"The Left are just the Right in Waiting"

I saw an article today which ties into one of the themes of my book and found myself wanting to explore it further, hoping that will enrich my novel in some way just by contemplating and dissecting it. The article referred to Mackenzie Scott, the ex-wife of Jeff Bezos, having made a whopping $4 billion in donations to several Covid-related groups lately. Inevitably, as with all good news stories on the sewer that is Twitter (not you guys reading this – you guys are lovely!) there’s always a ‘hot take’, there’s always a negative to be mined and extracted by trolls. Cue these kinds of comments from faceless ghouls:

“Yeah, but just think how much more she could give?”

or

“That’s like me giving a fiver. It’s a drop in the ocean.”

My initial internal reaction to the latter comment was “Yeah, but you haven’t given a fiver, have you? It’s just bravado.”

At first glance, it reeks of the “If you love refugees so much, why don’t you put one up in your spare bedroom?” school of thought. But, on second glance, I thought there might be more to that than just anonymous trolling in the hope of ‘bites’ from other Twitter who can’t help but bite at things like that.

I don’t know whether I should be worried about my later reaction. I’m trying to get into the head of a right-wing journalist – one of my main characteristics – maybe that’s why I’m thinking like one? But is that a right-wing response to that article? Is it not a left-wing response, albeit made by a right-wing troll, sarcastically?

The character in my novel, Ginley Sprott, uses that kind of logic in his battle against his left-wing rival, Sara Gauci, to try and pour cold water over her arguments, and diminish her legitimacy as a left-wing commentator. He will pick up on things like her six-figure salary, her nice house in an affluent suburb of London, her nice cars and expensive shoes and bags. Her retaliatory comments to such goading would be that by publicising the cause, she is doing more for the poor people of the UK than going all Mother Teresa and giving everything she has away.

Then, I thought about a ‘real-life’ example. One of my friends in a WhatsApp chat (probably the most vocal – on social media, at least – of my left-wing mates) took my initial reaction the aforementioned trolling, and that initial reaction is still his reaction now. I don’t know other than venting on Twitter what he actually does IRL that is in keeping with my left-wing principles. I don’t know if he gives to charity, pops some tins from his weekly shop into the foodbank trolley, volunteers in local community projects. I have no idea.

I know I don’t do any volunteering. I don’t donate any of my time to worthy causes. I know that I give a defined amount of money to charity every month and that’s all that I do, but is that the way I should be wording that? Should I not be saying that it’s great that I do that, rather than reaching for the ‘I could do more’ card. Ginley would say it was virtue-signalling for sure. Is there a sweet-spot on the spectrum between caring and consuming only for yourself and going full Mother Teresa, selling everything you own and giving it all away? Does it really matter? If the left and the right weren’t just looking for reasons to tear strips off each other, could there be a better way to live that was.

Without knowing what my friend from the WhatsApp group gives, in terms of time or money, it looks on the face of it like he has a bigger house than he needs (with the caveat he does have a child, his wife is expecting one, and they could be planning more), has a golf membership, a nice car and goes on good holidays. Could he have spent less on himself and more on others? Definitely, just the same as I could. Just the same as everybody could - even Mother Teresa bought a cheeky Chinese takeaway on the sly once, the hypocrite.

The question is; do people’s political beliefs and how they vote atone for what they actually do in practice? Or are political beliefs just a club that people belong to. Ginley’s mantra, and how he sleeps at night giving the downright lies that he writes and publishes, is that ‘the left are just the right-in-waiting.’ He thinks that everybody votes in their own self-interest; poor vote for liberals and the rich vote conservative. He believes that when a poor-person comes into money that their voting patterns change as they look to protect what they have. That the two camps aren’t people’s ideals and core values at all, but just where they happen to be at any given time.

I often wonder, as a thought experiment, what I would do if I won the lottery? I’m not materialistic and like the idea of charity, and I’ve always professed that I would give a lot of it away if I did. I wonder though, if I woke up and there were an unfathomable number of zeroes on the end of the number in my bank account, what I would actually do in practice? Would I operate exactly like Ginley reckons I would? Go wild spending it and think to hell with everyone else? I don’t play the lottery so I guess I’ll never know, and maybe there’s something in that? Maybe I don’t play because the idea of winning doesn’t appeal to me. Is that to do with my left-wing values? Or is that to do with fear of what I’d become?

As always, I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Harrison