A tsunami of opinions

Wouldn’t it be wonderful to let fly with honest opinions about the oddities of the world at large? While avoiding the social media machine-gun squads with itchy trigger fingers. Some authors do stick their heads above the parapet, with Trump and NRA rants, Brexit tirades and justified diatribes about racial and sex discrimination. I hesitate to add to the din and am saddled with the notion that if I think something then everyone else does too.

   That’s a problem in writing novels since familiar ideas to the writer seem like clichés, hardly worth repeating. In fact they may come as surprising news to readers, who haven’t had the same experiences; or don’t share my magpie mind which picks up titbits of information here there and everywhere.

  Did you know, for example, that the number of transgender people is under 1%? And yes, they need to be given the same respect and rights as everyone else. But gender fluidity has become a centre ground bandwagon, affecting attitudes to children, upsetting women in domestic violence shelters and others who are unnerved by the prospect of uni-sex toilets.

   Ideas and issues which gain traction and become the meme of the moment fascinate me. Tsunami-like pressures build until you think that this singular injustice is lurking under the carpet of every second house down the street. Then it recedes to be replaced by another. 

   Racial discrimination in the US was bravely fought in the 1960s, small progress was made and it subsided again.  Child sexual abuse surfaced in the 1980s, was battered into silence by denials in the 1990s, and is still struggling to make its voice adequately heard.

   The #metoo #timesup and pay equality for women campaigns are tackling a problem that has been around for ever, despite several waves of feminism.

  That is one thing which truly irritates me – why it takes decades to out the bad guys (gender free nomenclature). Usually only when they are dead and buried does the gory truth emerge; by which time a great deal of damage has been done. Individual lives have been destroyed; false ideas imbedded in common currency, which are difficult, nigh impossible to eradicate.

   The main character of my crime novel, Tire Thane, an independent-minded, investigative writer, isn’t entirely autobiographical but she shares my zeal for exposing wrongdoing. The feminist arguments wouldn’t interest her hugely since she’d swat anyone who tried to put her down. She’s travelled widely, embraces difference and is pretty laid back except when it comes to tolerating intolerance or hypocrisy.

  

Which brings me to the subject which I do hesitate to raise and may have to wait for next week to amplify.  How does a basically tolerant country cope when it uncovers intolerant elements? A laissez-faire, live and let live approach, floats the libertarians’ boat; but that allows a genuine problem to fester. Politeness and the wish not to sound like alt-right fanatics silences the mainstream and undercuts common sense. Balancing the individual’s rights to live as they please and the values of the society in which their children are growing up isn’t easy. But that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be discussed.

"It is a general popular error to imagine the loudest complainers for the public to be the most anxious for its welfare.”

Edmund Burke

Follow me on:

Facebook:

Twitter:

BUY my new crime thriller BY the LIGHT of a LIE at: www.marjorieorr.com