Damned Clever Idiots

We seem to have a lot of these about nowadays. There is not any inevitable delineation according to political alignment or nationality. One right-winger believes that women cannot get pregnant when they are the victims of "legitimate rape", whatever that means, and one left-winger believes that it is not rape if you rape someone when they are asleep or if you have enraged the American government. These brainless lies should not go unchallenged, lest they corrupt others. I find that sometimes the best thing to do here is to use analogies. Let us think on the latter idiot's position first. Imagine you have a book. A friend asks if they can borrow it to write an essay. Then you need it back so you can do your work. If the person who borrowed it breaks down your door and steals the book, you would not think that it was ok. If someone else defended him, saying that you had already let him borrow the book, so it was merely bad etiquette for the thief to break down your door and steal your book, you would be angry, rightly angry, and regard that argument as bad, invalid, weak, and possibly even evil.

Now let us think about the first idiot. The first baffling thing here is his terminology. What is "legitimate rape"? Is it perhaps like "legitimate theft", where you need to steal bread or you will starve? No, because nobody is going to die from not attacking someone else. So what could it mean? Perhaps it means that this idiot believes that half the population has to conform to a dress code or a manner of behaviour or walking only on certain well-lit streets or they deserve to be attacked. That's not just stupid, it is evil. Nobody deserves to be attacked for being in the wrong place or for wearing non-standard clothes. If you wear a Star Trek t-shirt and a Star Wars fan attacks you for that reason, you know he is the one with the problem, not you. Mark Mardell of the BBC said, "If someone talked about 'legitimate murder' or 'legitimate burglary' we would be left scratching our heads as to what they meant”.

Some of you will be reading this and thinking what George Galloway wants you to think. We are human, and we do get distracted and misled. Nothing of what I have said above about George Galloway's words means that Julian Assange attacked anybody. Nothing of what is above means that he has not enraged the American government: they do want to see him locked up. That is not pertinent. Two people have alleged they were attacked. That should be investigated, not ignored because he is a gadfly to America. There are people out there with no respect for others, and they are numerous, even multitudinous. They are encouraged to ignore, dominate and torture other people by these disgusting statements made by public figures. Nothing of what I have said above touches on the good or evil of abortion. I have not given my view of abortion. I have given my view of an evil statement which wrongly seeks to delineate between certain kinds of a particularly vicious assault.

When someone in the public eye makes an evil statement, one which strengthens the cruel and the vile, they should be challenged. They should retract it or they should learn that such evil as they promote and endorse must not be allowed to prosper. I may well have sounded furious to you as you read this. I am furious. No man or woman is my toy, existing solely for my enjoyment. No man or woman is anyone's property. We can change our minds from yes to no, or expect to sleep without being attacked. We are all people.