On Thursday a colleague and I asked 10 people at our workplace: "what do you think about what's happening in Afghanistan?"

Eight of them - yes EIGHT - knew nothing or barely anything about what was going on there. When probed further, they all said that they never watch the news or read newspapers..."can't be bothered".... "boring"... "the news doesn't interest me" etc etc.

Of the other two, one had a vague idea - knew something about the Taliban, but quickly turned the conversation around to a video he'd seen of Taliban types working out in a gym.

The other one had a fairly good grasp of the situation, but quickly added "we should never get involved in these countries in the first place; it's nothing to do with us".

I have long believed, as you say CP, that most people don't give a flying F about most things that don't affect them personally. Whereas this straw poll was unscientific - basically we asked the first 10 people who came into the staff dining room - it nevertheless covered a range of people from 'juniors' (including some uni undergraduates) to managers.

Reminded me of a conversation I had with an uncle in the west of Ireland YT,the night before the euros final, he"s got a fair bit of land and cattle etc, so busy enough, and keeps up with the news. I asked him "who do you think will win the game tomorrow ?" He said "who"s playing?", I said it"s the Euros final at wembley.!" He had no idea, just busy getting on with life!

Yes, indeed! But it just shows how most people just get on with their own world and sport and even Afghan can just be "news", that floats over your head, at least until it lands on your own doorstep like Stirling said.You havin a few ASCP?

I want to make one last point about this sorry...no tragic playing out of the inevitable in Afghanistan.

The other day I watched a couple of speeches made in parliament about what has happened. What I heard just sums up a massive problem in politics and indeed in the west. These people were essentially talking amongst themselves over how terrible what happened has been and how the west needs to 'do this, do that'.

The gulf between reality and the world as it really is couldn't be wider. They suffer from what I call 'Europeanism', which is the idea that all people want the same things, because they can't see perspectives other than their own.

They talked about Kabul as if it was some shining beacon of liberalism suddenly being forced into the dark ages. It just isn't true, Kabul is and was deeply religiously conservative. Instead they were talking about the intelligentsia, people like them. They were talking about Kabul as if it didn't contain anyone else.

What they are saying is what they want to believe, rather than the reality.....it was a problem in the war in Vietnam and it's repeated here.

No one wants to face a negative truth.

The reality is that in Kabul 2015 a 27 year old women called Farkhunda Malikzada was accused of disrespecting the Korean, something that later turned out to be false. as if that really mattered.....Over the next few hours she was beaten and stoned and slowly murdered surrounded by a baying mob of hundreds...maybe thousands when you see the video...all while Police watched and let it happen.

Kabul, where all the western embassies were sited.

[Link]

That was in Kabul, over 14 years after the west had taken over.

Politicians and institutions lie to themselves and lie to you....they lie and lie. They say whatever they think keeps them popular in their bubble and what keeps the weekly cheque coming through the post.

While the system promotes empathy over hard nosed meritocracy, the west will continue failing.

Yeah, sounds fair to me- bunch of self interested on the make people-hypocrites like the rest of us-although we aren"t getting paid for it.

Edited by Stirlingsays (21 Aug 2021 9.36pm)

I bet he knows if Mayo won.