#JeNeSuisPasCharlieHebdo#2: The Purple Puncher

By way of my final comment on l'affaire Charlie Hebdo – I promise I won’t mention this wretched episode again – let me give you an analogy:

Let's say there's a country where part of the population is...shall we say...purple skinned. These purple people already suffer huge levels of social discrimination and racist persecution...in part, but only in small part, because some purple people on the other side of the planet have committed crimes. Let’s also say that the government of this nation is complicit in those crimes; that it has armed, incited and provoked purple people elsewhere to commit crimes, and also invaded their lands, and helped kill them, while at the same time repressing them at home.

Fine?

Now someone who is most certainly not purple decides that he has a right to go around spitting on the ground at the feet of any purple person he sees, just to show that he can. Not on them exactly, but on the ground at their feet; in fact, as close to their feet as he can manage without actually spraying saliva on their toes. Not only that, he doesn’t just spit at purple people he randomly comes across. No; he goes actively looking for purple people to spit at.

Once in a while he also spits in the general direction of non-purple and very definitely not-discriminated-against people, but his most prominent target remains purple people. And when he spits at others, he’s polite enough to make sure he doesn’t spit at their feet, but a fair distance away. If he’s challenged about his purple-people-spitting, though, he claims that he’s an equal-opportunity spitter; he spits at everyone.

Then one day some purple person who let's say is already in a bad mood, not necessarily because of said racial discrimination, is spat at once too many times. Maybe he’s unemployed, and he blames it, rightly or wrongly, on the (very real) discrimination. Maybe he’s been deprived of education for the same reason, maybe he’s angry because of the killing of purple people elsewhere. Maybe it’s some other reason. He’s angry, and then, at the right psychological moment, he’s spat at just the one more time that sends him over the edge.

What does he do? He snaps, hauls off at the spitter and knocks him flat on his arse. Maybe he breaks his jaw for him. Just desserts, you say?

Not in this world. What happens?

In this world, the spitter is immediately called a hero. He promptly gets free hospital care, becomes a TV celebrity, and others begin emulating his expectoration at the feet of purple people, just to make the point that they can do it. And purple people everywhere are expected to support their right to do so, even as they're spat at all over.

As for the guy who punched him out - something that would have happened sooner or later anyway, given the spitter's behaviour – what happens to him? Why, he goes to jail for life for assault.

That's what Charlie Hebdo is. 

#JeSuisPurplePeople

Meanwhile, today's Rip Up The Public Day here in Indiastan. Happy Rip Up the Public Day. Drone Man flavoured, too!