Music

I've loved this song for about 18 years now.



And watching this video, I'm feeling very, very ambivalent about it. Very much indeed. Not the song itself mind you, which is anti-authoritarian and quite nicely attacks what is essentially a thug culture amongst far too many police.

But the scene and the imagery...

So often, I've defended skinhead culture as not necessarily being racist. I've known black skinheads and Jewish skinheads and Hispanic skinheads and from what I've been told, there are gay skinheads. Probably quite a few are bound to be out there if statistics are to be believed. I bet on the law of averages.

But then I see the Cross of St. George, the England jersey...and I just get nervous.

It's the nationalism that terrifies me. I see the aggressive stance against the immigrant, the visitor, the passerby, the newcomer and I suddenly cringe for the future.

It just feels like a terrible blindness, a future blinkered by a past that never was.

Albert Camus famously said "I love my country too much to be a nationalist" and accepting my atheism, I will unironically, probably hypocritically say "Bless him.". His is a gorgeous and uncompromising statement of patriotism. It demands that your country live up to your expectations. More significantly, it demands that you insist upon those expectation and never accept a "Sooner or later" or a "When it's convenient" as acceptable.

So love your country. Please do. I certainly, most passionately do. And scream at it. Oh so loud and piercingly. Scream at it because you love it and you always know that it can do so much better.