I laughed at some of the memes. A lot of the memes to be honest. This from someone who was so horrified by her reaction to Maggie Thatcher’s death that I donated to Shelter.
I guess I did recognise that I was dehumanising/othering people who happen to be a magnitude of wealthy that is completely out of my understanding but I definitely laughed at the memes.
The idea that they were going to turn out to be dead absolutely occurred to me, certainly the longer it was taking to find them the more I thought that it wasn’t going to turn out to be a happy ending but Christ the idea that they were dead basically as soon as they lost contact just wasn’t on my radar.
The more that comes out about the owners utter disregard for safety measures the more gobsmacked I am. The idea that health and safety legislation is written in blood is not new to me but by the same token I tend to assume that the rich look after themselves rather than just don’t care. But then I think about my therapist during the pandemic, a couple of times I expressed political opinions because a lot of what was stressing me out was to do with government decisions, it became increasingly obvious that her default position was right of centre and one of the things that really emphasised that was when I needed to follow certain protocols.
The first meeting we did was in person because it predated full lockdown and because I was working with The Old Guy I requested we both wear masks, had the window open and explained I’d be wearing gloves. This was before anyone had worked out exactly how the virus was spread and that Japanese Cruise ship indicating that it might be touch wasn’t yet disproven. She made it quite clear that she thought I was following rules for the sake of following rules, even after I explained that I worked with someone vulnerable she didn’t really get it.
I’m making some assumptions here I admit, I don’t know for certain that the billionaire entrepreneur who cut all the corners he could was right wing but I do suspect so.
There does seem to be a popular opinion in the right, that the left like to propose unnecessary legislation for the sake of it. “Elf and safety gone mad” – the more I work within the public sector the less I think the majority of bureaucracy I come across is unnecessary, because by and large if people can do things the easy way they will and cross their fingers nothing bad happens. I suppose if you genuinely think that extra rules are just there to satisfy some jobsworth’s desire to go on an ego trip then the more you’re going to disregard them and assume that you’re going to be ok rather than listen to experts.
I do stand by my previously held opinion that the bosses in charge often just don’t care about those that work for them, there’s a level of dehumanisation from the very rich to the rest of us that easy for me to see and that has made it harder for me to realise I’ve responded in kind until lately. But what happened to the Titan sub isn’t that, it’s the utter buy in to the idea that safety measures aren’t actually necessary, that they were some kind of gatekeeping.
That’s something else that’s not just limited to those on the right of the political spectrum but on that side of things does seem to link into the notion that people like to add safety legislation for the fun of it and that’s the devaluing of expertise. The idea that people who’ve studied engineering, who work in the field were suggesting safety measures for the fun of it – that’s got to have been coming across to the guy as gatekeeping elitism rather than people trying to share their knowledge.
There’s some kind of balance to be hand between healthy cynicism and respect for people who know their stuff. I don’t know what it is but we are not there when a guy can kill himself and his customers by such egregiously over the top stupidity.