LOL Interwebz: Some Rando Harasses Celebrity

Every Thursday in LOL Interwebz, Luke T. Harrington explores the quirks and foibles of Internet culture from a Gospel perspective.

Surprisingly, the recent UK elections made US headlines. Not surprisingly, it was because of celebrity gossip and a childish Twitter argument.

No political viewpoint will ever “win.”If you’re unfamiliar with the intricacies of UK politics, here’s the short version: they have elections. Frequently, one party wins a majority in such elections. There’s a conservative party, which is called the “Conservative Party,” and they’ve been winning more of these “elections” lately. Then there’s the Labour Party, which is the party for liberals and people who don’t know how to spell “labor,” and they won the smallest chunk of the vote that they’ve won in decades.

Also, J. K. Rowling is apparently in the Labour Party, which is weird, because I could have sworn she was in Slytherin.

But anyway, apparently she had opinions about the recent election and was venting them on Twitter, as Twitter users are wont to do, and some Conservative who was apparently conservative in all but his use of language thought he’d abuse her a bit, because harassing women we’ve never met is what mankind invented the Interwebz for. I’d link to the tweet, but his account’s been suspended, so here’s an asterisk’d version:

@jk_rowling @Matthew_Ireson F*ck off you Labour C*NT. All you lefties are finished in this country, especially you JK b*tchface.

And if that’s the sort of eloquence that one can expect from Conservatives, no wonder they won the election.

But anyway, obviously we wouldn’t be talking about this if it had ended there. “Some Rando Harasses Celebrity” is hardly an interesting headline. No, it made headlines because J. K. “Death Eater” Rowling tweeted this back at him:

.@sjosiah0 The Internet doesn’t just offer opportunities for misogynistic abuse, you know. Penis enlargers can also be bought discreetly.

…thus proving that J. K. can, in fact, write something that’s succinct and entertaining. Who knew?

But as much of a time-honored and Biblical tradition as such jokes are, it’s actually that initial tweet that’s interesting to me. It’s really not an uncommon sentiment, on Twitter or elsewhere: [Party X] is “finished.” [Liberals/Conservatives/Barry Manilow fans/etc.] are “finished.” And while I hate to be the bearer of bad news to everyone with Very Important political opinions, you’ll find that such proclamations are never, ever, ever true.

Here’s the bad news, guys: all available evidence says that political views are mostly genetic. Yeah, I’m sorry. It turns out your most treasured beliefs aren’t the product of carefully examining the evidence and reasoning out what would be an ideal course of action; you were pretty much born with them. It hurts to learn it, I know, but at least now you know how you and your sweaty uncle can look at the exact same set of facts and then, while you’ll land on favoring a centrally planned socialist utopia, he’ll land on muttering racist things to himself.

So what’s the upshot here? Well, it’s pretty simple: no political viewpoint will ever “win.”

As long as liberals continue to have their wild, kinky sex and conservatives continue to have their stoic, efficient sex, there will be more little liberals and little conservatives getting conceived every minute. And politics will continue to be a endless tug-of-war, with the only factor determining individual elections being how well each party has been at governing lately. But very little will really change: each side will continue to blame the other for everything wrong with society.

There’s nothing new under the sun, y’all.

Now, I know how hard this must be to hear for those of you who are entirely convinced that everything that’s wrong with the world is the [liberals’/conservatives’] fault and that if people would just come to their senses and vote [Republican/Democrat], evil would be conquered and everything would be fine. But maybe consider this:

Evil freaking has been conquered.

It has! It happened about 2,000 years ago on a cross. It happened when a God who’d been at war with humanity since time immemorial surrendered unconditionally and gave Himself up body and soul to the people below, most of whom were too busy struggling for temporal power to notice.

And hey! His yoke is easy and His burden is light.

He offers something much better than your petty, never-ending political squabbles. And He asks very little of you! To name a couple of small things, He asks that you submit to the governing authorities (yes, even if they’re [liberal/conservative]!), and He asks that you love your neighbor as yourself.

Yes, even if said neighbor is [liberal/conservative].

And yes, even if she keeps insisting on writing mediocre YA fiction about wizards.

Image: Publicity photo for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2, via CinemaBlend.