Decyphering The Guardian

The Guardian is always wrong. Always. Without fail. Even when one of their so called journalists says something that is factually correct, they still have an uncanny ability to place it in the wrong context or misunderstand it

 

Take the issue of slavery, for example (Stop groaning at the back. If you've had your fill of this subject, you're excused, with my apologies)

If we can’t speak honestly about Britain’s links to slavery, we turn our backs on change

This statement doesn't really mean anything to begin with, but there's two parts to it; honest discussion and change

I'll start with change. The writer assumes there is a need for change. I do not. Personally, I think we have had far too much change over the last half century, and that is why we are in the mess we are in now. western civilisation dragged itself into a good place by changing the bad, but when we got there, people insisted on more change. 'Progressive', they called it. When there is no real bad left to change, progression looks for bad in the good and changes that

 

Which is how we end up with a welfare state that pays people to stay at home and have kids, an immigration system that prioritises freeloaders over the incumbent population, a broken feral society where there are no consequences, a constant chipping away at our freedoms and a raft of other improvements

 

But of course the 'change' this author is refering too is a change to the racist attitude of white Britons

 

I put it to her that Briton is not racist. In fact, Britain is probably the most open and tolerant country in the world. Therefore, I question the need for change

 

What about speaking honestly about the past? I think we do. In fact I think the people she derides talk more honestly about our history than the people who have a constant chip on their shoulder about racism

 

We point out things like, 'England stopped slavery, at a massive cost to themselves', something which is never acknowledged by the race mongers. 

We point out the positives that came from colonialism, where they consider the past in the black and white, and connot accept that there may have been positives from something that was an overall negative

We point out that some countries have done nothing to imporve themselves, post colonialism, and are more backwards crap holds now, than they were under English control. They make excuses for this and blame colonialism for setting these countries back, which is demonstrably false

We point out that descendants of slaves live in very prosperous countries and have had the opportunity to live prosperous lives. They make even more excuses

Today’s generation is not responsible for what happened two centuries ago

Ok, now that's true

but it can be guilty of refusing to learn from it

Also true. That's two true statements in one Guardian article, but I refer you to my original musing

Slavery has been used in every emerging economy accross the globe. There's a missing link between the ability of the people to produce enough for themselves and the ability of people to produce enough for trade. Slavery has usually always bridged that gap

Two centuries ago, it made sense and did not seem to be wrong. Eventually, as the human race progressed, we decided that actually, what we were doing was probably a bad thing. Over time, slavery was abolished and economies began to stabilise without the need for slaves

And we've never done it again. 

That is learning from it. It was bad, but we stopped it and did not go back. We learned

This is why attempts to revise and update conventional accounts of British history are so fiercely and reflexively rejected. Britain’s past, or a glorious version of it, is so central to maintaining the status quo that to question our history is to invite dramatic charges of vandalism and erasure – from those who seem to believe the past is like an antique vase that might be shattered if too many people lay their hands on it.

The past is the past. What's done is done. The only thing about the past that should be up for discussion, is the factual accuracy of historical events. What we've seen over the past few years, is weak and ineffectual people (loosers) trying to bring the past forward into the present, in order to account for their own lack of success or happiness

Many people can say their ancestors were slaves and that was horrible, but if you can say that horror has tricked down through time and prevented you from achieving anything, you're on a winner. You're no longer responsible for your failiures

That's why we try to keep the past factual, and most of all, in the past. For example, you  never picked cotton and I never owned a slave. It does not address the feelings and emotions of what it was to be a slave, but it does prevent people from dragging those emotions out of the past and making me responsible for something other people did two hundred years ago

Even if my ancestor made a lot of money from slave labour, that money has been spent manay times over. And who's to say, if I had one entrepreneur in my lineage, might there have been others who made money at differnt times in history, if slaves had never been used

And if you as a descendant of slaves, have made nothing of yourselves, in a slavery free world, would you not now be living in Aftrica, walking nine miles every day to get water and beating your donkey to death?

The future owes nothing to the past, as we're not Gods and cannot know how things would have worked differently

Our own prime minister has made taking on “lefty woke culture that wants to cancel our history” one of his main election pledges. Before him, Boris Johnson objected to the tearing down of the Edward Colston statue, and claimed that we can’t just “go around seeking retrospectively to change our history or to edit it”.

This is not a serious way to talk about history;

Well in a way, yes it is. Tearing down a statue because the person had links to slavery, is not talking about history. It isn't even correcting an historical inaccuracy. What the woke left and the statue topplers want, is for things in history they don't like, to be erased

Cancelling and erasure is not talking

The Edward Coulson statue was not erected because he owned slaves and we love him for that. It was erected to acknowledge his philanthopy. Maybe some of the money he spent was made off the back of slavery, I don't know, but the fact reamins, what he did in his time was normal for people living in his time

 

If we disagree with him now, pretending he did not exist is doing no service to history. In fact, that is how we fail to learn from history, by airbrushing it and forgetting it. The bad things from history should always be at the forefront of our minds, as that's how we really learn and make sure history is not repeated

Erasing history because it triggers a few snowflakes, does nothing for anyone, including the snowflakes

If a country has owned, traded in, and profited from slavery and colonialism, it cannot escape or outrun the legacies of these foundational exploitations.

I might be willing to agree with this observation in principal, if Britain and America were not the only countries talked about when the issue of slavery is raised. What about Italy (Romans) and Egypt (Pharaohs)?

What about Belgium, Portugal, Spain? What about the Aztecs and Incas? The Norse, the Native Americans, The Ottomans, the Visigoths. France, Germany, Japan, Denmark...

The list goes on

Britain is shaped, in all forms, physical, political and demographic, by its past. This a fact, not an argument.

As with all countries. But the past needs to remain there. And it needs to remain intact

what restorative justice entails is not two versions of the past, but two versions of the future. In one, Britain is bewildered by its changing nature, riven by its inequalities, racial and economic, and childishly blowing raspberries every time someone mentions slavery, colonialism, or empire. In the other, Britain is beginning to understand that it’s time to grow up. I know which one I’d rather be a part of.

Me too