It was a dark and stormy night … *cough*

I call certain subjects Rant Switches. When these subjects are broached in my presence, I feel a rant bubbling up, and it takes some effort to keep it in. Tirades against the limitations of humanity in general, and about those subjects in paricular.

Belgian community squabbles – flemish against walloons – have long belonged to those subjects. Right now, the BHV crisis is so incredibly absurd that I’m almost speechless. So a small part of the population would need to vote for one subgroup of our poor excuse for a political class instead of another subgroup ? Who Bloody Cares ? Don’t we have anything more important to think about, like the country’s national debt, its administrative sclerosis, unemployment, etc, etc ? Really ?

And don’t get me started on the burqa ban.
Why ban burqas (head to toe islamic veil for women): reasons given:

• a terrorist could be hiding under it and video cameras couldn’t identify them
• to free women from fundamentalist control.

By this reasoning, large sunglasses, wigs, carnival costumes don’t really enhance facial recognition either. Hell, furry conventions or goth meetups are out of the question. While we’re at it, by law we should be obliged to present our faces at the best possible angle when passing a surveillance camera. Anyone see any problem here ?

O wait, it’s in the name of security. Why are you protesting against that ? That’s suspect, no ? Do you, or any of your friend, have any connections to subversive groups ? We need to datamine all your conversations, and take you in for questioning, it’s a matter of state security.

The second reason is even more laughable: free islamic women ? First off, do they want to be freed ? Has anyone asked burqa-wearing women if they wanted to throw off the cloth ? It may be equivalent to asking them to walk around in their bras, for all we know.
And if it’s a matter of oppression – do you really think that forbidding women to cover themselves will help them ? In all probability, if they couldn’t leave the house without their burqa, now, they won’t be able to leave the house at all.

And oh, there’s the small matter of antagonizing parts of a large belgian community. It’s in effect saying ‘you are not welcome here’. Bully behaviour. It’s not by singling out one group and imposing a ban, that anything, at all, will be helped.

Bravo, I say. Pat yourselves on the back. You, who we voted for, have really made our country a better place. We were known for our pedophilic incidents, let’s also be known for ground-breaking stupidity.

breathe in, breathe out … OK, I’ve got it back under control. Carry on.