A Ship Called Dignity

The rise of Donald Trump is a symptom of societal decay across the western world, not a cause. The old world order was a dystopian confraternity dominated by a precisely delineated Caucasian patriarchal system, entrenched in political structures, business and education systems purposefully created and maintained to actively exclude anyone other than the stereotypically archetypical old boys of yore . Pretty much every republican senator is a living caricature, looking like the staunch derivative by-product of a Colonel Sanders emoticon photo-shopped into a Duck Dynasty advertorial with the beauty filter conspicuous by its absence, all the while enunciating their hate speech tirades like a slightly more crass, less literate and infinitely angrier impressionist of Mater from Disney's cars. The meteoric rise to power of Barack Obama proved too much for many on the right to bear. Frail egos crumbled, with the insulation against being exposed to the realities of a

I vividly recall the moment things changed for me. It was early 2016, and I was sitting in a conference hall full of stuffy corporate executives and anally retentive business owners listening to Lewis Pugh explain what it takes to swim across the North Pole. I think he is mad. He had three major “take homes” for us, namely that climate change is real thing, be brave and ask for help as people want to help you, and that you should follow your dreams. Now I do not need to be convinced by his histrionics to the veracity of the existence of climate change. Denialists are just dumb. With over seven and a half billion people polluting the atmosphere, throwing away plastic into landfills and not recycling, investing in firms that do not subscribe to best environmental practices, poisoning vital water sources, over fishing and generally not caring about the planet, something has to give. It’s just common sense. We do however differ significantly on the fallout t

I think I am a self-loathing middle aged white male. I was educated a very conservative dual medium primary school in the early to mid 1980s, where the virtues of the apartheid National Party government were extolled at every opportunity, the states brainwashing project in full swing trying desperately to cling on to power as the walls closed in. In 1989 there was a momentous shift in sentiment and political will as the collapse of communism in Central and Eastern Europe meant that the massive international inflows of money towards defending the African continent against the Red Army dried up, and the Apartheid state could no longer be sustained as sanctions quickly took their toll. I was privileged enough to go to a very liberal English speaking co-ed high school, during a time when the entire world was emerging from a dark age of oppression and cold war. We began to openly discuss the virtues and iniquities of socialism, communism, capitalism, colonialism, religion, r