Choice B: Hope

16 November, 2015 (23:54) | All articles | By: Stuart Fraser

I was going to write a whimsical piece about the enormous cat Brother Bertie inflicted upon us, Captain Pusstasticus, who has been under the vet, but only after a ferocious struggle. This would have been amusing and as another bonus would have irritated old Brother Fiddle, who dislikes whimsy. But this is no time for whimsy.

I don’t think this is a time for mawkish solemnity, either, nor for cliché. ‘They’ll pay for this’, seems to be the collective will. ‘It’s war’, says President Hollande, despatching bombers and aircraft carriers.

But is this going to help? Making them pay for it isn’t going so fucking well so far, is it?

Let me have a go at clichés: the only way to stop the death-dealers focusing on dying is to give them something to live for.

Until the people of the Middle East have things for which to live – schools, cars, jobs, movie theatres, leisure time, futures – they will be prey to the crazies who want them to die, with suicide vests taped to their skinny ribs.

The world is full of the crazies: live my way, live the only way, dance to my sick tune. Once there were more of them; now there are less of the heirs of Stalin and Hitler, less of the heirs of the Lionheart and Saladin, but technology has made them just as dangerous.

And we’ll never change them.

Crazies are crazies. You’ll never lead a racist homophobic evangelist Christian redneck from America’s deep south into a room for a cozy chat and have him coming out as a decent human being, never: it’s in there, way too deep. You’ll never take the crazies of Islamic state, or whatever other name you want to use, and teach them tolerance; if there were tolerance, they’d have no reason at all for their own existence. No lentil-wearing hippy could have got Joe Stalin in touch with his inner anger enough to turn him sane.

It’s the people listening to the crazies I want. Talk to them. They’re persuade-able. Anybody with half a brain cell left, unlike the crazies, is going to take the obvious choice here:

Choice A: Keep listening to the crazies and stay living here in this bomb crater, half starved, prevented from any pleasure, watching your friends die, having your sorry arse bombed from Kurdistan to Kazakhstan by day and by night.

Choice B: Chuck it in. Embrace a world that wants you to worship your god and enjoy your life, with a job and money and toys for your children and cola in the fridge.

Come on. Let’s work on Choice B. I understand the desire to bomb the living fuck out of the crazy evil bastards, of course I do, but that means more people will die who didn’t need to and the noise of the bombs keeps the endless cycle going because nobody can listen.

When peace has come, it’s come because of Choice B, from Ulster to South Africa, the unstoppable momentum of the offer of life over death. Yes, I know that’s not universal. Choice B didn’t solve Hitler, though it did solve Stalin. After an awfully long time. But isn’t it better to aim for Choice B?

The people who’ve died in this modern crusader war have been living their lives – from a banker’s desk in the twin towers to the soukhs of Baghdad to a concert hall in Paris to a bazaar in Damascus. As the bombs are loaded onto the jets, somewhere another family will be setting off on a long journey to avoid those falling bombs, a journey that may end on some gods-forsaken beach where hope – Christian hope, Islamic hope, atheist hope, any hope at all – lies face down in the fucking surf.

None of these people gave or is giving too much of a toss about geo-politics or the price of oil or the meaning of the holy books; they’re eating and drinking and listening to rock’n’roll, or they’re trying to.

Yes, yes, yes, I know this is all cliché too. But what else does one do in this appalling world but hope? I will never believe bombs are the answer – mainly because bombs have never been the answer. Hope is the answer. But it’s also the hardest thing to have.

 

I was going to write a whimsical piece about the enormous cat Brother Bertie inflicted upon us, Captain Pusstasticus, who has been under the vet, but only after a ferocious struggle. This would have been amusing and as another bonus would have irritated old Brother Fiddle, who dislikes whimsy. But this is no time for whimsy.

I don’t think this is a time for mawkish solemnity, either, nor for cliché. ‘They’ll pay for this’, seems to be the collective will. ‘It’s war’, says President Hollande, despatching bombers and aircraft carriers.

But is this going to help? Making them pay for it isn’t going so fucking well so far, is it?

Let me have a go at clichés: the only way to stop the death-dealers focusing on dying is to give them something to live for.

Until the people of the Middle East have things for which to live – schools, cars, jobs, movie theatres, leisure time, futures – they will be prey to the crazies who want them to die, with suicide vests taped to their skinny ribs.

The world is full of the crazies: live my way, live the only way, dance to my sick tune. Once there were more of them; now there are less of the heirs of Stalin and Hitler, less of the heirs of the Lionheart and Saladin, but technology has made them just as dangerous.

And we’ll never change them.

Crazies are crazies. You’ll never lead a racist homophobic evangelist Christian redneck from America’s deep south into a room for a cozy chat and have him coming out as a decent human being, never: it’s in there, way too deep. You’ll never take the crazies of Islamic state, or whatever other name you want to use, and teach them tolerance; if there were tolerance, they’d have no reason at all for their own existence. No lentil-wearing hippy could have got Joe Stalin in touch with his inner anger enough to turn him sane.

It’s the people listening to the crazies I want. Talk to them. They’re persuade-able. Anybody with half a brain cell left, unlike the crazies, is going to take the obvious choice here:

Choice A: Keep listening to the crazies and stay living here in this bomb crater, half starved, prevented from any pleasure, watching your friends die, having your sorry arse bombed from Kurdistan to Kazakhstan by day and by night.

Choice B: Chuck it in. Embrace a world that wants you to worship your god and enjoy your life, with a job and money and toys for your children and cola in the fridge.

Come on. Let’s work on Choice B. I understand the desire to bomb the living fuck out of the crazy evil bastards, of course I do, but that means more people will die who didn’t need to and the noise of the bombs keeps the endless cycle going because nobody can listen.

When peace has come, it’s come because of Choice B, from Ulster to South Africa, the unstoppable momentum of the offer of life over death. Yes, I know that’s not universal. Choice B didn’t solve Hitler, though it did solve Stalin. After an awfully long time. But isn’t it better to aim for Choice B?

The people who’ve died in this modern crusader war have been living their lives – from a banker’s desk in the twin towers to the soukhs of Baghdad to a concert hall in Paris to a bazaar in Damascus. As the bombs are loaded onto the jets, somewhere another family will be setting off on a long journey to avoid those falling bombs, a journey that may end on some gods-forsaken beach where hope – Christian hope, Islamic hope, atheist hope, any hope at all – lies face down in the fucking surf.

None of these people gave or is giving too much of a toss about geo-politics or the price of oil or the meaning of the holy books; they’re eating and drinking and listening to rock’n’roll, or they’re trying to.

Yes, yes, yes, I know this is all cliché too. But what else does one do in this appalling world but hope? I will never believe bombs are the answer – mainly because bombs have never been the answer. Hope is the answer. But it’s also the hardest thing to have.

Comments

Comment from Old Fiddle
Time November 17, 2015 at 12:47 pm

So true: fucking whimsy! What’s it good for? Who wants to read about rugby and cats when vitriol is available for prime targets? Nice to see you felt it was so good, like New York New York, it deserved to be published twice. Now enough of this: I’m trying to learn the guitar.

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