It’s election time again and the cynics, trolls, shills and no hope doom sayers are out in force to drain every vestige of energy out of life and hope: less of a storm rolling in as just a massive, energy draining, dump.
Let’s start with trolls, shits in wolfs clothing, casting their baited hooks and revelling in every catch. Of course they offend, hurt, smart, enrage, incite indignation, like the odious little troopers they are, every comment is loaded to wound the unwary and force a response. That’s how they work, mixed metaphors not withstanding. The one and only thing they cannot deal with is being ignored, complete silence. Every second spent ‘dealing’ with them is energy lost, dribbling down your own legs in futile impotent rage as they revel in it and lap it up, literally stealing your energy and feeding on it.
Whatever it takes, whatever wounded pride you have to swallow, whatever raging indignation you have to deal with, however you manage to not place that first fatal finger on the keyboard, don’t feed the trolls. Sit on your hands, clean the house, walk the rage off, read a book, rest and sleep it off, scrub a public toilet with your own toothbrush, stab yourself (non fatally preferably), but do not, ever, respond unless you really get off on masochistic torture.
Every troll abhors a vacuum, there is no answer to silence, they’ll only poke for so long, revealing themselves a little more each time, until they either give up or you do the right thing and block the parasitic, evil, time wasting, shits.
Naturally, we all get caught out, responding to what appears to be a fairly innocent comment, but as soon as the barb hits, get the fuck away from there, if you value your life, have an ounce of self respect, have a squillion (or one) better things to do, than be caught on some nameless trolls hook. Yeesh, that’s disgusting.
Shills? Paid trolls. Some paid up psy-ops monkey bollock. Trash!
No hopers. “The sky is falling”, cries Chicken Licken, but not off to tell the king, just any and everyone else. “They’re all the same”, “If voting changed anything, they wouldn’t allow it”, “Same shit different arsehole”, “What’s the point, May’s going to win by a landslide”, “Politicians are all the same”, “They’re all in the pockets of the corporate elites”…
Are we not human? If there’s nothing to live for, dying is easy. If we must weep, then let them be fierce tears at least, not dismal self pity, or at least keep the self pity brief. As long as I am human, as long as I know it, then I can fight, asking no one’s permission, nor accountable to anything barring my own conscience and if I find, having fought to my last dying breath that it was all for nothing, still I fought and would do it all again. Why would I do less? I cannot imagine Tony Ben lying on his death bed and saying in his last breath, ‘It was all for nothing’.
The council of despair, is despair – but death, the final affront to all life, is grief for the living, who mourn the loss, survive, and do not themselves give up even in that moment and time of brutal, uncontainable, sorrow, when they have not yet found out how to continue, but know they must. C S Lewis railed against god at the loss of his beloved wife calling God the Cosmic Sadist and an Eternal Vivisector, yes, that bastard God who gives a plate of soup only to snatch it away, rail against him all we like, but live and fight with all the fury in us and if we fall, then rage against that too. And why not? We may have to surrender to death in the end, but live without surrender.
I gave up once, taking enough pills to kill a horse, or so I thought. It was only in surviving that I learnt to fight, it was that or do it again and the reason I was put in a psychiatric hospital was because I would have tried again and was too brain fucked to even think of lying about it.
There is nothing weak about hope, it is an eternal flower that never ceases to bloom, even after some fool has stomped on it.
I’ve saved cynics and cynicism till last because of all things in life, I think I detest cynicism the most. It’s the classic, “Life’s a bitch, and then you die.” Cynicism is the heartfelt belief in mediocrity and spreading it to everyone else. It’s the evangelism of hopelessness and the religion of futility. It’s the belief that life is shit and then taking a dump on it and sneering whilst you do it.
Cynicism is a self fulfilling prophesy, losing without making any attempt to win and then saying, ‘I told you so’. “Corbyn can never win so don’t vote for him.” Later, post election. “See, what did I tell you?”
If there is anything more disgusting than Theresa May, lying through her teeth and grovelling for power in the most god awful way, it is cynicism. If, heaven forbid, May wins the general election, cynicism will have largely enabled it. It is cynicism that sees all immigrants as cockroaches or a ‘swarm’ (as Cameron put it), all benefits recipients as scroungers, disabled people and those unable to work, as ‘stock’, it is the sneering face of ‘Britain First’, and ultimately it is for narcissistic losers who want to shape the world in their own putrid image. it is for the vainglorious, who are proud to pass on a pot of piss to drink at an oasis.
Life is a marvel, it is also hard, challenging and often a struggle, but, as M Scott Peck said in ‘The Road Less Traveled’, “Life is difficult. This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths. Once we truly know that life is difficult – once we truly understand and accept it – then life is no longer difficult.” If you’ve ever taken an old exhaust manifold off a vehicle, you’ll know that it is not easy, it’s a gumption trap waiting to happen, but once you know and accept the challenge then you can just get on with it and take whatever comes without throwing a blue fit, even accepting those times when all your motivation drains out through your boots and the only thing to do is to leave it and come back fresh to try again.
This election is a challenge without a doubt, but no one knows the result and will not know until June 9th. We certainly have a fight on our hands, not least against all of the above, but it was always going to be a fight, that is not new, look what Corbyn has already faced to even be in a position to hold rallies all around the country. I have no intention of fighting a losing battle, because there is only one way to really fight, and that’s to win and whatever the result of the election to be ready to carry right on fighting.
KOG. 11 May 2017
https://samedifference1.com/2013/12/10/ids-calls-those-unable-to-work-stock/
