Right now I feel ashamed to be English. Ashamed to belong to a country that has clearly identified itself as insular, self-absorbed and apparently caring so little for the most vulnerable people among us. Why did a million people visiting food banks make such a minimal difference? Did we just vote for our own narrow concerns and sod the rest? Maybe that’s why the pollsters got it so badly wrong: we are not so much a nation of shy voters as of ashamed voters, people who want to present to the nice polling man as socially inclusive, but who, in the privacy of the booth, tick the box of our own self-interest.
No doubt sobbing with frustration, he went on:
The utterly miserable thought strikes me that Russell Brand just might have been right. What difference did my vote make? Why indeed do people vote, and care so passionately about voting, particularly in constituencies in which voting one way or the other won’t make a blind bit of difference? And why do the poor vote when, by voting, they merely give legitimacy to a system that connives with their oppression and alienation?If I ever found myself wondering if Russell Brand had been right about anything, I'd assume that I was either suffering a psychotic episode or that someone had spiked my drink with a powerful hallucinogen. And if this were 1945, I could imagine being ashamed to be German, but I'm not sure that Tory-voting English folk should feel the need to cover themselves in sackcloth and ashes for having elected a mild, centrist Conservative government in 2015. On the other hand, I would feel ashamed if I were an Anglican priest who had so totally forgotten the point of my calling that I had turned into some Marxist obsessive who feels that the church's job is to preach socialism rather than the message of personal salvation revealed by Jesus in the Gospels. In fact, I'd feel it my duty to resign from the church, throw away the dog-collar, and become a political activist, rather than hysterically insulting the majority of Anglican church-goers who identify themselves as Tories.
Most of the Anglican priests I've met are reasonable, rational, rather nice people, as one would expect them to be. Dr. Fraser would appear to be none of the above. While, in my experience, priests generally try to view people's actions in the best possible light - after all, compassion is meant to lie at the heart of their profession - Fraser seems determined to impute the vilest possible motives to anyone who doesn't agree with his extreme, hard-left political views. Why assume that voting for stability and prudence and order is voting for "our narrow concerns and sod the rest"? Has it really never really occurred to this narrow-minded ideologue that people might vote Tory because they think socialism inevitably results in poverty and misery and oppression? Or that voting Tory might be in the best interests of the people of the country they love? Or that they're justified in voting for the party which they think will create better lives for their families, friends and communities? Or that enticing people into a life of welfare dependency by making it more rewarding than working for a living is morally repugnant? And that advocating such a system purely because it salves your own conscience and sod the consequences for all those who suffer as a result is extraordinarily selfish and wicked?
As for foodbanks, Dr Fraser, the only person I know who runs one is a Catholic Tory - he actually set it up from scratch, entirely on his own initiative. I doubt if he's in the least ashamed of how he voted on Thursday. Neither do I imagine that all those Tory Anglicans who spend their free time helping the poor and the homeless, and giving to and collecting for charities feel any need to apologise to an arrogant, insulting, insular, self-absorbed, mean-minded pillock like you.
And if parliamentary democracy is so bad (when it doesn't yield the result you prefer, of course), what alternative are you proposing? Tyranny? Dictatorship?
Shame on those who voted Tory? Shame on you.
You can read the rest of Dr Fraser's spiteful ravings here.
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