2020: half the year when nothing happened, half the year when all fucking hell broke loose

It's probably the case that everyone carries some prejudices with them. What marks out people who have made progress in the art (or is it a science?) of being a good person is that when they detect a prejudice working in them, they examine it, challenge it, and perhaps dismantle it so that next time they can encounter a new situation featuring familiar types without the assumptions that might make them get it wrong. People further down this line of development seem to be able to challenge instances of prejudice when they encounter it. 'Challenging' should be very carefully handled here, because it does not - and I stress that in using this language I am both representing the reality of the situation on some social media platforms and intentionally trying to achieve shock value - involve calling someone a cunt, or threatening to rape them, or telling them to go suck a dick. Challenging anything on Twitter is impossible to do effectively, because you basically don't have the room to call out something like an instance of racial or homophobic prejudice without getting into a corollary argument about freedom of speech - more of which later - or sounding like Donald Trump, sarcastic, mean-spirited and lacking intelligence. A tweet that starts 'are you aware that you seem to be showing an outmoded racial prejudice...' can't help but sound, well, patronising. That's why a lot of this is better done in person. You can use tone, body language and all the other non-verbal cues and clues that help someone to see that you're on their side, just trying to adjust their attitude to the world. Adversarial exchanges on Twitter (in particular) do nothing to move a debate forward. 
In fact, I'll set a challenge. If anyone can provide me with a documented case of someone saying something on Twitter, getting a reply challenging the opinion, and then admitting that the original statement was wrong and thanking the intervener for their help, I'll send you a prize. As yet to be determined, mind, but a prize nevertheless. 
What's harder to challenge is where prejudices are built in to institutions, whether that be the difficulty of women building their career at the same rate as men due to the effects of maternity leave and the fact that mothers tend to be the ones doing the part-time work after that leave ends, or the collection of factors which make it harder for black British students to get into Oxford and Cambridge. On a personal level, you can identify these prejudices in some cases, you might even be able to point them out to a suitable authority figure, maybe a manager or master of a college, or an MP. But the shift required in attitudes across a vast range of people to level playing fields in both of these regards is huge. That doesn't mean it shouldn't be done, but it does mean that doing it is difficult. 
And so we come to an interesting discussion that is going on at the moment about how to argue with someone whose opinions are very far removed from your own. Although I have never attempted to engage her on any subject, it is a fairly succinct explanation that if Katie Hopkins has an opinion on a subject that I know nothing about, I will probably take the opposite side of the argument. Whatever she thinks, I can be pretty confident I will think the opposite. Although that used to be the case with Piers Morgan, and, yes, I do feel a quiver of revulsion saying it, but Morgan-as-mouthpiece for criticism of the current government has been surprisingly effective. So how do you begin to argue with such a person? It's a mark of the sort of person you are that you take up the argument against people who spout hateful stuff, but it's much more of a mark that the argument happens in the calm, clear way. Hence Twitter being such a poor debating platform. It goes directly from blunt assertion to flat denial to personal abuse. There's no subtlety. To the extent that on the few occasions that I have taken people up on something, they are generally surprised to see an actual criticism of the argument and sometimes even attempt to address it. They were expecting, to repeat a phrase, to be called a cunt. Katie Hopkins, apparently, has been banned from Twitter altogether. It's not the loss of her opinions that I find to be an issue, it's the fact that she is such a draw. She had over a million followers. And she is dragging them to another platform, supposedly. Shutting her up on that platform - where there are enough people getting after her and trying to argue with her - might be a news story, but the real news ought to be that loads of people hear what she has to say and think it's worthwhile. I had always assumed that both her and Morgan were much more intelligent than their expressed opinions, and that both of them just said what they thought a particular section of the public wanted to hear. Now, I'm not so sure, but I'm still considering it. I wonder what I would do if I had a book or a painting that was particularly beautiful, a spectacular piece of art, complete in both conceptualisation and realisation, and I found ought that Katie Hopkins was the artist. I'm not sure I wouldn't suffer from the sort of prejudice that says bad people can't do good art. Or at least I can't like art by bad people. It'll be interesting to see how the JK Rowling fiasco continues, because some have pegged her as a bad person, denying the essential woman-ness of a trans woman. The sense of the argument I have is that whatever a trans woman is, being a woman isn't just a state of affairs, it's a kind of process, and so it can't just be decided on. I don't know whether that is the right way to look at it, and I certainly don't know whether it should shape the law or the moral landscape, but I certainly don't think she should be shouted down for having that opinion. Whatever the challenges - and that might mean moving the argument off Twitter - the disagreement needs to be firm but gentle, rather than threatening and insulting. A criticism needs to be of the idea and the argument, not of the person. 
In the same way, one might read a book that someone essentially good has written, where the book isn't up to much. You have to be firm but gentle. 'It's horrific, and not in a good way,' is perhaps to be avoided. 'It's some way short of being ready for publication' carries with it the optimistic but probably ultimately wrong thought that any book can be brought up to that standard. My issue is a different one, and that's the fact that this book is creepy. And it doesn't acknowledge it. I'm finding it hard to shape a sentence that can get the point across. And to level the accusation that hero is in fact just as bad as the baddies because of his choices... Not sure how to deal with it. The real world is full of moral ambiguity and the need for a guiding principle is great, because so few of the people who manage to achieve things like power, wealth and influence do so with a clear guiding principle in place, except perhaps for 'get me more power, wealth and influence'. It's never been clearer than it is now, with the government desperately trying to find something to say that people will like, but not having the balls to say the difficult stuff or to ask people who might say that what people like is also a terrible idea. We might all be back in schools in September (we might not, I hasten to add) but it won't be because government has consulted with schools, headteachers, unions and scientists and found out that it is doable, however difficult. It's because government has decided it needs to say that, and they're quite happy to stitch up schools (etc) later when it turns out not to be a very good idea. If only it were the case that these politicians actually had a principle to work to, but I don't think many of them do. So I'll leave a couple here:

Be excellent to each other...

and 

Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.

Although given the current progress of things, perhaps this one would be better:
Do us a favor... I know it's difficult for you... but please, stay here, and try not to do anything... stupid.


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"You know, for having such a bleak outlook on pirates you are well on your way to becoming one: sprung a man from jail, commandeered a ship of the fleet, sailed with a buccaneer crew out of Tortuga, and you're completely obsessed with treasure."