The worldwide struggle for moral superiority

The problem with the global village is the neighbours

Politics is inherently irrational, and mine are often driven by an aversion to sanctimony, moral preening and narcissism. I was born into the wrong era, clearly.

Take the German football team’s protest, and the country’s interior minister wearing the OneLove armband. Zero personal cost, for a state which has embarrassed itself in its appeasement of Russia, and almost no chance of changing anyone’s mind and improving the lives of sexual minorities in the Middle East.

This is my ape-brain’s instant response, and five years from now I’ll probably read a paper showing a connection between empty sporting gestures and reduced anti-LGBT oppression. The 'science will prove me wrong; until then, I suspect that this kind of thing only encourages the idea of westerners as being arrogant and patronising, so that even I’m starting to feel sorry for the Qataris; the way things are going, by the time the World Cup is done I’ll have converted to Wahhabism. (Although some might say that this was always a likely story arc for me.)