Em

@BenGrahamUK Bore off Ben. Find something worthwhile to do with your life than this performative bullshit. It’s a 19th C tradition that has no relation to Christian teachings. It was a way to market chocolate. Us atheists quite like this holiday because A) time off work and B) chocolate.

Britain has been a Christian nation for over 1,400 years. Through wars, plagues, and countless kings, Easter has always been celebrated. Yet now, Cadbury won’t even use the word ‘Easter’ on their eggs. When did celebrating British traditions become controversial?

Robert Mueller died last night. He was 81 years old. He had a wife who loved him for sixty years. He had two daughters, one of whom he met for the first time in Hawaii, in 1969, on a few hours of military leave, before he got back on the plane and returned to Vietnam. He had grandchildren. He had a faith he practiced quietly, without performance. He had, in the way of men who have seen real things and survived them, a quality that is increasingly rare and increasingly mocked in the country he spent his life serving. He had integrity. And tonight the President of the United States said good! I have been sitting with that word for hours now. Good. One syllable. The thing you say when the coffee is hot or the traffic is moving. The thing a man who has never had to bury anyone, never had to sit in the specific silence of a room where someone is newly absent, reaches for when he wants the world to know he is satisfied. Good. The daughters are crying and the wife is alone in the house and good. I want to speak directly to the Americans reading this. Not the political Americans. Just the human ones. The ones who have lost a father. The ones who know what it is to be in that first hour, when you keep forgetting and then remembering again, when ordinary objects become unbearable, when the world outside the window seems obscene in its indifference. I want to ask you, simply, to hold that feeling for a moment, and then to understand that the man you elected looked at it and typed a single word. Good. This is not a country having a bad day. I need you to understand that. Countries have bad days. Elections go wrong. Leaders disappoint. Institutions bend. But there is a different thing, a rarer and more terrible thing, that happens when the moral center of a place simply gives way. Not dramatically. Not with a single catastrophic event. But quietly, in increments, until one evening a president celebrates the death of an old man whose family is still warm with grief, and enough people find it acceptable that it becomes the weather. Just the weather. That is what is happening. That is what has happened. The world knows. From Tokyo to Oslo, from London to Buenos Aires, people are not angry at America tonight. Anger would mean there was still something to fight for, some remaining faith to be betrayed. What I see, in the reactions from everywhere that is not here, is something older and sadder than anger. It is the look people get when they have waited a long time for someone they love to find their way back, and have finally understood that they are not coming. America is being grieved. Past tense, almost. The idea of it. The thing it represented to people who had nothing else to believe in, who came here with everything they owned in a single bag because they had heard, somehow, across an ocean, that this was the place where decency was written into the walls. That idea is not resting. It is not suspended. It is being buried, in real time, with 7,450 likes before dinner. And the church said nothing. Seventy million people have decided that this man, this specific man who has cheated everyone he has ever made a promise to, who has mocked the disabled and the dead and the grieving, who celebrated tonight while a family wept, is an instrument of God. The pastors who made that bargain did not just trade away their credibility. They traded away the thing that made them worth listening to in the first place. The cross they carry now is a costume. The faith they preach is a loyalty oath with scripture attached. When the history of American Christianity is written, this will be the chapter they skip at seminary. Now I want to talk about the men who stand next to him. Because this is the part that actually breaks my heart. JD Vance is not a bad man. I have to say that, because it is true, and because the truth matters even now, especially now. Marco Rubio is not a bad man. Lindsey Graham is not a bad man. They are idiots, but not bad, as in BAD! These are men with mothers who raised them and children who love them and friends who remember who they were before all of this. They are not monsters. Monsters are simple. Monsters do not cost you anything emotionally because there is nothing in them to mourn. These men are something more painful than monsters. They are men who knew better, and know better still, and will get up tomorrow and do it again. Every small compromise they made had a reason. Every moment they looked the other way had a justification that sounded, at the time, almost reasonable. And now they have arrived here, at a place where a president celebrates the death of an old man and they will find a way, on television, to say nothing that means anything, and they will go home to houses where children who carry their name are waiting, and they will say goodnight, and they will say nothing. Their oldest friends are watching. The ones who knew Rubio when he still believed in something. Who knew Graham when he said, out loud, on the record, that this exact man would destroy the Republican Party and deserve it. Who sat next to Vance and thought here is someone worth knowing. Those friends are not angry tonight. They moved through anger a long time ago. What they feel now is the quiet, irrecoverable sadness of watching someone disappear while still being present. Of watching a person they loved choose, again and again, to become less. That is what cowardice costs. Not the coward. The people who loved him. And in the comments tonight, the followers celebrate. People who ten years ago brought casseroles to grieving neighbours. Who stood in the rain at gravesides and meant the words they said. Who told their children that we do not speak ill of the dead because the dead were someone's beloved. Those people are tonight typing gleeful things about a man whose daughters are not yet done crying. And they feel clean doing it. Righteous. Because somewhere along the way the thing they were given in exchange for their decency was the feeling of belonging to something, and that feeling is very hard to give up even when you can no longer remember what you gave for it. When Trump is gone, they will still be here. Standing in the silence where the noise used to be. Without the permission the crowd gave them. Without the pastor who told them their cruelty was holy. They will be alone with what they said and what they cheered and what they chose to become, and there will be no one left to tell them it was righteous. That morning is coming. Robert Mueller flew across the Pacific on military leave to hold his newborn daughter for a few hours before returning to the war. He came home. He buried his dead with honour. He served presidents of both parties because he understood that the institution was larger than any one man. He told his grandchildren that a lie is the worst thing a person can do, that a reputation once lost cannot be recovered, and he lived that, every day, in the quiet and unglamorous way of people who actually believe what they say. He was the kind of American the world used to point to when it needed to believe the story was true. He died last night. His wife is alone in their house in Georgetown. His daughters are learning what the world is without him in it. And somewhere in the particular hush that falls over a family in the first hours of loss, the most powerful man and the biggest loser on earth sent a message to say he was glad. The world that loved what America was supposed to be is grieving tonight. Not for Robert Mueller only. For the country that produced him and then became this. For the distance between what was promised and what was delivered. For the suspicion, growing quieter and more certain with each passing month, that the America people believed in was always partly a story, and the story is over now, and there is nothing yet to replace it. That is all it needed to be. A man died. His family is broken open with grief. That is all it needed to be. Instead the President said good. And the country that once stood for something looked away 🇺🇸 Gandalv / @Microinteracti1

@paulforbangor @BeingJWood Nope. All it’ll do is make life more difficult for women as well as making the idea of taking your new husband’s surname even less appealing. What kinds of hoops are married men going to have to jump through? None.

@BeingJWood Don't you think it's a bit anti-feminist to say that women can't prove their identity for voter registration?

Republican women supporting their OWN disenfranchisement is baffling to me.

@emilysavesusa Emily. Proving, once again, that MAGA have a cabbage in there instead of an actual brain.

Why would you ever write something like this? What a mentally ill miserable fag

@furbabygirl Approximately 7% of the UK is privately educated, yet 23% of MPs come from this group. That’s the real problem…

The Muslim population in the UK is about 7% so I fail to understand why they are so dominant in British politics. For a religious minority they appear to dominate the way our country should be run. Imagine what it will be like as that percentage keeps rising.

@ScottishSuffra1 Ah, you’re also a terf. Makes sense. Terfism and racism go hand in hand.

My grandson came home yesterday and told his mum that they had a lesson on muslims, and their religion in school that day. Today, my family decided that as Christians, catholics, and with Jewish relatives as well as women's rights activists aplenty within our family, this was not appropriate, needed, or wanted. Monday, the head teacher will have a complaint she never imagined, she will never forget and will never wish repeated.

@ScottishSuffra1 RS (or RE) exists in schools!!!!! “Shocking” says lady. Don’t you remember your own school days, or has the racist mind-virus got you? You, @ScottishSuffra1 are a gold star idiot.

@MiloTindle9 It’s funny that this idiot tweet gets more hate from the even more extreme racists, Restore, than from the left. You guys have really screwed each other over and it’s awesome to see. Reform/Restore/Recycle…you’re all shit 🤣

I’m voting Nigel. That’s it. RT if you agree.

@UncleDynamite £50 for two at the IMAX. I used to take my daughter at least twice a month, but it’s so expensive now. Sad… but for one of my fave books, I’ll make an exception. Ditto Dune 3…

I don’t know how many people have told me they don’t go to movie theaters now and really haven’t gotten back into it since c*vid. I always shake my head sadly. Going to the movies has always been meant to be a communal affair. Plus the screen size, projection quality and surround sound is always far superior. Project Hail Mary is made to be seen on the big screen. Everything about it pops. It staggers the imagination. Leave the comfort of your couch and go see it with a bunch of other humans and live inside it for a few hours and gape in awe and wonder. You’ll thank me. And keep on going to the movies!

@philiplord IMAX booked!!! Loved the book so much, so can’t wait ❤️

We want EVERYBODY to see it

@Temulkar Have you watched “One Battle After Another” yet? Stunning film 👍🏻

Friday night... I could go out, but my extrovert side has been satiated with gigs and friends the last month. It's going to be jimjams on and find a film on prime 😊

@theleftbible @Nigel_Farage @TheSun The Sun?!? Who cares what that rag says? They’re famous for lying.

@Nigel_Farage @TheSun Most normal people don’t give a flying f*ck

New polling in @TheSun shows Brits of every age group want to keep Winston Churchill on the £5 note.

@Jan51478528 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 bullshit

Last night me & the gals had a day out in Londonistan. A person on the tube told me to stop eating my Crème egg because it was offensive to her . So Christian chocolates are now harem in my country ?? 🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧

@Fido64261825 @MadelaineLucyH Idiot. My dad dies in palliative care and the only reason he was not in pain was because he was heavily sedated and unconscious.

@MadelaineLucyH Children born under such circumstances will not die in pain. Did you ever hear of palliative care?

Ok when we say a third-trimester fetus is 'non-viable' we don't mean 'I don't want a baby without one arm' or 'I don't want a baby with a learning disability'. We mean the child is likely to die during birth or immediately after. Usually in a great deal of pain. That's the bar, legally and medically for an abortion at that stage. No doctor is going to perform a 9-month abortion because the child could have autism. That's a fantasy.

@ConnorHollandUK No we don’t. We just resent racists like you.

@akdetj @PattyMurray Women, Andrea. You’re talking about a bill that would suppress the vote of women. That’s what this is about.

@PattyMurray If what you say is true… why not pass the act to appease all of us that don’t believe you? What harm would it do?? Oh… it would get rid of a nice chunk of your voting base… got it… this is a bi-partisan ask from your constituents and citizens of this great nation.

The average person is more likely to be struck by lightning than they are to commit voter fraud. Seriously. That's a real stat. I'm voting NO on the SAVE America Act.

@JamieAA_Again @BlondiieMama @DrSimonsTravels Waking up and reading your interaction with @MichaelRosenYes makes me sick to my stomach. You are a bad person Jamie. Just simple a nasty piece of work. I know you won’t feel ashamed of yourself, but you should.

@BlondiieMama @DrSimonsTravels He gave them to his adult son not because he was in pain to help him.... but in his own words because he was "mucking around". In my opinion that's not nice behaviour. That's why I pointed it out.

Meningitis is one a few diseases where your child can be well in the morning and dead by the evening And if you’d ever seen it happen, you wouldn’t be debating whether to vaccinate or not Tragic and horrifying

@redfresds @miffythegamer Ah…blocked that one ages ago.

@Bloomgabs @miffythegamer that's the alt account. the main has like 30K botted followers now

You have no power to hurt us, especially when they take your law license & guns away. You're just a mentally ill person ranting bigotry on the internet who's family (if they care) should put you in treatment before you hurt yourself, sad angry little person

BBC News are covering Reform’s Scottish Manifesto launch in such detail across radio and tv you’d honestly think Reform were the Government. Beyond a joke. This is the National Front we are talking about.

Oops. There goes Farage's invite to the Cenotaph in November. 🤦‍♂️