One of my favourite Monty Python sketches is near the start of the Life Of Brian when Brian summons up the courage to ask Reg and his band if they are the Judean’s People's Front. A minute of hilarity ensues where Reg and his band the People's Front of Judea catalogue all the nasty splitter and splinter groups that they hate worse than the Romans.
It's high farce and at the time was a none too subtle dig at the various terrorist groups fighting amongst each other.
A couple of days ago, I thought I'd stumbled into an updated version of the sketch on Twitter.
I follow a broad range of views on Twitter -all the way across the political spectrum. I find that by following a range of views I get a good feel for what is really happening. The thing that has become really obvious to me is that there is broad agreement among the active thinking members of the left and right that something stinks about the process of government. Let's leave the President out of it for a moment and just acknowledge that vast numbers of both left and right voters are sick to death of being screwed by a system that has given up any pretence of caring about them.
The views expressed are remarkably similar. In many cases, the villains are the same. The bare bones of a genuine political revolution can be seen.
The more practical of both sides of the political spectrum see this. Those with genuinely deep scars no longer attach themselves to any movement or philosophy. They simply hunger for justice. They want to clean house and then sit down and talk like rational adults about fixing things. Unlikely alliances are being formed. In the face of massive disinformation, blatant McCarthyism and neo-liberal spin people are talking. There's still reason to hope that somehow these forces will prevail.
Then there are the others.
You know the types. You may even be one. It's your way or the highway. By far the silliest are the #I'mwithher crowd who still suffer from the mass delusion of Russian collusion. The extreme right-wing people are always good for a laugh, but there's a smaller group that really might give more value per tweet. They're the rusted on armchair socialists that either haven't had time to study history or simply think it's cool to sprout socialist philosophy knowing full well that there is no danger of pure socialism being practised in any Western society. But it's, you know, cool, to claim to be a socialist.
So I semi innocently stumbled into one of these socialist group circle jerks. One of their members had written a hit piece on a journalist whom I like. I don't always agree with the said journalist but I respect her opinions and enjoy her writing. Apparently, she had the temerity to think it would be a good idea for left and right to have dialogue. That's a hanging offence apparently. I offered a free critical assessment of the writing and it wasn't well received. It wasn't well received at all.
I was informed that it had been noticed that I followed another traitor to the cause and if I wanted to shill for people like that I'd be better off not following a particular account.
You know because these people are traitors, (I think that' was the point) worse than Trump, worse than Hillary, worse than Hitler himself. Because....they (and I) dare to entertain other people's opinions. We even get our very own label pepegressives – which is kind of nice given that I gave up trying to belong to any movement or group. The back slapping and smug satisfaction of righteousness is all a bit nauseating, but each to their own I guess.
The logic here is so pythonesque, so absurd and so bizarre that it is curiously frightening.
How can you possibly hope to engage others when you only want to surround yourself with carbon copies of yourself? Much of The Life Of Brian was satirical in nature and aimed at this very splintering of causes. The cause becomes an end in itself. Change is unnecessary as long as there is a cause to cling to.
Thank God for those seeking middle ground and dialogue.