All Grooming Gangs

Maajid Nawaz (a man I’m strangely familiar with even though I couldn’t tell you what he does for a living) has admonished his Muslim ‘sisters’ and pleaded with them in a ‘heartfelt’ campaign to remove their Muslim dress, and as an added bonus, dredged up the old Asian grooming gangs ‘scandal’ a coupla days later, reiterating how we as British Pakistanis should be discussing it not brushing it under the carpet. I don’t think we need reminding ever because the narrative around Asian grooming gangs is ongoing, it is the first thing bigots of all classes belch at us when we defend our right to exist free from harm.

I also find it dangerously problematic this man of Pakistani descent is contributing to a narrative which excuses the violence perpetrated by white men against Muslim women for their dress; Muslim women have been murdered, beaten so viciously they have lost their unborn children, spat at, sworn at, assaulted, all because of what they are wearing. Rather than support his Muslim sisters in their choices and seek to protect them by naming the problem –  violent white men with empire sized entitlement issues – he enables it, victimising them further. He wants white men to attack Muslim women in the street. He’s given them carte blanche when he, self-appointed mehram, is PLEADING with us to be good little Muslim girls and strip for the white people. If we dare to disobey this very public appeal then we’re, honestly, just asking for it, white supremacists are looking for any excuse. Maajid repeatedly underlines that Muslim women are attacked in the street because of Muslim men who flee terror situations in female attire. He doesn’t once mention the racist judgments white people make of anyone who is not lily white, of the sort of violence and arrogant misogyny white men subject Muslim looking women to.

I was wearing a dress cut to my knees with bare legs and my hair out when I was racially abused on a packed bus at 3am in a multicultural part of London. It does not matter how many hoops you jump, my beloved diaspora siblings, a dog born in a stable is still a dog to these mad Englishmen. Take your veil off, uncover your face, you arse even, men will still be men, racist cunts will still be racist cunts. I challenged a white male on Twitter recently, when he said he did not want Europe overrun by Asian grooming gangs yet didn’t think twice before he told me:

That’s why I find this stab at the ol’ grooming gangs all the more grotesque. This insistence that Asian grooming gangs are somehow the biggest threat to society is deliberate. This regurgitation of information to the exclusion of all other facts is propaganda. What makes the victims of Asian grooming gangs more deserving of recognition and justice than the victims of Britain’s national treasures, parliamentarians, social services, the police, the football association, the church? I know for a fact no one cared about these young victims of sadistic brown men. It went on from 1997 to 2013 and the excuse given by the all-powerful authorities is they didn’t want to offend anybody. How awfully British in its delivery and the fact that it is complete and utter bullshit. When I was a domestic and sexual violence worker for women of all colour, religions etc. I would often inquire with the officers in charge of my cases why there was such a gap in provision for women of colour and they used the exact same excuse, that the perps would insist it was a part of their culture and the authorities didn’t want to offend. From my perspective, it was just lazy racism, when you are not motivated to care about people you do not consider human you’ll make up a thousand excuses for your negligence and no one will think to question it because it is in line with their lazy racism.

Fact: no one, not the cops, or the governing authorities, or even the average white man, gives a flying shit about white working class girls. You think of them as chavs and sluts and mock them for being gym slip mums in love with Albanian refugees. I’ve seen it, heard it, I’ve worked with these young victims. Nobody cared until it appeared the rug had FINALLY been pulled out from the elite paedosadist networks and we’d finally get justice for the many thousands of historic victims.

Every time well-meaning bros like Maajid and Adil Ray contribute to this metanarrative of predatory men of colour seeking out white women to spoil, they are confirming entrenched notions of sexual violence as a basic trait found in most if not all darkie savages to the detriment of all victims of white men.

Whenever I try to point this out I am targeted by white supremacists who just keep repeating the same old shit; “why don’t Muslims condemn it?” They condemned it in 2013 and again in 2014, read all about it here.

“Why are you denying there is a problem in the British Pakistani community?” If you’d ever actually listened to me you’d know I believe all men are capable of sexual violence in a patriarchal society that actively encourages harassment and subjugation of women, both east and west. In my opinion I wish they’d all drop dead but some of y’all find this contentious too.

“You don’t want to discuss it, just pretend it never happened.” Maajid, again with his impassioned pleas, has said we must talk about the grooming scandal and yet twice, I’ve tweeted at him to let him know he has an open invitation to discuss it with me, a British Pakistani, a cultural Muslim as opposed to firm believer, a survivor of male perpetrated violence from both Pakistanis and whites, a domestic and sexual violence worker with feminist leanings and first and foremost, a woman, and he hasn’t responded and most likely won’t. I do not fulfil their stereotypes, I provide a real account of life on rainy fascist island from the perspective of those women everyone seeks to silence. Or maybe he cannot speak to me because he is NOT my mehram and can only communicate via a third party. I find it cheeky af he uses his position as a ‘brother’ to convey certain patriarchal dynamics whilst being most unbrotherly like when he asks them to take their clothes off. Whatever his angle, it wasn’t as innocent as it would seem with his emotive culturally familiar language, it just makes it even more despicable.

When they do this, recycle ‘scandals’ like these, I cannot help but wonder what they are trying to cover up. It is sensationalised and it’s difficult not to get swept up by it, rage is renewed, the facts are distorted some more until it feels like it only just happened yesterday. How many thousands of victims of white grooming gangs are currently suffering unimaginable cruelty because we’re all focused on a particular kind of rapist? When they do come forward they get accused of only doing it for the money or attention, no one ever believes them. This should be an obvious double standard, plain for everyone to see.

Don’t be a racist collaborator, Maajid, it never ends well, & fucking well answer my tweets.

Legitimate Concerns of the White Working Class

A few days ago, I went to a restaurant with a friend and after the meal we stopped off at a supermarket for some essentials. My date said he’d pop in quickly whilst I smoked my cigarette. Stood at the entrance I noticed a heap on the floor to my right, a young lad maybe no more than 18 with ginger hair and circles under his eyes – malnourished was the word that immediately popped to mind. I dug around in the bottom of my bag for loose change and found £1.70 in coins which I handed to him. It was a particularly blustery evening and his sleeping bag seemed inadequate, the air felt cold and sharp with the coming rain. It wasn’t right that he would have to endure a night like this. I asked him if he had anywhere warm to go and he said he just needed another fiver before he could make that happen.

Now I know some homeless shelters are free. I get that. I understand sometimes it’s not safe for people to stay at these shelters because they are vulnerable and the needs of all service users must be considered. He may have been talking about a cheap hotel, it really didn’t make a difference to me, I pulled out a fiver and handed it over. I said, “I really don’t care where you spend it, honestly, just that you need it and I can give it” and he seemed panicked as though he desperately needed me to believe him when he said it was going towards shelter. I suddenly felt sheepish, in trying to reassure him I’d actually made him paranoid, no doubt because this a conversation he has several times a day, and has had to defend himself against these cruel judgments.

To make things less awkward I decided to go into the store and track my friend down. We met in the queue for the till, there being one customer before us and so I proceeded to tell him about what had just happened. I wasn’t talking loud enough for anyone else to hear, I thought, yet the cashier, an older woman perhaps in her 60s, with a tattoo on her neck that resembled a port wine stain in the shape of a badly drawn daisy, suddenly barked at me “how much did you give him?” My response was equally abrupt, “nothing” I said, confused as to why this woman was inserting herself into my private conversation given that she was still serving the customer in front of us and we most definitely did not invite the interruption. Nonetheless she proceeded to tell me what a mug I was for giving this kid some pocket change, rolling off a bunch of other times customers had given him money including a chap who’d won £120 on a scratch card and she said he’d only go and spend it on drugs.

“GOOD!” I exclaimed, much to her annoyance. “Do you know how cold it is out there? If I can help someone find something that will make the cold night air a bit more bearable, even if it is just drugs, then I’ve done my part. In an ideal world, that kid wouldn’t be on the streets, we’d look after him.”

She didn’t seem pleased at this and started rambling about how he gets into a jeep with some lads and makes at least £50-60 a day and people like me were just encouraging this deception and suddenly the older white man in front of me in the queue pipes up about Brexit and how “it’s a good job we’ve finally left the union” not looking up from his shopping once, brave white knight that he was. My friend and I looked at each other like, what the fuck is going on, we’ve somehow got ourselves embroiled in an argument with Bigots for a Bastard Britain. I knew what Bashful Brave White Man meant, Brexit meant Pakis Out and soon enough there would be no Pakis around to give poor white kids money on the streets, or that once the Pakis were gone, the poor white kids on the street would have jobs and wouldn’t need to beg or something racist, at least, I know this much from his nonsensical interjection and entitlement to my time and efforts. We didn’t validate his pointless contribution with a response, he paid for his groceries and fucked off.

Ratty Old White Lady, seemingly hesitant to accept she had no right to tell me what to do with my money, continued to whinge about nothing until I stopped her and said “there are billionaires in the world hoarding money, the kind of wealth you clearly have no clue about or else you wouldn’t spend your days begrudging a teenager pennies, comparatively speaking, but you won’t challenge them, because you’re twisted and you don’t feel like you’re living unless you’re suffering. They’re laughing at you, and so they should, you haven’t got the first clue” and with this we paid for our things and left the store.

My friend and I seethed all the way home, analysing every little thing that was said before I launched into a diatribe on the state of the white British working class. As a born and bred Britisher, there are, unfortunately, members of my family I could describe in the same way, those who’ve brought into the protestant work ethic and live to work, but suffering is crucial for it to be considered worthy. You can’t do something you enjoy or anything that requires little effort on your part, that’s cheating. My friend is white British middle class and said that he could never say what I had just said because it would sound completely different, my point being, “the white working class is keen to point out how hard they work for the right to call themselves decent hard working folk but I cannot think of any other demographic so lazy and immature in its thinking.”

As a daughter of immigrants, my grandfather was a foreman for British Steel, my father a car mechanic (his work unit in the grounds of a council estate) I am completely wedded to this statement and couldn’t be more justified. I am justified in its application because I have come to detest the double standards and bullshit emanating from the general direction of the supposedly native and legitimately concerned white working class the establishment overlords wheel out to excuse their racist and inhumane policies against other working class people on rainy fascist island. I wish I’d said to badly drawn port wine daisy tattoo lady she was the mug for working at Asda for her £50-60 a day when young homeless lad knew to appeal to those who have more. I wish I’d called Brexit Bigot out when I’d had the chance and told him to jog on.

Stop making excuses for horrible people, I reckon. Stop legitimising their hateful creed, there is nothing virtuous about doing a job that pays you peanuts whilst lining the fat cat’s pockets with your blood sweat and tears. You don’t get a medal for keeping in line, that’s a myth. Stop being such an insufferable serf. Wake the fuck up and acknowledge this life you have as being more precious than the value some narcissist with a trust fund places on it.

Stop being so damn white and undeservedly proud of monstrous attitudes.

Interview on the Headscarf ‘Ban’

Penny Sized Thoughts

As a short Asian woman (5ft 1in) belonging to one of the largest demographics on this here planet of ours, representation matters. We’re an easy target, we’re smaller so we can’t get away quick enough, or we’re more visible because we are child sized in an adult world, frequently fetishised by orientalists and predators who think we’re easy pickings. Everyone has a go, and I mean EVERYONE, because we’re traditionally submissive and scared of most people. The penalties for deviating evident on this very blog, as a notoriously small yet unusually loud and ‘aggressive’ south Asian woman I’m a shock to most people’s systems because I refuse to play to type, not that it matters, people only see what they want. We never have legitimate concerns, we’re merely acting out, throwing a tantrum.

Perhaps this logic can be applied to some people, just not all. The equally diminutive Laurie Penny has since deleted the offending tweet but I gather it went something like this:

Here’s the thing Laurie, there isn’t a niche market for little Asian lady clothes, we live in a society that almost exclusively caters to white people, with their big bones and flat bodies. We are masters of the wunderweb or else we have our clothes professionally altered, it’s always been more expensive to be a little Asian lady on Rainy Fascist Island, unless you manage to find a child sized garment with enough room for woman sized boobs and bums.

We’re the same size more or less, Laurie and I, in height that is. Our bodies are completely different, as you would expect. I suspect Laurie, whilst similar in stature, has a fetishisation for bodies she would deem exotic, the curvier silhouette of a woman of colour for example. It is perhaps why, when she overheard me bemoaning the severe lack of smoochable comrades at a party, she offered her own mouth. What was I going to do, put on the spot like that? I couldn’t exactly reject her (I’m much better at saying no these days, beware)  so I obliged. It was nice enough but I couldn’t shake off the feeling it was a bit awkward and entitled and she walked away straight after, if it wasn’t already weird enough.

Thinking on it now, with my more rounded view of Laurie and the world she inhabits, she probably did it just so she could say she’d kissed an Asian girl and she liked it. It’s not the first time she’s gotten into trouble for saying inappropriate things about woc, specifically small Asian women.

Or you could just be a white woman with an orientalist fetish, and enjoy the relative privileges being white gives you. You can dip into short people’s oppressions when it suits, and also the ways in which you are perceived, for instance, I think you play on the infantilisation people impose on you. We’re expected to forgive the awful things you say because you haven’t eaten, when people like myself are expected to never make a mistake even when we’re on opiates for ill health.

Frankly, I’m sick of this petulant brat. She is beyond reproach, schmoozing Nazis, helping to rebrand white supremacy for the 21st century and her sycophantic audience laps it up, time and time again. Laurie has many opinions on womanhood and how we use performative femininity to attract men, completely ignorant of the various cultural reasons non white women have for keeping their hair long. She thinks of herself as enlightened, almost Godlike (a white supremacist trait) in her analysis of other women.

I don’t care what she meant, or whether she thinks her words are being taken out of context, every interaction Laurie has with the wider world speaks volumes about the kind of person she is; irresponsible, self absorbed, entitled and ultimately, a predictable bore.

 

Calling Time on Twitter

I have deactivated my Twitter account. There are many reasons but it was in fact a straw that broke this camel’s back and I don’t particularly want to discuss it. By and large, I have achieved my objectives, we all seem to be on roughly the same page now; the nazis are here and we won’t let them pass. Liberals have left no doubt in our minds whose side they’re actually on. You all know what to do (punch nazis, in case you forgot).

You can catch me on here, or if you have my email address, feel free to drop me a message there. If you’d like to work together, please ask. It’s been life affirming and destroying, I want to ponder on this awhile.

Thanks to everyone for their unwavering support. A big fuck you to all the white people who made these past few years a gaslighting hell, the truth always outs and your words and actions will speak for you when future generations look back. An almost equally humongous fuck you to all the people of colour who were quick to believe the bullshit yet never quite managed to pull their finger out for me. I’ve had to play this duplicitous game but please, do not think me stupid or unaware.

For once, it is actually going to be all about me. I want to learn a skill I can put into use in my local community. Time to learn how to be around people again, like, physically in front of me. I plan to give my time to those who need it. Take care of yourselves.

Asian Woman Doesn’t Speak For Me

In 2010 I finally found the courage to turn my back on a toxic relationship I had suffered for 5 years. As an historic victim of child abuse with toxic internalised object relations, I had very little experience of healthy interaction within an intimate setting (my father was extremely abusive to my mother) I was hardwired to experience negative emotions in a positive light. My brain translated fear/anxiety into excitement. The very early interactions you have in a romantic relationship, unspoken even, determine whether you give someone a chance and if I’d been just like any other young woman in her 20s with a secure attachment to her early caregivers I would have given this man a wide berth. Unfortunately, I was not, and I was already in too deep the first time he revealed his true nature.

When people suggest victims of abuse could leave if it really was that bad, they are in fact suggesting they do not believe the victim. I tried, many times, to break it off, run as far as I could but abusers know you have nowhere to go, it is in fact one of the things that attracts them to you in the first place, not so much the neon sign on your forehead asking for trouble but the vulnerability we carry all around us, the sadness that seeps through and the need we have to fill all the empty spaces with love, whatever the cost. Estranged from my family, whom I’d fled to escape abuse, I found myself leaping out of the frying pan into the fryer, barely a year into the relationship, when he ‘put his foot down’ and decided he would no longer pander to me, because I had asked him to rinse the bath out after he was done.

Abusers know you have no recourse so they do what they like. They use your body, place their own thoughts and feelings in your brain, pushing yours into the furthest recesses where you can’t find them so easily, gaslighting you until you don’t know who you are anymore. You forget who you are, in a bid to keep them happy, because you know they’re capable of love and empathy, that’s how they draw you in, and you can’t help but wish it will be like that again someday. In the course of an abusive relationship a part of you dies forever. For what it’s worth I am glad that part of me is dead and buried, I was afforded the opportunity to be born again, in a sense. I am at peace with the fact my 20s were destroyed by this leech of a man who did not deserve me. One of the lasting memories I have, if only because of how ironic, is of various male friends of my exes crowing in disbelief he’d managed to score a girl like me. Of course, it was all done in the name of ‘banter’ and whilst I am not personally an advocate for jokes that make no one laugh but insult often vulnerable people, it did cheer me up and now I know they were telling the truth, which is probably why he used to get so upset back then and scream at them he had me cos he was worth it.

You might be wondering why I am bringing this reprobate up now, 7 years after I washed my hands of him. When feminists talk about domestic abuse in the context of gendered relationships, a binary set up, usually with one person in a traditionally male role and their partner female, this dynamic also being prevalent in homosexual relationships, we are keen to illustrate the difference in how this abuse is perpetrated because it matters. It matters in a society where opponents of feminism will accuse women of holding equal structural power and control and being just as likely to commit domestic abuse and get away with it. This is simply not true, gendered violence against women is encouraged in a patriarchal system. The penalties for gendered violence are poor, conviction rates abysmal and support is hard to come by. The rate for repeat offence is the highest in domestic abuse, compared to all other crimes. 76% of victims/survivors will endure further violence for daring to leave. There are many ways men continue to control women they believe to be their property, sometimes many years after the relationship broke down, directly but also indirectly, affecting your future relationships and career even.

This is where my ex Shihab Salim Joi creeps in. Despite his unacceptable behaviour during and shortly after our split, using gendered slurs against me, saying I was a slut for e.g. and good for nothing else he had the audacity to ask me for information regarding a book he was thinking of writing. He wanted to write about domestic abuse refuges and what could go wrong, and wanted to pick my brain for insider information. Obviously I said no. He promised me exposure, as though it was the magic word that would erase memories of him domestically abusing me (most of it was mental/financial/sexual but he thumped me a couple of times). I put *my* foot down and told him to get stuffed.

A few years later, I was googling myself (at least I’m honest) when I saw a link to Asian Woman Magazine which confused me, I had written stuff for Asiana but that was when I was still dating the editor, Shihab Salim, his work for Asian Woman was definitely post-split, after he’d been made redundant as a victim of the credit crunch. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I read what it said. Not only had someone used my name and job description from Asiana, I was the ‘agony aunt’ for a bit, they had given out the kind of advice an abuser would deem suitable. As a staunch feminist who hates most men I am hardly going to advise you pander to any manz fragile ego. If these shoddy little men can’t get a grip on their own toxic masculinity I would advise you kick their asses to the kerb and let them cry wank into the night, you are worth more than some man child who missed out on key developmental stages and really just wants you to be his mum. THIS is why I have written this post. When you google my name, or Shihab’s I want this link to show up too.

I contacted Issuu who said they cannot amend or delete any content without the publisher’s consent but the publisher/editor is as elusive as Wally, in that I can’t find her, even though her name is all over the internet. I can’t/won’t submit a DMCA request because copyright infringement would mean they used words I’d written without my consent and I want it noted I most definitely did not write the frankly, badly written frottage of an excuse for journalism published by J Wimal, clearly without editing, otherwise she would have known I wasn’t at all involved in Shihab’s shameless display of male entitlement and indirect harassment.

It has been 7 years and I am still having to deal with this man turd and his attempts to control my opportunities. This is why women don’t leave. We’re afraid they’ll carry out threats to destroy us, our reputations (as it is in my case), or even our lives, the 52 women murdered by their intimate partners every year a testament to this, for daring to think of themselves for a change, for saying enough is enough.

UPDATE: Issuu have quarantined the offending article as the publisher appears to have deleted their details from the Issuu database. Thank you to Jonas at Issuu for taking my concerns on board.

ANOTHER UPDATE: I will never cease to be amazed at the lies people tell, even when you have evidence to the contrary. What is going on in that tiny little brain of yours Shihab? Is it perhaps a barely veiled threat to out me, giving the name on my passport without my permission (kinda your MO), as though you can scare me into a corner in defense of my anonymity? You were one of the people who convinced me to change my name! You said you wouldn’t employ anyone who sounded like they might wear a hijab and suggested I include a photo of myself with my CV.

That’s really odd, because if you really are telling the truth here that’d mean you also used my image without my permission.

It behooves you to tell the truth as it happened, Shihab, lies always have a way of unraveling themselves.

Poor Shihab, leaving a trail of angry ex girlfriends in his wake, when he is just a kind and decent sort. I’m not the first to say he’s an abuser, and I won’t be the last. I have plenty more evidence should anyone require it. You won’t take me to court because you’ll lose. Just saying.

Remember the Holocaust, punch Nazis

Today marks the 17th Holocaust Memorial Commemoration Day. It reminds us of the date the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz was liberated by the soviet union in 1945. We also remember the victims of subsequent genocides; Bosnia, Rwanda, Darfur. It comes as a timely reminder of just how close we are yet again to experiencing a similar fate, if certain forces are allowed to continue spreading hateful propaganda.

With so many genocides behind us, you’d think we’d know by now how to prevent one. It seems easy enough to me, failed states look for scapegoats; whether Jews, Muslims, trans, disabled or LGBT, already marginalised groups are easy targets, because they have no way of defending themselves against a system that begrudgingly allows them to exist.

It seems obvious to anyone who is willing to sign their name to the truth; neo Nazism has risen off the back of a white supremacist agenda, promulgated by people/organisations we thought we could trust (like the BBC). The instinct to protect humanity is chipped away at by the state and media, gradually, drip feeding the message that all of society’s ills can be attributed to this group, unlike us, that has failed to do x. In times of economic crisis, failed states and their leaders crank up the propaganda machine to distract us from their deficiency, so we are not baying for their blood and demanding our dues but killing each other, conveniently letting our toffee nosed overlords off the hook.

How can we in good conscience honour the victims of genocides past when we seem to be teetering on the brink of another, nefariously intimated by the same individuals espousing liberal platitudes such as ‘Never Again’?

‘Beware Hate Speech, says Auschwitz Holocaust survivor’ is a featured story on the BBC website. There are also segments on Newsround such as ‘Holocaust Memorial; what can we learn?’ Yet it wasn’t so long ago the internet was aghast at the BBC for their promotion of real live fascists like Farage who was given more airtime in the run up to the general election than all the other leaders combined. You might have caught the swastika tattooed Nazi on the news who went by unchallenged by BBC presenters when he suggested the swastika was not in fact racist. The BBC likes to claim its non partisan stance reflects its programming but in refusing to label Nazis they have failed in this respect. By downplaying the Nazi, they have chosen the Nazi.

The execrable minimisation of genocidal white supremacy by your faves has enabled a 21st century descent into fascism, yet still there are those who claim to uphold liberal values whilst ushering in this kinder, gentler attitude towards Nazis. Nazis just need to be shown some humanity, allegedly, to stop behaving like Nazis. You absolutely must not punch a nazi or you’re as bad as those who slaughtered 11 million people in the name of white pride. If you’re the sort of person who has even a shred of empathy/sympathy for Nazis, you might be a nazi too, or at the very least a white supremacist. When I think of Nazis, I don’t stop at a punch, Nazis are for the wall. Y’see I understand Nazis don’t even think of me as human, just medical waste. I knew as a child Nazis would have come for me, it made learning about the holocaust shockingly real and painful.

I guess this could go some way to explain the dissonance of those who mark memorial days yet platform Nazis in their newspapers and magazines. Fascism won’t ever directly impact on Nazi collaborators, they’re white by and large, middle class too if they’re journalists and academics. A bunch of these folks were fine othering Muslim people or trans people and denying it would lead to fascism but now that it is here, they’re down for punching Nazis. Dissonance or naivete, I can never tell but it might have helped stall things had they believed us.

If we read enough we know historically Nazis respond only to violence, rather it is the only thing that can stop them dead in their tracks. Nazis are cowards, they are opportunists, they thrive only because liberals legitimise their extremism, they claim to be moderates yet turn away refugees and make distinctions between good and bad immigrants, Europeans and non Europeans, Muslims and Jews. Nazis do love to divide rule and conquer so we must respond with solidarity, whether it personally impacts on us or not. When they other even one of us, we must fight back together as a whole. Othering is a white supremacist tool used to justify dehumanisation then genocide, it has no place in a civilised society. It is bullying to speak of other identities whilst excluding them from the discussion, protesting this fact does not make the protester a bully but a revolutionary.

The world is in need of a therapist, to show us all the incongruence of our words against our actions, and the good grace to admit our deepest faults, in the belief we can all be forgiven if we uphold the truth.

In our post truth, fake news world, I despair.