Today in town, I saw a teenager wearing a hoodie (oooh, bad things, he must be about to mug an old lady of her kittens before stabbing her to death and eating her) that said ‘I’m Not Political, but I Don’t Like Labour’.
This depressed me.
We live in a free country, and of course you are free to say what you like about our reigning political party (or at least I think that’s how it should be), but if you proceed it with the statement ‘I’m not political’, I’m sorry, but why the FUCK should I care? If you aren’t political, then why are you wearing that political statement for the world to see? Is it supposed to show how Labour are so bad that even those who aren’t political turn against them? Well, not really, it just shows that you’ve been duped into jumping on the sensationalist bandwagon. Sure, the current regime is far from what we’d expect from a government, and there are plenty of reasons to be angry at them, but if you proceed the statement with ‘I’m not political’, then thanks mate, I’m off to find someone who is and knows what he’s saying. You may be rebelling, but when the rest of us rebel we actually bother to check up what it is we’re rebelling against.
This doesn’t mean your opinion should count anymore because you have no concept of what you’re arguing about, because if you tried that under any other subject, you’d be considered an idiot.
Examples;
‘I don’t look at art, but I don’t like the ‘Mona Lisa’.’ Please, look at some art, including the Mona Lisa, and come back to me when you’ve formed your own opinion from that.
‘I don’t listen to classical music, but I don’t like Bach.’ Please, listen to some classical music, including Bach, and come back to me when you’ve formed your own opinion from that.
‘I don’t listen to pop music, but I don’t like McFly.’ Please, listen to some pop music, including McFly, and come back to me when you’ve formed your own opinion from that.
‘I don’t watch movies, but I don’t like Stephen Spielburg.’ Please, watch some movies, including Spielburg movies, and come back to me when you’ve formed your own opinion from that.
In all of the above examples, the speaker sounded like some moron who just rates something before experiencing it for himself, based on (presumably) other people’s 2nd hand news.
Note: this isn’t the same as saying ‘I’m not a writer, but I don’t like Dan Brown’, because that would be the equivalent of him saying ‘I’m not a Politician, but I don’t like Labour’. If that was the case, then he would be much like many other political commentators, who aren’t politicians, but still understand the subject matter (some of them even fully understand it!). What he said was the equivalent of ‘I don’t read, but I don’t like Dan Brown’. Yes, because you heard somewhere that ‘The Da Vinci Code’ was a book of lies, and inaccurate, and otherwise bad, bad, bad (this is true, but look at it this way, I do read, and I have not formed an opinion of him, as I have not read his books, for precisely those reasons).
Now politics is quite hard to understand (especially fully), and you may even know more about it that you make out, by just putting that hoodie on. But for the love of whichever deity you follow, if that is the case, please drop the ‘I’m not political,’ and replace it with something else, because it makes you sound like a twat.
If that isn’t the case, I take solace in the fact that you won’t be voting. Ever.
