Every book we read, every movie we watch, every play we experience has a story line around a central character, around a hero. As the story unfolds, we learn to know the character, we empathise with them, we hold our breath whenever they go through a rough time and we delightfully celebrate the successes they have in their endeavours.
On the other side, there’s always a villain, the character who disturbs the waters in search of, or something that brings more power, dominance, control. The villain believes that the purpose, as self-centric as it is, excuses the means, and therefore does everything in their power to win.
Just as stories have their heroes and villains, so does the real world.
It’s been just over a week since the Brexit has taken place. The nightmare unfolding has its villains too, they are always in the other camp, on the other side, it’s them. It’s the elderly generation who voted Leave, it’s the immigrants, it’s the EU and the UK money it absorbs… I don’t think there are heroes in this story, there aren’t because there’s noone actually standing up for good (not that I believe good, pure good, exists in this equation), and certainly there’s noone winning. We’re all loosing in one way or another, no matter how much we cite leaders of either the Remain or the Leave camp.
Perhaps, in the world we live in, not everything is black and white; it may as well be that there are shades of gray in between, that good and bad are relative, that the variables are too many and too intertwined for the average person to make sense of what’s going on. What’s certain is that lies were told, truths were manipulating and misleading, only fraction of facts were presented – all to suit one of the sides, depending who’s talking or blowing in the mike.
And yet, it is the average person who’s in the front-lines of everyday life in Britain. It is the average people, some tens of thousands of them, who marched for Europe in London yesterday (2nd July), it is their future that’s been changed overnight. And there are people, the others, who became us once the stories of the Leave leaders started disintegrating, making space for some tardy truths, those people whose blinkers were taken off a little too late, when the Brexit results hit them in the face full blast.
Britain is breaking at its core. There’s no longer a gap between generations, it’s a battle. And with 500% race hate crimes increase (The Guardian) in just over a week after Brexit, the international appeal of Britain is plummeting, overtaking even the great British pound. The winning camp fell apart and chaos dominates the political scene.
I am saddened and disappointed – by the Brexit results; by the things that were said to me by a camp Leave inhabitant; by the big picture Britain paints today, by politicians who burdened and demanded the average person to make a crucial decision based on lies, manipulation and incomplete and misleading information; by the racist reactions people consider to be entitled to feel and display due to a 48% / 52% result.
