Thread by @shaunjlawson

What's one of the first, abiding rules in life? Everything in moderation; nothing in excess.

It applies with diet. It applies with fitness. It applies with fun, leisure and work. It applies in politics (though certainly not with self-described 'moderates' who are anything but).

And the reason it applies in politics - well, good politics, at least - is because good politics, progress, consensus and consent are based on REASON. On evidence. On facts. On serious, sensible discussion and on the facts guiding decisions and policy.

What's gone so wildly wrong in the US and UK and elsewhere in recent times is the descent into emotions and populism.

Populism promises the Earth and delivers much worse than before; populism finds easy scapegoats, easy targets and isn't interested in detail or in facts.

Thankfully, in the UK at least, the laws do not operate according to emotions or populism. They operate according to a completely rational, objective, detached viewpoint.

While allowing faith-based viewpoints to co-exist within society as long as these do no harm to others.

What do I see when I look at Trump fanatics in the US? I see religious zealots. There's no point in reasoning with them because they don't do reason. They only do hysteria, lies and nonsense.

It's exactly the same with Covid deniers, climate deniers and anti-vaxxers.

You can't reason with them because their minds are not open to being reasoned with. They're closed. Completely closed. It's what extreme forms of religion do.

By the way, when I refer to anti-vaxxers, of course I'm aware that some people can't have the vaccine.

I don't mean them in any way. I do mean those with their gibberish conspiracy theories, who cry about 'freedom' while not giving a single shit about anyone who dies... nor having done so about condemning millions and millions to misery, destitution and even death under austerity.

"What are we doing to our young people?", they wail - having spent the last decade slagging off young people, telling them to 'stop buying avocado toast' if they want a home, and constantly voted for policies to destroy the futures of an entire generation and the next one as well

The hell with these ridiculous people and their self-entitled, I'm alright Jack, self-aggrandising bullshit.

But the hell, too, with the new religion. The gender identity religion. Which like all faiths, would be fine if it kept itself to itself. But we can't have that.

No no. We must impose it on everyone else against their will and without their consent. If anyone objects - or worse, if anyone uses evidence, reason and facts to demonstrate what a pile of nonsense this all is - we will hunt them down and try to destroy them.

That Labour conference motion I referred to earlier? Note how its critics demand it isn't discussed at all. Its critics aren't interested in democratically persuading others of their case.

All they're interested in is denouncing and excommunicating anyone who does not agree.

One thing I also want to emphasise. When I complain about all this, I am not complaining about or criticising trans people at all.

Trans people face horribly difficult; in some cases, hellish lives. What I'm condemning is the unhinged activism allegedly being done in their name

That activism is so militant, so extreme, so devoid of reason, compassion or any sense at all, I think it does the most staggering harm to trans people.

Trans people haven't asked for a bunch of men to go around denouncing and harassing women wherever they find them.

Trans people have always existed, always been discriminated against, always been ignored.

But I bet only a tiny number of them actually want this much grief, this much abuse of so many in their name. Plenty of them are probably absolutely horrified.

I do not, and will never, stand with extremist ideologies which want to take us back a thousand years, and to undo centuries and centuries of painful, hard won progress for women.

If, after The Lancet called women 'bodies with vaginas', you still don't get it, you never will.

But plenty will never get it. Because that's what being blinded by faith, blinded by extremist religious dogma, always does.

And such viewpoints must always find apostates and traitors and infidels too - to harangue, intimidate and abuse.

There must always be an 'enemy' full of 'evil'. Who must be dehumanised, who must be insulted, who must have their humanity and their identity and their lived experiences and their knowledge - of themselves and the world - stripped away from them.

Not to do that, not to obsess with some 'enemy', is to come dangerously close to the scales falling from adherents' eyes. To realising how much in common they actually have with their fellow humans; to recognise the benefit of consensus based on reasoned and respectful discussion

But until that applies, sadly, we are where we are. And where we are is very simple.

#WomenWontWheesht