How did one of the world's once-great empires turn into a soft-bellied, suicidal state that ignores child rape rings but arrests people for jokes? That's a good question, and the answer isn't a simple one.
The latest example of the United Kingdom's insanity came on Monday when police swarmed comedian Graham Linehan at the airport, arresting him as he returned from Arizona. Had he committed fraud? Did he murder someone? Was he running drugs? Had he beaten his wife?
No, Linehan's grave crime was making three jokes targeting "transgender" individuals using female-only spaces. For that, the UK sent five officers to take him into custody and interrogate him.
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“The moment I stepped off the plane at Heathrow, five armed police officers were waiting. They escorted me to a private area and told me I was under arrest for three posts on X,” he wrote in an op-ed for The Free Press. “In a country where pedophiles escape prison, where knife crime is out of control, the state had mobilized five armed officers to arrest a comedy writer for these three posts.”
In a scene that would pass for parody were it not so depressingly real, the comedian was pressed on the meaning of his jokes. Linehan, to his credit, didn't back down, correcting one of the officers when the phrase "gender assigned at birth" was used.
“I explained that the post about punching a trans-identified man in a female-only space was a serious point made with a joke. Men who enter women’s spaces are abusers, and they need to be challenged every time.”
“The officer mentioned the term trans people. I asked him what he meant by the phrase. ‘People who feel their gender is different than what was assigned at birth,’” he continued. “‘Assigned at birth?’ I responded. ‘Our sex isn’t assigned.’ He called it semantics. I told him he was using activist language.”
Things only got worse from there. Linehan's blood pressure shot through the roof, with a nurse warning him he was in "stroke territory." The police brought him to a local hospital and kept him under observation. That's when the comedian was offered bail in exchange for not posting on X.
Yes, the UK tried to blackmail Linehan into not being able to speak online in exchange for bail.
The Irish comedian said a nurse checked his blood pressure, and it was in “stroke territory.” He was transported to the hospital and was put under observation. Linehan said the arresting officers offered him bail on the condition that he stop posting on X.
“I was arrested at an airport like a terrorist, locked in a cell like a criminal, taken to the hospital because the stress nearly killed me, and banned from speaking online—all because I made jokes on X,” he wrote.
As to what the posts that touched this off entailed, the most "serious" one surrounded a joke about punching men who claim to be transgender in the "balls" as a last resort if they invade female spaces and refuse to leave, such as restrooms.
The posts in question include one that says, “If a trans-identified male is in a female-only space, he is committing a violent, abusive act. Make a scene, call the cops and if all else fails, punch him in the balls.”
Naturally, the authorities and various left-wing politicians doubled down after the news of Linehan's arrest went viral. Green Party leader, Zack Polanski, went so far as to claim the abusive treatment was "proportionate" to the jokes that were told.
The BBC went so far as to light up the interview table in transgender colors. That's how ideologically captured every institution in the UK is, and while I'd love to keep a positive outlook bout the situation, I think we are seeing the death throes of a once great nation. There's no going back from this. Too many people in the UK agree with this anti-speech movement, including the majority of the ruling class. Meanwhile, traditional Brits have been marginalized and demonized as their country continues to be flooded with left-leaning, predominantly Muslim migrants.
In short, the UK is utterly cooked. Charles Cook explained it more eloquently than I can.
As he writes, there is no way to save the UK at this point other than a mass revolt. The politicians aren't going to back down, and the left in the country will continue its march into oblivion until they are forced to halt. Will enough Brits have the courage to stand up and save their country? I have my doubts.
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