Victim-hood

Once victim-hood becomes such a valued social commodity, it leads to a desperate search for it.

We have become a society where the slightest whiff of controversy towards certain sacred cows the predictable reaction is to treat it like a epidemic and everyone is put in quarantine  and isolated. 

The offences grow each year with academia the most effected. Lecturers warning students of passages in prescribed books which might offend them, perhaps even to the point of needing counselling so they don't have an adverse reaction in later life. I ask you.

"Punch and Judy" was in the news this morning with a woman (it is usually a woman) complaining about the violence, the child abuse, matrimonial wife beating, every discriminatory ill you can imagine was being piled on the head of this Victorian entertainment for children.

The Flying Scotsman's journey into Scotland was put on hold whilst some jobs worth in Network Rail had to be convinced that there were no "issues" regarding the train travelling on the track.

We are being manipulated by certain people and groups because the can and they can because we have acquiesced to their every whim and complaint. People have become frightened of their own shadows and to hold views that don't fit in with what is a minority view but a minority with a loud publicity machine, aided abetted by the 'media lovies' who feel quite fragile on these sort of things, bless them. With the truly British characteristic of avoiding any sort of controversy we stay silent.

There are so many "no go" areas that one begins to doubt the ability for young people to hold opinions other than those which have been cleansed by political correctness. The art of questioning "everything" of looking for fault in all aspects of current thinking will wither on the vine for fear of upsetting 'someone' especially those with group think. 

In Business its litigation which has become the boogie man as in so much of our private lives it's the fear of being brought to court which strikes fear into the individual who holds a different  viewpoint and is willing to articulate it. 

Freedom of speech, the freedom to disagree are the first things to go in a totalitarian society. Totalitarianism is usually the outcome of a one party state, the "dictator", be it an individual or an ideology, seek to close down communication outside the sanitised politically acceptable view. Conformity is the aim, uniformity the ideal and the dead hand of authority is everywhere.

We are not there yet but in their avowed rush to protect us all, the totalitarians would have us mute free speech, maybe abolish it altogether for a sanitised version of history and events, so that the hymn book is known to all and along with the familiar tunes we become, like any congregation, putty in the hands of the person giving the sermon.