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There are always people out there who make a life and a career out of winding up liberals, portraying themselves as daring renegades who dare to stand up against the tyranny of political correctness. They say something callous about the story of the moment – calling drowning migrants cockroaches, for example – and then sit back and revel in their notoriety as the storm of condemnation grows.
It’s a simple formula, and no less effective for that. Ignore them, and they go unchallenged; respond, and you’ve given them the attention that they crave, you’ve swallowed the clickbait. The game has been carefully rigged, and – whichever response you choose – it seems they win, you lose.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock – and it’s a valid lifestyle choice, if that’s what tickles your fancy, and may be all any of us can afford before too long – you’ll know that the most striking example of this is playing itself out in North America, where Donald J Trump is making the running in the race to be Republican candidate for president of the USA.
Is the idea that a billionaire businessman can claim to be an outsider utterly laughable? Yes. Is he playing the tired old card of blaming all life’s problems on immigrants and minorities? Yes. Does it seem to be working? Quite probably. I don’t know about you, but in the face of all that I need a bit of a shot in the arm, a little morale-booster, a flight of fancy which imagines a better world, and cuts bullies and renegades back down to size.*
So I did what I do, and wrote a poem. Then I made a video of it. You can watch that video here. Watch it once. Watch it as often as you like. Share it with strangers, share it with friends. In the politics of the playground (which is what we seem to have right now) a little mockery can go a long, long way.
*No, I don’t for a moment believe a little poem written by a gobby bloke in the West Mids will derail the Trump bandwagon. But I do believe in the subversiveness of laughter. And right now, that’ll do.
