Except they’ll never learn the lessons they should, right?
(Which is why this chick’s very existence shocks me. Good for you, dear. You remind me of a young me. Her [surviving] neighbours, though, are probably all, “Why is she getting so much attention?? Does she think she’s better than us or soomit?”)
Here’s another:
The lesson from Grenfell is simple: stop building residential towers
Well, also how’s about:
Don’t give so many people the option of living off the state?
Oh, and here’s the Guardian’s editorial:
Grenfell Tower: Theresa May’s Hurricane Katrina
The 2005 hurricane that devastated New Orleans exposed failings in leadership and a terrible disdain for the lives of the poor. The London fire is doing the same
Well, Katrina actually exposed to the world the shitty life decisions “the poor” tend to make (Pro Tip: Don’t live below sea level. Also? Don’t get so fat that you’re now diabetic and “disabled” and can’t get the fuck around, and, especially, don’t adopt “Let the good times roll” as your goddamn city motto); burning resentment of same exposure; their learned helplessness, and the tendency of some “poor” people (more than others) to start looting 6.4 seconds into a catastrophe…
See, here’s one reason people have “a terrible disdain for the lives of the poor”:
So do the fucking poor.
Who, as I keep saying, are the “rich” Jesus warned you about.
PS: If you’re new here, I spent most of my childhood below the “poverty line.” So fuck off.
(UPDATE: I was bitching to Arnie about this and he just sent along:
Sprinklers were not fitted in the Grenfell Tower because residents did not want the disruption of fitting them, council bosses have claimed.
Nick Paget-Brown, the Tory leader of Kensington and Chelsea Council, said there was not a ‘collective view’ among residents in favour of sprinklers.)
Also? Didn’t we abolish the “stay in place during a highrise fire” (?!) protocol during, you know, what was that thing that happened…? Oh, yeah:
9/11???!!!
Anyhow, I’ll never understand these “councils” that apparently run every aspect of English life, but they just take it as an unalterable given. Puke.
The idea that the state doesn’t, and even shouldn’t, “care,” is so oddly foreign to them.
And this whole “caring” thing has really, er, flared up lately. You’ve likely seen the latest leftist meme:
“Right wingers protesting sharia don’t really care about women and gays. Their ‘free speech’ is just the freedom to go back to saying hateful things about them eventually.”
But what if I don’t “really care” about “women and gays”?
So what??
For the record, I also don’t “really care” about “the planet” and “the children” either. (I’ve already mentioned “the poor.”)
And what would this “really caring” look like in practical terms, anyway?
Whatever the answer (and I doubt a leftist would have a coherent one) I doubt I’d measure up. So what’s the point?
What I “really care about” IS freedom of speech, period.
As an abstract principle that must be defended first, for my own — and it’s own — sake, first, in the same way you have to put on your own drop down oxygen mask on the turbulent plane before you put one on your child (who you presumably “really care about.”) And if there is no child travelling with me that I “really care about,” well, I’d put on my oxygen mask anyhow, right?
This is what puts me in a minority (maybe even singular) position on the right:
I’m not a free-speecher because I want to “debate” issues or somehow “educate” people or “change their minds” or otherwise “make the world a better place.”
I have no ameliorative motive.
In a way, despite my nasty “tone,” that’s why I don’t even qualify for the description “polemicist.”
Rather, I want the freedom to say what I want, when I want, period. For its own sake.
(And yes, then dealing with the consequences. Is it possible that the SJW terror of “free speech” isn’t that it “hurts other people’s feelings” but that it puts too much responsibility on the speaker, is too risky, and these kids, who’ve been chauffeured to every helmet-wearing play date and still live with their parents, are averse to responsibility and risk? We all know that leftists are never really angry about what they say they are angry about…)
When I started blogging 17 years ago, blogging platforms didn’t have comments capabilities. When these later became ubiquitous, jumped up trolls who’d just discovered blogs that week would bitch:
“Kathy doesn’t even allow comments!!!”
It occurred to me then that I wasn’t particularly interested in “dialogue” or even convincing someone to adopt my positions.
I honestly don’t care what 99% of the population thinks. Why would I?
I’m really just interested in writing, and if people read it and like it, even if my audience is small, that’s fine.
I compare it to after hours jams by musicians. If a few folks wander in, cool, but we’re not trying to please them or “convert” them to any cause.
Or it’s a bit like graffiti. Yeah, you have a message, but it’s one way, and maybe even too obtuse to be understood by anyone but you. In fact, most tagging is just “X was here.”
That’s me, on this blog. Except, unlike the graffitist, I even have the decency and principles to scribble all over my own property.
I’m amusing myself, clarifying my own positions, sometimes even just showing off.
So if my writing is too harsh or tasteless or misanthropic to be “good for XYZ cause” or “for our side,” and might even “turn people off,” well, you’ve missed the point.
I.
Don’t.
CARE.
I realize this concept is a bit rarefied for the average drone, left OR right.
Don’t care about that either.