Not yet. But there may be more mileage yet in the old dog. Continuing the original theme:The wisdom of the ranter.Here are some marvellous gems of wisdom from real and actual rants. I’ve added my attempt at understanding the point they were trying to make and how they might rephrase it.“Get in touch with reality.” This is always a favourite phrase. It means the person in the post previous has said something that the ranter cannot conceive of being correct. From the ranter’s mindset the previous post has no foundation of fact. Of course, what they really mean to say is something like “get in touch with my reality”. But that sounds a bit rude.“If you want to criticise me, at least be accurate in what I actually said”. This is a great way to stimulate debate. Largely the writing of ranters is so piss poor that it is often difficult to determine exactly what they mean. Also, most responses are about the implications of what is said, as much as the specific statements themselves. Did the ranter ever say “I want all (insert group of choice) out my country”? No. But then the sum of many previous rants might well imply that this is the aim and desire of the ranter. But where is that specific statement? Drat, can’t find it – so the ranter must be a paragon of balance, multi-culturism and virtue.“Viewing life through rose tinted glasses.” This is essentially the same ‘get in touch with reality’. The ranter means that the lens through which others view the world is not just different from his/her own – but also wrong. Or naive. Or unbalanced. Or whatever. Another, perhaps more accurate statement from the ranters might be “or you could view the world through the insecure, twisted, bitter, spiteful lens that I favour”. “I’m not racist.” In the ranters mind, when he/she primarily refers to someone by their nationality or colour or religion, they are making statement of fact not prejudice. What comes across of course is that they are fixated by minorities, appalled that anyone other than true-blooded English are allowed into the country, furious that these incomers are even allowed to group together let alone build a place of worship that isn’t a CoE church hall, angered that anyone with a UK passport and national insurance number can get access to our social services….even if they were not born here, disgusted that there is not some sort of campaign against all these foreigners in our country, stealing our women, eating our food, killing our babies, etc. “Illegal”. This does not mean an act that is defined as against the law as laid out in the statutes and precedents of this fine land. This is a noun to describe someone who has entered the country and seeks domicile but has not been given leave of residence. They are, the argument goes, lacking a legal right of residence and are therefore ‘illegal’. We should extend this naming convention to other groups. The logic goes “you are not something, therefore you are called the un- or il- or non- of what you do not have”. So someone who does not have a driving licence is an unlicensed, and a person without bus pass is a passless, and a person who lacks a mobile phone is a stationary. I’m sure this approach to defining people is not fully utilised.
Alan Clark ● 6320d
