Reality hit me hard today.
Today I saw an ugliness and truth that I think I had been deluding myself into not believing could possibly approach being a problem in the UK.
I'm a Gen Xer. Fairly liberal in all the ways that count, fundamentally humanist but with a healthy dose of disillusion about the world around us, and yet since 2016 I had always held an underlying belief that as a people, as a global people - we would figure it out, and we would overcome our differences. It was a core belief of mine because I grew up seeing the atrocities being committed in South Africa, just old enough to know what was happening was wrong...And yet we overcame. South Africa is not perfect, but I trusted that with enough reconciliation and dialogue people would find a way forward. DeKlerk and Mandela instilled that sense of hope.
I remember friends of the family that were deployed to defend the Falklands, and never coming home. I was too young to grasp what that meant, what that meant for the Argentinians, but despite that some of my best friends are from Argentina.
As the 90's dawned, I saw the fall of the iron curtain and our Russian cousins able to join us in a new world; Family from East Germany were able to reunite with loved ones in the West for the first time and even at my young age back then, I understood the significance. It felt like the world was not only progressing, but for the first time in a long time, Germany was finally able to shrug off the cloak that the spectre of nazism had enshrouded the people of Germany had been wearing for a long, long time. I love Germany. Even today, I consider it to be my home nation, all of the teams that I love supporting during the world cup and Olympics are German. For all the harm that has come from the Thatcher era, from Reaganism, I will always be grateful to the pressure of the governments of the day for applying pressure in the right places and bringing my home together.
Perhaps more closely, because my father was a British soldier, I remember very vividly the division and pain from what the Irish and the Brits refer to as the troubles. I remember being woken to bomb alerts on numerous occasions. I remember news bulletins of another explosion in a pub or a railways station. I remember Omagh - I never thought the UK or Ireland would see a way through that, but thanks to the framework of the Good Friday Agreement which is far from perfect, what it has done is held a fragile peace and as a consequence I've been able to bury a deep hatred and mistrust of Irish people that I used to bear like a cross so that I can count some friends as some of my favourite people in the world that also happen to come from some of the most beautiful country that isn't North Yorkshire.
I apologise for labouring my point, but the salient point is that I had believed that it was possible for hatred and mistrust to be overcome, because I had seen and been a part of being able to make that change.
Even in the light of the 2016 referendum that had the UK leaving the EU, I felt it might be a necessary but painful step for the UK to realise that it was better to be in Europe, and for the disruptive elements to realise that the UK was always a part of the European Community, and rightfully so. For all of the friction that exists with the French, for all the horror that has happened over the years, the UK has answered the call to fight. Twice. I...Believed, somewhat naively that the rift that has been caused since the referendum could be resolved, and had trusted that Brexiteer and Remainer that had voted on opposite sides would once again, when the dust settles once again sit around a table, enjoying a cup of tea and remembering why underneath all of the politics they remembered the love they once held each other and begin a path to reconciliation that would hopefully begin with the UK once again taking its place within the EU.
I saw an...Ugliness today that hadn't truly hit until I saw a video of a man beaten and executed, and for the first time I think I understood an underlying truth - that what is happening in the states right now is not an issue of Democrat vs. Republican, it's American vs. Maga. Against populism, and that what is happening there threatens to come to the streets of my beloved United Kingdom, of my German home if we allow populism to rear its ugly head. I saw that body slump, and for the first time in my life I felt horror as my thoughts concluded that I don't know how we come back from this.
I hope we do. I'f you're reading this still, know that I love you as a fellow human and am surely afeared for you, dear reader irrespective of your race, colour or creed. All I've ever wanted for you was to feel safe and loved.
I hope that the Genocides in Sudan and Palestine end definitively. I hope that peace comes to Ukraine. I hope that compassion prevails in America, and I hope that Europe becomes a the beacon of progress that many of us hoped it would be as I grew from a boy to a man.
Rest in Peace, Alex Pretti. Please be safe, people of America.
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