What in the Name of God?!

It’s hard to believe now, to look at me, but I was once a young man. I know it must come as a shock to people when they meet me, but, yes, I was once young.

I was the proverbial, `Angry Young Man’; I had long hair and a flagrant disregard for authority. My views were left-wing and there wasn’t anything anyone could possibly tell me, as I knew everything.

I moved through life creating havoc for those who cared about me, or those who tried to get close to me. I not only wanted to save the world but I wanted to be seen saving the world.

I marched on anti-Apartheid rallies, nuclear disarmament and the one that was the closest to my heart, the miners' strike.

I would collect food for the striking miners and organise fund-raising events. The loyalty and camaraderie between the miners used to fill me with awe.

I know that it split communities and families; it eventually went on to make towns like Barnsley ghost towns. People lost their lives, but we don’t now remember them - they didn’t receive ten million pound funerals.

The group of people that I hung around with had, of course, the same ideologies as me. There were always older men in the group, which, at the time, didn’t seem strange to me.

We were in our late teens, early twenties; these men were in their forties. They would make fine speeches in the pub and fire all us young guns up. These men seemed to me to be so clever with the things they said and the way that they said them.

We would go on rallies, and they would turn up, but we would always lose them in the melee and when we reconvened later in the pub, they would regale us with anecdotes of their clashes with the police and how it took four policemen to hold them down and arrest them.

It took me only a short while before I noticed something… it was all bullshit!

Why didn’t these men have a job? Why were we paying for their nights out? I started to read more, and soon found out that all the fine speeches and words that they spoke were not theirs but belonged to others much more eloquent and intelligent than these morons.

They had never been in trouble with the police because they were off as soon as there was any sign of trouble.

They were just puppeteers, and we were their puppets!

As long as we have young people, we shall have protests, and long may this last. The young have a right to tell us old giffers what a shambles we are making of the world that we have to pass on to them.

But even though I would get into fights and scrapes because of my passionate beliefs, I never once considered trying to decapitate an innocent man in broad daylight.

Young people now are open to the same type of puppeteers that I encountered. But these puppeteers have the internet and access to their victims twenty-four hours a day. The lonely and the disenfranchised youths are the most venerable.

The puppeteers will give them a common bond, and use carefully-chosen words to fire up the victim.

Religion and gods is the new anti-Apartheid and nuclear disarmament, and are now the new rallying cry of the disenfranchised, one people under one banner for the good of… It’s still the same old bullshit!

As I have said before, you don’t ever see a middle aged beardy-weirdy guy with a suicide bomb strapped to him. Or the right-wing Christian preachers, who preach hate and fear, being on the front lines of shootings and burnings, they get the angry young men to do it for them.

The atrocity that has just happened in London is a prime example of young men who don’t really understand the politics or the religion.

99% of people who believe in a God believe their God to be a benign loving being. To them God is a manifestation of true love and understanding.

Even though I don’t believe in any gods, I can understand how people can get some comfort from believing that loved ones have died and gone to a better life where they will be loved as much as they were loved here on earth.

But because Gods and religion evoke such emotive and passionately held beliefs, it’s easy for the puppet masters to use it for their own political purposes.

The beliefs these stupid, manipulated idiots hold are just the puppeteers' political aims.

And rather than doing something for the good of ’Their People’, they have done far more damage to the tolerance and harmony for different beliefs!

           

Because all who saw a young man with the blood of an innocent fresh on his hands will recoil with disgust, regardless of their belief system.

His people are not the millions of hard working, devoted and loving Muslims around the world. His people are political puppeteers and stupid manipulated individuals.

I now realise just how I was manipulated when I was young. So thank your God that I didn’t have access to such puppeteers!