You know I do feel much the same, but coming from a different angle, in a different county,...and finally arriving at a different conclusion!
I've actually been stubbornly apolitical for most of my life, feeling, as I did, that strengths lay in more academic pursuits, and that I couldn't be arsed with trying to aquire the kind of political knowledge it would take to be able to proffer an educated opinion. Heck, i even shunned the media, as best I could, because I didn't like having my mind manipulated.
That being so, the first political figure to seriously impress me (in a positive way) was Naom Chomsky, partly because he went through much the same process as myself; and had a really convincing explanation as to how and why the media were trying to manipulate my brain ; the moral of that tale being : don't fuck with the brain of a Professor of Linguistics (I mean Chomsky, not me).
Ofc meantime, I couldn't help noticing some of the undercurrents could I? You can't live with other people, care about people, and not be political , as it happens. Also most of my friends were very left wing, as chance had it (or is that mere chance? Maybe nice people , and thinking people will naturally gravitate towards the left) but, me, I had no time for the simplistic hate-filled rhetoric of the far left in the past. I really didn't fancy getting the guillotine out, and decapitating people just for the crime of being lucky bastards (how many people would sniff at being rich, really?).
I mean realy, I looked at some of the far-left leaflets and stuff, and it was like: The far rifght are saying that immigrants are lazy bastards who sponge off the state, and also steal all ourr jobs. So the far left retaliate with : immigrants are hard-working people who don't claim benefits, cos they're too busy contibuting to the british ecomnomy; what's more , too many the poor dowtrodden immigrant population are out-of-work because of prejuice.
I mean, FFS one side totally contridics iself, and the other side argues by inverting the contradicton (which only effectively repeats it) but with a different emotive twist. That kind of stuff only strengthened my own resoloution to stay well clear of politics.
In the meantime, i was inwardly trying to solve the World's problwems, like we do, ,and come up with some sort of realistic. workable and fair social system. Unbejknownst to myself, i was reinventing Marxism
. So, if I'm honest, I really have to call myself left-wing , don't I?
Meantime, my country was slowly going to the dogs, beginning with Thatcherism , which had an all-too-obvious negative impact on just about everything. I was trying not to have an opinion, but I couldn't help living it. Over the following 40-odd years, you could clearly see the supposedly Left-wing Labour Party signing up to so many Conversative agendas that the difference between the two parties completely vanished. We've been getting increasing privatisation of our industry, despite that very, very few Brits want that, benefits cuts and more benefits cuts, increasingly harsh treatment of the poor, an ever-widening gulf between rich and poor. People ceasing to vote, in droves , because they no longer feel they have any real choice; it's just one Tory Party or another.
Of course, I could not avoid noticing the general political ambience, especially given that my repeated academic failures (mostly due to inabilty to complete exam papers in the given time) had left me at the bottom of the social pyramid, rubbing shoulders with the depressed and disaffected all the time
Meantime the Social Justice Warriors have gained an awful lot of power in Britain, especially within the so-called Left. We've had an increasingly absurd "political correctness" rammed down our throats for decades. I was very active in the local Arts about 30-years ago, and Political correctness wad already repressive, back then. Most artists believe in freedom of expression of course (yes, even the downtrodden social minorities believe in freedom of expression) ; so the general ambience was one of resentment and/or mockery. A few blacks artists etc were taking advantage of the opprtunities that political correctness offered them, but sadly , they were more-often-than -not the not-very-talented ones; the "unprejudiced" white middle class were patronising them as if they they were performing monkeys, FFS. As for the white natives? Well, some of us jumped on the on patronage banwagon ofc, because the chances of getting Arts Council funding were roundabout zero otherwise. But most of us were staying well out of it. Which is why nobody's heard of most of us. Seriously, I've had the privilege of knowing some really talented people, who all felt it was better to get yerself a day job, be creative in your spare time, and keep your integrity. Political correctness is responsible for that, to quite a large degree.
I'm not talking about racists. i'm talking about a bunch of people who just couldn't stomach the unconscious (or it unacknowledged?) racism of the patronising classes, and who didn't like the divisive effect of it. Artists , for the most part, are quite naturally cosmopolitan, after all. We don't need telling how not to be racist.
(Oh! when I say Art , btw, I include poetry of course, which was my thing. Don't expect see any awesome images getting posted from this direction *chuckle* But I was part of a social network that included all kinds of artists, I sat on various commitees , for what that was worth, and was active in organising gigs and stuff)
Right now, there's an intersting swing of the political pendulum in Britain, as i expect you've noticed. And to my own surprise, I've found that that the "Trotskyites " that the Labour party had purged from it's ranks are talking a whole lot more sense than anybody else is. I've even gone so far as to actually join the Socialist Party. Perhaps unnecessarily.
Well, ummm, there's a wall of text for ya, hmm? But I think it says it all, relatively succinctly.
-walkie
