Ich Bin Ein Untermensch Too

Seaneen over at mentallyinteresting.org.uk. launches a ferocious and passionate and eloquent attack on this article in The Daily Mail. And every missile hits its target. I see parallels between the treatment of the underclass and the treatment of the mentally ill.

They do not follow the rules.  They do not obey instructions.  They are weak, they are feckless, they are helpless.  Their very presence corrupts society.  The industrious middle class readers of The Daily Mail are the most hostile towards them.  It is not that they lack imagination.  It is not that they are devoid of empathy.  Far from it.  They possess those qualities in abundance.  They understand more than they want to.

The underclass and the mentally ill represent devastation.  Lives laid to waste by some invisible force over which they have no control.  Those Daily Mail commenters are afraid because one day they know it could happen to them.  Like aerial bombardment.  No one knows who the missiles will hit next.  But they will never acknowledge that.  Not in a million years.

A Burden on the Parish II

'Rentawomb'

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Addendum:  I gotta say for someone who has churned out thirteen brats and has one firmly ensconced inside her Theresa Winters has quite a decent figure. Shapely legs and no sign of bingo wings.  You certainly can’t accuse her of letting herself go.  If I were you though, Theresa, love, I’d grow that fringe out because it simply doesn’t suit you and ditch this dress (Did the stylist at The Daily Mail suggest  you wear it?) – that’s most definitely not you.  Why doesn’t the Daily Mail fix Ms. Winters up with their middle class readers who’ve found it almost impossible to dispose of the blubber that was their new born baby’s gift to them?  And that many of the columnists whine about incessantly.  Funny, isn’t it?  How some ‘chav’ on the dole can work out how to get rid of her baby blubber and yet many female Daily Mail columnists still have it, firmly cleaved to their bones when their brats are off to university – Oxbridge, of course.  Anyone ever noticed how every middle class brat is Oxbridge bound?* They’re not, of course. That would be a statistical impossibility.

And here’s another business proposition: why doesn’t  The Daily Mail try and hook up Ms. Winters with a few middle class readers who can conceive but can’t carry the baby full term?  I can see it now: ‘Rentawomb.’  Now I’m off to draw up a business plan.

</satire>

*http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/you/article-1178070/8216-We-stand-skunk-8217.html

Remember the Myersons. Proof, if ever proof were needed that the Middle Classes aren’t infallible and omnipotent to a man, as the Daily Mail would have you believe.  ‘Jake Myerson had been a straight-A student destined for Oxbridge; skunk addiction had made him menacing, unmanageable and morally erratic.’ Sure you were, mate, sure you were. Oh, and another thing: I grew up in a working class family and my parents would never permit my brother or I to ‘smoke a spliff’ in their house (or anywhere else for that matter) just so they could look ‘cool’ in front of their offspring. ‘Ooh, look how liberal we are!’ They adopted a zero tolerance approach to drugs. And I knew no one in our (working class and even ‘underclass’) circle of friends who would offer their younger siblings drugs. This is exactly what Julie Myerson asserts that her son Jake did to his younger brother.  So, a question directed at my many social superiors.  Should I still emulate my betters?

And I bask in the warm glow of schadenfreude. Is that a bit mean of me? Well, damn it – I’ve earned it!

A Burden on the Parish

I had to reread this article in The Daily Mail to establish whether or not it is satirical a la Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal. It is not. The fine specimen of the master race pictured above uses the extreme example of Theresa Winters, a woman who in her relatively short life has given birth to thirteen children all of whom were taken into care, to justify eugenics. He takes pains to emphasize that this is not what he is advocating. Methinks the gentleman doth protest too much.  He is more candid about his views in this article in The Telegraph:

“Eugenics, as advocated by kindly figures such as its pioneer, Sir Francis Galton, or its most eloquent exponent, Dean Inge, was simply the notion that the useful and intelligent classes should be allowed, indeed encouraged, to breed, and the murderous morons, who are never going to contribute anything except misery to themselves and others should be discouraged. No one need be killed.”

The article in The Daily Mail is replete with inconsistencies much like Wilson’s own life – he has oscillated between atheism and faith in God for most of his adult life and has pontificated endlessly about this in various right wing newspapers.  Indeed that is what he appears to do in this article.  It is the very embodiment of cognitive dissonance.

‘Human life is not for playing with. Human beings, each and every one of us, are of unique and equal value. And, as I will explain, it is precisely because I share this view that I believe women such as Theresa Winters should be sterilised.”

He then reduces each ‘unique and valuable’ human being to their economic worth and their worldly success.

‘If we pay for these children from the moment of their conception and through their whole lives – of being taken into care, through their early convictions for petty crime, through drug and drink problems, through healthcare and eventually to sickness and old-age benefits, state-funded housing and hospitalisation – why on earth should we not ask ourselves whether we wish to foot the bill?’

He also uses this case as a stick with which to beat benefit claimants. He does not seem to realize that if her children do not reside with her then Ms. Winters is unlikely to receive benefits on their behalf.  He also seems to be unaware of the fact that if these children had been taken from their mother from birth or before the age of two then it is highly likely that they would have been adopted.  By a loving, caring and probably middle class family.

The views expressed in this article are so repugnant that even the average Daily Mail reader would find them hard to stomach. The children AN Wilson refers to may also be future cannon fodder in wars started and sustained by their social superiors.  I wonder if that thought has occurred to him. ‘You are a burden on the parish’ Mr Bumble said to the eponymous protagonist of Oliver Twist.  It appears that little has changed.

Addendum: : Just noticed this: ‘As a society, we already accept abortion on demand, we already experiment on human embryos and we are on the verge of legalising suicide.’ This intellectual colossus is so dim that he isn’t even aware that it is not suicide that the law forbids but assisting a suicide. Didn’t they teach you basic research techniques at New College, Oxford? Or even how to make use of your minions (aka PhD students.) I’m sure your alma mater is very proud of you.