for being against affirmative action is radically different from that of a racist rightwinger; and my reasoning for being vegan is radically different from the people who have thrown themselves into the alternative-health thing wholeheartedly.

I didn't even think abortion was too terribly controversial an issue in your part of the world. Am I wrong?

[batbat]

Abortion is one of those things. I don't think that British people in general care about it that much one way or the other, but the Left in this country have made it a bit of a poster issue - as they have with anti-Zionism. A big part of that is that being a British Lefty is all about being anti-American, particularly anti-Middle-American, so anything that Middle America doesn't like is automatically to be triumphed. Abortion is at the forefront of that. (Left wing politics in the UK really is a horror show. You'll hear people making statements in support of Islamic fundamentalists and brutal third-world dictatorships purely because such things happen to cheese off the US. There are still British Marxists - and I'm talking about figures of the establishment, not just the lunatic fringe - who will claim that Stalin had mostly the right idea.)