I completely agree with you. I understand this is how it works. This is why the biggest mistake anybody made pre-Brexit was to be snobby and call people stupid rather than try to engage with them on anything approaching a respectful level, because it radicalised them. I told many of the people I worked with at the time (London bubble and all that) that they were the main problem. I was in Lille with a few of them from the day before until 2/3 days after the referendum, for the Euros, and vividly remember sitting in the main square listening to them moaning like idiots while telling them in no uncertain terms that their attitude and the way they conducted themselves was a big part of what went wrong. It’s no secret where I stand but if you’re respectful I will return the favour. I can have a civilised conversation with virtually anybody if they’re willing to drop the insults - throw a jab and I’ll happily throw one back. I’ll be angry and ratty at what’s going on, and towards the people who run things, but I try not to get into fisticuffs with Joe Bloggs unless they decide to whack me in the plumbs. Ultimately, why would anybody want to be on ‘your team’ if you treat them with disdain and spit on them from the off? Some people can’t and won’t be ‘changed’, but you guarantee they won’t be if you go charging in with a right hook as a first course of action. So-called populists know that - they thrive in frying pans. They’re people who endlessly campaign even when they get in, because they don’t have the ability to actually govern. They need the bitterness to keep people split into teams, because otherwise it doesn’t work. Angry people get them what they want without them having to give them anything of substance in return, besides a feeling of ‘winning’ and ‘beating people’. It’s so simple, yet so effective. For now. These things come in waves, and it doesn’t tend to last long because the angry people who burn things down generally don’t have any idea of how to build anything back up again. It’s like a riot that runs its course and then disperses - there are many more days in history without riots than there are those with them.
I’m disappointed that you say you find it funny to see other people upset, and that you laugh at their distress, but only because you couldn’t feel that way unless you’d had a hell of a time of it at one point or another. Not being remotely condescending in saying that - I don’t enjoy the thought of anybody having such a tough time at any point in their life that it makes them feel that other people being upset is somehow soothing or enjoyable. I haven’t had what I would call a particularly enjoyable life in many ways, certainly in years gone by, but my approach is that I know what it’s like to feel like you’ve been left without a single card in your hand, and so I don’t want anyone else to feel that way. Doesn’t make me right or ‘better’ for it, though, just different. Maybe if more understood that we wouldn’t all be so angry at each other. We would probably have a much better world for it.
Feel free to pop round for a doob some time. Feel free to bring the doob with you, too.