Post code liberalism

Subject: Post code liberalism

Is it time yet to declare liberalism dead. Has the urge to be fair, generous, kind, just and truthful come to an end in a surge of rational practicality and are our own problems far more important than the problems of others.

Donald Trumps capture of the rust belt vote or the Brexit result would seem to suggest that the voters have had enough of giving and now want to be recognised as having needs.

There is no doubt that the political class take whole swathes of their own electorate for granted. The assumption that (as it used to be) cheap fags and beer was enough to keep the masses onside whilst the real work with the poor and disadvantaged in other lands, was the aim of a liberal society. 

Of course the make up of our society has changed immeasurably and many of those disadvantaged foreign people now live here as being British. It's also interesting how many of the people who have escaped their own national poverty are the first to pull up the drawbridge and claim we are full.

The question we must ask is, is Liberalism an intellectual pastime only to be practised by the middle classes who having found "sufficiency" can spin a little largesse in the direction of the unwashed majority in far off lands, knowing that this might act as a salve to their conscience. 

Conversely these same middle class people resent the poor unwashed variety in their own country. They happily demonise them. The politicians who are made up from this middle class 'thought speak' assembly in Whitehall, hack away at the few props in the welfare system which make life passably bearable. They find nothing but contempt for our own brand of poverty  whilst eulogising the under nourished, under educated people who's faces light up our TV screens with painful pleading looks and a call to donate. Donate donate is the mantra but not for our own undernourished, listless disheartened folk who can also claim, as a person living in Lagos, that it's all down to a post code lottery.

How many middle class people understand their advantages flow from their own post code lottery and the positive advantages, nay surety of "the good life" it brought them. Oh no we had to work hard they say. My University "education" was no gimme and the "job" was demanding, it meant I had to make "choice's". The assumption that education, a job and choice are on the table for all, that the feral societies in some of our inner cities are so by choice is one of the greatest lies of the 20th and 21st century. The assumption that people chose to live the way they do in the drop out estates is criminal. People are conditioned by their environment just as much as the middle class are conditioned by books and the school they attend, so are the drug addicts and the unemployed.

So if "Liberalism" is to survive it better switch its gaze closer to home otherwise a Donald Trump will come along and capture the glassy eyed electorate, first to capture power and then to turn us all into Disney characters a hotchpotch of the surreal, the cat and the mouse where only the mouses hole in the wall offers any proper security.