Cognitive dissonance.
Britain’s Two Set of Books
Britain is in the midst of a breakdown. It comes from trying to live a double-life. As with everybody who leads such a life, at some stage it will inevitably crack under the stress of its own contradictions.
Take just one day’s worth of news on the BBC website this past week. On one side of the page was the headline: “Tory candidate quits over homophobic and anti-Islamic tweets.” On the other side of the page was a headlineabout the alleged Islamist take-over of schools in Birmingham and the North of England.
The first article involves a council candidate who retweeted several tweets that someone could potentially have deemed offensive. As usual in modern Britain, the likelihood is that nobody actually did find them offensive, but that someone decided that someone else might find them offensive, and therefore decided to get rid of the culprit. For what it is worth, the “homophobic” tweet consisted of a lame joke asking: “How CAN a gay guy keep a straight face?” Not the best gag in the world, but sure as anything not the precursor to some anti-gay pogrom, nor, in any sane society, a matter to cause a resignation.
But then of course we get to the far more serious matter of a tweet which might be regarded as being (cue drum roll) “anti-Islamic.” This tweet cited the arrest of four Muslim men over the rape of a girl of 14. It then added, in its entirety: “#Islam ‘the religion of peace’ & rape.” Not perhaps the wisest thing for a man elected to be a candidate for a council position just two days earlier to have tweeted. But was it really worthy of him immediately apologizing “for the real offense caused” and stepping down from the election, saying, “I recognise that someone standing for public office should show leadership and seek to unite communities, not divide them. I hope the residents of Brentwood South can forgive my lack of judgement in time.”
