Shooting of Renee Good by Ice agent predictably brings out the ‘anti-woke’ merchants |
Stuck in a long, rainy tailback on the M4 recently, a driver in the bus lane had made repeated aggressive attempts to cut in front of cars each time the traffic shunted forward a metre or so. Then he missed my car by a millimetre as the traffic suddenly stalled again, leaving him stuck in the bus lane. Lowering the passenger window to placate him, I realised too late that his tanned, 30-something face was already half way out the door, contorted with rage and spitting a fusillade of abuse carefully tailored to his target : “ya ugly old c**t”, “ya dirty old hag”, “ya filthy slag”. “F***in’ bitch” was his clear favourite.
Growing up in the 1970s and ‘80s, in a culture so sexist that no one quite believes it who didn’t live through it, was a useful preparation for defusing later threats in lonely places. But even then, before social media and Donald Trump, the sexualisation of abuse was more about condescension than hate.
Back on the M4, the hate-filled ranting a few metres away felt so menacing that I was about to jump out of my car when the traffic finally moved. Afterwards I wondered what he did for a living and who he went home to in the evening. Wondered how I might describe my larger fears about that driver to a busy garda without sounding like an elderly fusspot. His was the kind of verbal rage that feels like a prelude to something potentially much darker.
Maybe that’s why........