When Turkeys Vote

I got back from a last-blowout-before-term-starts holiday in Turkey yesterday – ten days of blissful sunshine, the thick air of a humid Mediterranean climate and, annoyingly, a complete ban on Wikipedia.

I discovered this while trying to look up the details the sex lives of Roman Emperors*, only to be faced with the Page Not Found of information tyranny.  A little digging allowed me to discover that President Erdogan, Turkey’s contribution to world leaders who really shouldn’t be, had banned Wikipedia some years ago during his crackdown on journalists and critics, because they’d been 'spreading fake news'. The equivalent of the kid who’s shit at football kicking the ball onto a motorway and then claiming they would have scored four if there was still a ball.

Naturally this led me to question whether I should really be holidaying in a country which has treated government critics so badly and, more importantly, which doesn’t let you find out whether Caligula had really been shagging his sisters. But, as I was already there, I didn’t feel I had too much of a choice, and, besides, Turkey is still a democracy and Erdogan was democratically elected. He can still be democratically defeated.

It might seem to me to be fucking insane that people will vote to have their rights eroded, but God hasn’t died and appointed me his successor, so while I may disapprove, I’m not actually in a position to smite and suchlike.**

However, too many times in recent months I’ve been forced into exclaiming What-the-fuck-is-this-insanity while pondering such topics as why can’t I search up if Nero was giving ponies handjobs, whether there will be food post-Brexit, and what exactly is VAR for other than pissing me off when I watch Man City play.

Scratch that – too many times in recent years, not months,  I’ve been forced to exclaim this, And by exclaim, I mean utter with tones of disdain and disbelief akin to those Judas must have uttered on entering the afterlife and discovering he’d been the victim of some weird father-son powerplay.

In recent memory events have occurred which have both defied all logic, but also forced me to question my long-standing belief that humanity, while prone to stupidity, is fundamentally decent.  I’m sticking with part one of that argument, but part two has been tested to its limits.

There was the proto-period of Are You Having a Fucking Laugh, when the pig-head-fucker was voted into power for a second term, despite applying primary-school maths to the complex global economic situation of the Credit Crunch. Then we had the This Doesn’t Surprise Me All That Much Anymore vote to leave the EU, for such nebulous reasons as ‘Taking back our laws’ and ‘ To stop Turkey’, along with classics along the lines of ‘You see that there Brussels’ and ‘Maastricht was essentially a Trojan Horse which has resulted in a lack of reciprocity in Pan-European infrastructural support programmes’. 

I’m making some of this up, but that was pretty much the gist of every conversation I had with the Brexo-isolationists. Apart from the last one, obvs. There are polysyllabic words.

The Are You Fucking Kidding Me factor clearly took a major step into the realms of What The Fuck is Wrong with You People when The Tango King of Combover was made The Man with the Nuclear Codes.  

I can understand, if not accept, when politicians I despise are elected. I can even understand that sometimes the electorate does something unhinged or radical as a protest at the inequality and ineptitude of the status quo. But this decision seemed to be the political equivalent of burning your house down because you’ve got a few ants in the kitchen.  Yeah, the ants are gone, but so has the kitchen.

And now the house is just a pile of smouldering embers. Cheers, dickheads.

As does the US of A, so must England follow. Thus we’ve gone and got ourselves a PG Wodehouse comedy villain of our own at the head of the government.  Except it’s not funny.  File under Dystopic Catastrophe, not Light Edwardian Comedy.  Less Wooster, more What The Fuck is This This Shit?

We stand on a precipice, while this cabal of shitsticks, masquerading as a legitimate UK government, try to override democracy, proroguing parliament to avoid debate, dissembling with every slithering syllable uttered and even threatening to not recognise changes in the law***.  

Is this the ‘sovereignty’ we were supposed to be getting back? Is this the Better Off Out? No, this is the kind of behaviour that Disney villains engage in before the Forest Animals all band together and stop the evil princes from selling the country for a bag of gold by utilising a couple of magic beans and a whole lot of gumption.

Unfortunately, our Forest Friends are being thwarted by the stupid donkey Swinson who refuses to help because she would do anything to stop the evil princes, but she’s secretly a Meatfloaf fan.  

Anyway, my guilt about holidaying in a country with an iffy political situation was assuaged as I watched the country I actually live in enter the We Do What We Want Peasants, Bow competition.  I’m not really in a position to judge other countries when my own homeland is emerging as a bit of political farce.

So I enjoyed the sun, and cheap beer, and food which Turkey claims is Turkish but Greece claims is Greek and accepted that I’d be returning to situation that I desperately hope is sorted, but fear is going to prove a victory for fuckwittery and wilful ignorance.

But remember, Quitters, you voted for this shit. When food runs out, were eating you first.

*Academic curiosity, not uber-vintage porn.

**There’s a joke about Turkey’s voting for Brexit to be shoehorned in here somewhere, but I fear it would be a pun for the sake of it, so, in preparation for the everyone-for themselves, bestial wilderness I forsee if this shitcanery actually  goes ahead, you can make it yourselves. 

*** Yes, Michael Gove, I’m looking at you, you opportunistic sock-puppet.