When a Muslim Sits Next to You on the Subway…

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7/7, Alexander Armstrong, BBC, BBC Iplayer, Bomb scare underground, Etiquette, HIGNFY, Ian Hislop, iplayer, Islam, Justin Bieber, Muslims sitting next you on the tube, Notting Hill Gate, Paul Merton, Rihanna, Taylor Swift, Underground

Last week on the popular satirical news quiz ‘Have I got news for you”, the guest host Alexander Armstrong quipped that to have ‘quiet crisis of liberal conscience’ was the ‘standard procedure’ for when a Muslim sits next to you on the tube. The joke received what it deserved; a pattering of knowing, nervous giggles.

What do you do when this happens? If you’re a Londoner – or, for that matter, New Yorker, Muscovite, Parisian, Roman or Berliner – this situation and your reaction to it is really no laughing matter. Choose wrongly and you may lose the use of your legs or even perish altogether.

Where I live (in Putney) I have the luxury of using the District Line, a relatively Muslim-light part of the capital’s network. I’m aware of the crisis Armstrong alludes to, but whenever I’ve used the Islamised lines of East-London, mine has a different content. It isn’t a crisis of ‘conscience’, but rather of etiquette. The question isn’t ‘How might I suppress/conquer my own bigotry?’, but ‘Will my fellows think me cowardly or rude if I switch carriage at the next stop?’.

I should clarify before going forward that we are talking here of devout Muslims; that is, bearded, religiously dressed men, or completely veiled women. I don’t feel any anxiety sitting next to a brown person. It should also be clarified that I mean here situations in which one will be seated for a long time.

With that out of the way, I’ll confess to what I’ve done in the past – not always, but on occasion. If a devout Muslim has chosen a neighbouring seat, I will often wait until the train is at the following station, head calmly out like that is my stop and then hop back into the neighbouring car instead. On most of the these occasions, it has been because the Muslim in question is embellished with a backpack or bulky satchel (those with memories of 7/7 will appreciate why this matters). I’ve never felt a whiff of bad conscience for doing this. My legs, my arms and my life mean infinitely more to me than my sense of political correctness.

I also think that if Muslims should ever dare to repeat an enrichment of the 7/7 kind, we could make good use of this gesture as a means of protest. Though I still make cover for myself when switching carriages, in the event that Muslims once again bomb our infrastructure, we could make standing up when a Muslim sits next to us a very emphatic display of moral resistance.

In dignity and silence, this public motion would make known our willingness to put our safety before the bullying demands of established politics.

D, LDN.

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Dysgenics, Onesies, and Kids getting Dumber.

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Barack Obama, Defend the modern world, Dysgenics, Eugenics, Infant bodysuit, Jonestown, Justin Bieber, Onesie, Scotland, YouTube

It seems that the craze for adult babygrows – rebranded as ‘onesies’ –  has now stalled and will soon enter a period of red-faced decline. Those who fell victim to the ludicrous fad can now begin the work of stitching up the damage to their social credibility, probably by invoking the cards of ‘irony’, humour, or (if these fail) intoxication. Meanwhile, those of us who always were amazed at the herd insanity of such people, can glow with righteous satisfaction.

But why am I mentioning it here, on a political blog? Well, it’s known that fashion, like any other element of popular ‘culture’ acts as a kind of shadow government. It controls and governs the masses beneath the consent of electoral politics. More importantly (and worryingly) it also provides a barometer of national intelligence and mood. 

The craze for Onesies may be lessening, but much still has to be explained as to how such a strange trend could emerge in the first place. Who is to blame? What went wrong?

If anyone ever doubts the fallibility of the human mind to acquiesce in the most degrading kinds of behaviour, I point them in the direction of the harrowing documentary. Jonestown: The Life and Death of People’s Temple.

The story of Jonestown is well known. So well known that the (pretty insensitive) phrase “Don’t drink the kool-aid” has become common parlance. The phrase is designed to caution those who seem to be blindly following a herd, especially when that herd is itself blindly following a fallible authority. Whether or not it is unkind to use it, given the tragic nature of its source material, is irrelevant. What it gets right is more important than what it gets wrong.

The insinuation behind the phrase is that the lesson of Jonestown is not limited to freakish cults, but can be justly applied in other more everyday contexts.

And as the macro can be applied to the micro, so can the micro be applied to the macro. The fact that Onesies are so ridiculous, ugly and embarrassing for those forced by their weak minds to don them, coupled with the wildfire success of the fad itself, creates genuine cause for concern.

Where can fads go after adult babygrows? Perhaps some devious social scientist could deliberately create a fad for not wearing trousers. If it was endorsed by Justin Bieber, there’s no reason to think we wouldn’t see it become the norm….for a few weeks at least.

And then after the hypnosis of peer-pressure fell away, the affected consumers could look into mirrors, horrified at what they, and the human average is reduced to.

But it isn’t just fashion. This herd-madness is ruling the era. It elected President Obama. It motivates those vague, nihilistic protests against Capitalism which blight London streets every weekend. It is part of a pattern of general human degeneration known scientifically as ‘Dysgenics’. People are not just becoming more easy to round up and control. They are also becoming thicker.

Anyone over 25 who uses YouTube and is foolish enough to get into a debate with another user will immediately feel their generational distance from contemporary teenagers. ‘Text-speak’ is one thing. The sentences I’ve read on YouTube defy logic. They remind me of the “word salad” ramblings of patients suffering with Amphetamine Psychosis. 

And before the ‘age’ card is played against me, I’m in my twenties. I know and understand slang perfectly well. This is not and has never been the issue. People who notice that literacy is becoming worse with every new generation typically blame ‘slang’ and mobile phones because they are afraid of other explanations. But this is both rong and riddickoolus yeah? The words people cannot spell are not urban phrases but the basic mechanics of language. This can only lead to a less fluffy and digestible hypothesis.

A recent article in Prospect magazine drew attention to the alarming fact that the average British IQ appears to be falling. 

“A study in 2009…. compared IQ scores obtained by British teenagers in 1980 and 2008, using the same test. The average had declined by two points on average, but by as much as six points among teenagers in the top half of the IQ scale, a fall that wiped out the previous two decades of gains in that group.”

Does this matter? It might do. Especially as we prepare to go toe-to-toe with 1.4billion Chinese with an average IQ over 100. 

But that’s a long term issue. In the short term, we must confront the idiocracy forming at the base of British society and prevent it spreading further. That’s the best we can do for now, Innit?

D, LDN.