Sunday 14 August 2011

Zoe Williams and her strange notion of functional

Grauniadista Zoe Williams makes the same connection as I do vis à vis 'The Big Society', but draws the opposite conclusion in her piece on citizens stepping into the breach. JuliaM at Orphans runs through it all, so I will concentrate only on two parts:
"The point here is that everyone from "feral rat" lady to the Enfield Defence League is on the same spectrum: they vary in the impression they give, from seeking order to seeking chaos, but they all doubt the ability of the state to defend their safety – and they are all, therefore, tacitly outside the control of the state."
You get that? "Tacitly outside the control of the state". Here's her closing flourish with my italics:
"Big society might look like people on the streets with brooms or doner knives; but that's not what functional society looks like."
So, what can we assume to be Zoe's vision of a functional society? Clearly not one where members of that society do anything for that society, be it defending their property from criminals or sweeping up broken glass, unless they have a uniform and a badge, work for the state and have been instructed to do it. Functional society for Zoe is when the state controls everything, and the citizens are utterly passive, only doing what they are told, and nothing else.

What the fuck is the matter with the woman. Rush her to hospital, somebody, and give her a scan. Somebody's looted her fucking brain.

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