Apathy Sketchpad

Apparently, a BBC show that nobody watches (hence the interviews ending up in the news in advance of the broadcast) will include an interview in which Tony Blair admitted that religious faith was “profound about [him]“, but that he’d tried to underplay it because otherwise “people do think you’re a nutter”. Well, yes. Turns out, in a shocking revelation, that people like to think you have actual reasons for doing things beyond an irrational belief that an invisible wizard who lives in the sky would like you to do them. When those things are limited to where you spend your Sunday mornings, nobody much cares, but when they’re decisions like whether or not to start a war, people tend to think motives are important.

Essentially, what we have here is a man who knew his beliefs would be unpopular, so he acted normal until he got out of power and now he’s converting to Catholicism, which is by any reasonable definition joining a cult. He knew that people would object to having someone running the country from a religious standpoint so he pretended not to have one. The “we don’t do God” quote has been swimming around the Internet a lot again this week. Essentially he lied about something that he knew people would consider important in order to get himself elected to a position of great power. Surely we have a system to punish people who do that?

Why is it so hard for politicians to think clearly about religion? Blair knew that people wanted secular politics or else he wouldn’t have covered up his faith in the way that he did, and yet he still insisted on advocating faith schools, without doing anything about the mandatory Christian worship in all other schools, the Establishment of the church, or the fact that the Prime Minister was a closet nutter. All the while, public opinion, and that of his own education secretary, was firmly against him. He knew that people disliked the influence of religion on politics, and yet as far as I can see he did everything in his power to increase it.

Make no wonder he thought people might call him a nutter — he is a fucking nutter. (If you doubt that, check out the scary grin.)