Modern Politics

I don’t have a political affiliation. I agree with some points from each side of the divide but not by enough to actually join either side. That’s because every side has things I definitely won’t support.

On immigration, for example. Here’s how I’d do it.

Anyone can come in. Anyone at all. No restrictions. BUT…

Anyone moving to a country must adopt the laws and customs of that country. We have had the ridiculous situation in the UK where a rapist was released because ‘he didn’t know rape was illegal’. Yes, really. Ignorance of the law used to be no excuse. Now, by precendent, it is a valid defence. Any good defence lawyer could get anyone off any crime with the ‘I didn’t know’ argument and cite that case as precedent.

In some countries, having multiple wives is fully legal and normal. In some, marrying children is legal and normal. Those two are not religion-based. They are culture based. In some countries, beating to death those who don’t agree with your religion is legal and normal. In some countries, people are divided into a social heirarchy based on an arbitrary matrix that depends on which parents you are born to. If you want to move to those countries, you have to accept that those things are legal and normal there.

They are neither legal nor normal in the UK. Do those who come here accept that? Actually, most do. A small number do not and yet they are not corrected nor punished by the courts. They are excused with ‘It’s their culture innit?’

Well you try having a gay pride march in Saudi Arabia and tell them ‘it’s your culture innit’ and see how far that gets you. Telll Mexico you don’t like chillies so they have to stop putting them in the food. Tell France they have to give up wine and garlic because you don’t like those things. Go to America and tell them you don’t agree with their Constitution and demand they do things your way.

If you are lucky, those countries will just deport you. Some of them have other, more permanent, solutions.

Different countries have different laws and different cultures. Which set of laws, which culture is the best one? That is entirely subjective. It depends on what you like and how you want to live.

I own no guns and don’t want one. I don’t need one in the UK, we don’t have bears or wolves or mountain lions or poisonous snakes (well, we have the adder but for normal healthy people its bite is painful but rarely deadly, and I haven’t seen one in the wild in 58 years). If I wanted to own a gun I would move to a country that allows it.

The UK does allow hunting/target rifles and shotguns if you want to go through all the paperwork to get one. They are expensive and I really have no use for one so I haven’t bothered. Handguns are banned for everyone except criminals. They aren’t hard to get if you hang around the right people. But they are unregulated and there is a chance it’ll blow your hand off first time you fire it – and of course, there are no practice ranges or any form of training available.

If I moved to a country where I might well find a dangerous animal in my garden one day, one that is very likely to kill me, then I would like that country to allow me to own enough firepower to win that fight. Basically, if your country has large predators and your people can’t have guns, I don’t want to go there.

So I’m happy where I am. I don’t want or need a gun here. The most dangerous animals to venture into my garden are badgers and foxes and they’ll leave you alone unless you severely provoke them.

We currently have immigrants who come from places where it’s normal – and sometimes actually necessary – to be armed at all times. They have escaped that country and, I suppose, old habits die hard. Carrying a machete is just normal to them, they’ve done it all their lives. Nobody seems to have told them that it is not only not necessary here, it is actually very illegal indeed.

Move to a country, adapt to that country. Do not try to foce them to adapt to you or accept you in some ludicrous ‘multiculturalism’ experiment. Multi-ethnic societies do just fine, the UK was one for a long time before the insanity set in and okay, we had racists, including violent ones (I’m thinking skinheads, we used to call them Densa Boys but never to their faces) but they never had popular support. Now we have a lot fewer openly racist idiots but practically everyone is called racist. It’s as if someone wants to stir up the old Skinhead days.

Multiculturalism cannot work. One culture does not carry anything bigger than a pocket knife. Another thinks a machete is a necesary tool at all times. Another decides it’s fine to get a gun and just shoot your rivals. You cannot mix these things.

So, in my hypothetical country of Underdoggia, you can come and go as you please. While here, you live by our laws and our customs. You can bring new customs and new ideas and if they prove popular, we’ll adopt them.

If you can get here, we let you in. We are not paying you to come, we are not providing free transport and we are not responsible for your welfare while you are here. You want a house? Buy or rent one. You want a regular income? Get a damn job.

The one exception would be healthcare. I would have a central health system run by a Public Health department whose remit was to cure disease and prevent its spread. Mission creep will be stamped on hard and some will no doubt go to jail for misuse of (very limited) public funds.

It is possible that people will arrive who are running from a place where there is a rampant epidemic of something nasty. They will need to be screened and if necessary, isolated and cured before being released into the general population. Otherwise they’ll soon be running, like everyone else, from the same rampant epidemic in Underdoggia. So yes, we do need a central and ‘free’ (paid through taxes) health system but only for actual illnesses. No lifestyle controls. If you want to spend the entirety of your one and only visit to this life in a cocaine coma, well you just go ahead. As long as you don’t bother anyone else, nobody cares.

You can, of course, take out medical insurance to cover things that are annoying but not fatal or debilitating, and you can pay for elective surgery if you want it, but the central health system, the ‘free’ part, is only there to try to stop you dying (or to make it at least painless if incurable) and to prevent the spread of disease. Nothing more. It does not judge your lifestyle, it just tries to fix what is wrong with you.

No current political party would support that approach. One side wants ‘anything goes’ open borders and the other wants a points system where you have to prove you don’t need any help before they give it to you. I want something in between. Nobody offers it.

You can move to Underdoggia if you have nothing, but making something of your life is up to you. There are no free rides. If you have paid in to the system there is a safety net in case you are suddenly unable to work or lose your job through no fault of your own. You can live on it but it won’t be fun – unless you are permanently and irrevocably unable to work. Then we can be a bit more generous.

There’s a catch though. You have to have at least paid in or been born here. You can’t drag your legless torso across half the planet to get freebies. That sounds cruel and it is, but if I were to offer free stuff to all the world’s cripples, all the world will send them here and I’d be bankrupt within a year. Underdoggia is a pleasant place but it has to run on a budget. It cannot afford to take on all the world’s ills. If it tries it will die and then we all starve.

It’s a good feeling to be able to say you will take all the poor, the damned and the useless and it’s a laudable aim. Sure, take in everyone who can’t fend for themselves but how are you going to pay for it? Do that as a country and your working population will be taxed to the hilt. They will resent you and they will resent those you brought in. Then they rebel. They vote for anyone who says they will stop you and well, you can guess where that ends up. I mean, it’s not as if it hasn’t happened many times before.

It’s happening again. Politics is becoming more and more violent. Parties are relying more and more not on ‘what we will do for you’ but on ‘what they will do to you’. You are not voting for improvements, you are voting to not be the ones sent to the camps. It won’t work, it never does. Jews who collaborated with the Nazis, even the ones working in factories that made Nazi war helmets, were sent to the death camps anyway. You vote for death camps, don’t be surprised when you end up in one.

We all hear about the 1930s/40s and Hitler’s mob. Cambodia’s regime was more recent than that. North Korea is still doing it. Don’t imagine humanity has outgrown death camps. We’ve just found better ways to justify them. It is not over yet, not by a long way.

This round of divisive, ‘the other side is wrong about absolutely everything’ politics is the most vicious yet. There is no middle ground any more. You will have to choose a side soon and whichever one you choose, millions of people will want to kill you.

Underdoggia will remain neutral. A safe haven where you can watch the world devour itself in hate.

What a pity it doesn’t exist.