And Rushmore couldn’t be more twee if it tried. Leave me to my Daddy issues, philistine.
I suspected that’d be picked up on (and rightly so - well done), but decided to keep it in for one basic reason - the discourse is still wrong. I would propose - and maybe this is controversial, but I intend to stick to it - that part of the reason that such an event happened was because of a lack of education - and by education, I mean information that wasn’t so thickly disguised with partisan politics that those on the opposition would be naturally blinkered.
There’s this big ethical debate on what constitutes evil - whether it’s those who commit atrocities while believing that they’re doing the right thing, or those who know they’re doing the wrong thing and still choose to do so. I tend to take the controversial stance, and only really consider the latter to be so, and I believe that under that sort of definition Tony Blair’s actions were those of a horrifyingly misguided man rather than evil.
Again, though - it’s a weird, grey area. In a democracy, power is only ever given (ignoring our House of Lords, who weren’t party to the decision to go to war with Iraq), and there were and are provisions to consider the Prime Minister unfit for office if a decent majority of elected officials judged him to be so. That they didn’t should say something important about the constituencies that voted them in, but it tends to get skimmed over in favour of attacking the politicians themselves.
In an ideal world, we’d all be voting for Jill Stein (or, if you’re you, Gary Johnson). Unfortunately, political and prudent voting gets in the way of electing better candidates, but this doesn’t give the electorate a clean moral rapsheet when it comes to judging how they participated in their small, indirect contribution towards running the country. It might not implicate them in total moral turpitude, but there’s nothing clean about political voting, even when the vast majority do it.
I’m not sure if it’s a strength to be like this or not. The prospect of being blunt with people (or just honest when it would be likely to upset or offend them) is something that makes me anxious to the point of feeling dizzy. But, at the same time, I’m fairly sure that the people I convince don’t think I’m an asshole. I’d much rather provoke sympathy than scorn, even if it makes me feel dirty.
I can only assume you’re talking about Central Hall, the spaceship-like building in the background. It was built in the 1960s. I probably don’t need to say anything else.
Oh Jesus Christ me too God you weirdo