This week, I have seen a couple of recent news stories relating to Palestine and Israel: one which enraged me; one which provoked me. I made a throwaway collage on 27th February for Ephemera for the former story about how a pro-Israel lobby group made a London hospital take down art work by children from Gaza as they felt ‘threatened’. I am still struggling to find words to explain how rage-full I feel in response to that. That people representing one of the most belligerent, violent, and militarised countries on earth could consider children’s artwork threatening is an egregious farce and an abuse of the English language. What they did not want was for anyone outside of Gaza / Palestine to know the reality of those children’s lives. That the hospital would capitulate to this lie of vulnerability disgusts me. Today I read the historian Simon Schama calling for British Jews to
[aiovg_video mp4=”https://tankgreen.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/european-parliament-covid-hearing-pfizer.mp4″] I’m going to leave that there for every single person who was injured by and/or died as a consequence of taking the vaccine. I hope it strengthens your (family’s) legal case. I’m going to leave that there for every single person who was forced into getting vaccinated under pain of losing their job and/or friends and family. I hope you can sue your employer for not doing due diligence.
Two things happened today. Firstly I saw a picture of the once supremely handsome (now vegan) Robert Downey Jr looking old, grey, and dusty as fuck; secondly, I realised that I can hang off callisthenic bars using one arm, including my bad arm/shoulder. This was previously completely impossible due to my shoulder injury. Both of these observations are related to diet. I turned vegetarian at the age of 13 or so for ethical reasons. I made the connection between the (delicious) lamb chops on my dinner plate, and the cute, fluffy lambs I would bottle feed in the spring time at my dad’s mate’s farm. I just couldn’t eat them anymore. I stayed vegetarian until I was in my mid-30s, after which I started eating some fish and meat as my health was clearly suffering as a result of spiralling food intolerances and allergies and the beginnings of IBS. (Side note,
Liberal Americans are going apoplectic because another state has made abortion illegal. Reading the comments of those “shocked” by it, is to encounter some of the most profound cognitive dissonance I have observed in a while. The right to abortion hinges on the right to bodily integrity. What precisely did this dumbest of countries think would happen when it ran roughshod over that most crucial and fundamental of human rights by mandating vaccines? Human rights are hard lines. You do not cross them. Once you do, they cease to be rights and become perspectives. And look what happens when people don’t share yours. You reap what you sow.
We have long reached peak performativity in society. Of course, there has always been an element of performance, and if I could control my reading to just Goffman’s The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, then I would likely give you a nice little overview of the work on this subject. I’m going to have to come back to that as I have a feeling this is going to become a series of posts. I think, if I were a different kind of person, I would be talking about “wokery” right now. I hate that word. I hated it when the self-righteously inclusive self-proclaimed themselves as “woke”, and I still hate it now those without broadly inclusive politics justifiably use it as an insult against those who proclaim broadly inclusive politics. Even as I type this, there is so much to unpack. What do I mean by “peak performativity”? What do I