Means of protest:

The way I figure it humans have only been working as a species (sort of, in places) for thirty or fourty years. Before that various contries had agreements, pacts, deals etc.. but as a global society.. well that's only really since the internet (which is younger than me!)

We've had wars (are having wars) over how we handle ourselves, but mostly (from what I see of history) they've been comportion - desperation, of knowing that others don't conform to the same standards and expect some of those standards from everyone around them. Over time this has shifted and we've seen the dictators and leaders that we can agree didn't really believe their own standards but pushed them on others none the less (another dumb example; Trump gave to pro-choice charities until it became a problem for him running as president, now he's espousing pro-life ideals.. or better, Hitler probably didn't agree with everything he and his party were pushing) as a global society we fear seeing that sort of thing again. That's why this american election has so many people watching, because there are massive implications to the kind of leader-based machinations that are going on.

And I can't help but feel that at some point, these leaders have said, "Well, what are they going to do about it?" It's one of those Warning phrases - it's possible to say it innocently but fairly fucking rare.

I find it facinating how each country (each collection of personalities involved in leading) dealt with Hitler, I get a real sense that (GB, certainly) had the same kind of 'uhhm's, and 'oh fuck's that I had when told that I needed to be a witness in court against a pedophile... "Really? What? Seriously? People do that knowingly?" and then the waiting, to see if it's true and if anything else needs be done. And the funny thing is, because of the person I am and the places my parents were and the nature of the decision (with the advise of a cop I trusted) I pretty much navigated that one alone.. kinda one of the first truly instrumental events of my life. Do you, when given a chance to hold someone to account, give or take - push or pull?

I've said a couple of times that court fucked me up worse than the fucker who got me there. That's not actually true, but it did push me into making a decision that would effectively change another person's entire life based on my own sense of morality at a time when I was still told to pray at the end of class (fucking catholics, sorry I'll stop shouting about that sometime..). I was younger than my neice is now, and (as I write this) I'm beginning to realise that choice is probably what I've been struggling with the longest. I took childish vengeful pleasure for years in the thought that he was probably hurt by that decision, then spent years regretting that schadenfreude and wondering if it's possible to actually be a 'good' person all the way through, before realising that's one of life's great mysteries: even the most enigmatically kind people I have known have the same darkness in their souls, probably different keys and triggers but we're all only human after all. How you direct energies...


Tbc... Sorry it swayed away from means of protest again.. I keep having realisations while writing (great stuff, bit distracting, eerie sense of deja vu). Thanks for reading anyway, g'night folks!