#i am directly thinking about a major scottish blooger who was happy to sit and argue away with a pakistani woman on tumblr because she was

[mekanikaltrifle]

on my little ramble today I do want to note that of Scottish politics types here on Tumblr and elsewhere in the vaguely-lefty-vaguely-gay spheres, the few who're talking about Scottishness and Independence tend to be very leery of acknowledging our worse truths. the fact that Scotland was both a gleeful participant in the Empire, and roped into a shotgun marriage with England. The harm we've done as both aggressors and the harm done to us as the loser in a centuries-long war of colonisation. Early testing for what way, way worse things would be done to first the Irish and then a disturbingly large amount of the world.

The right-hand-man of the bastard empire, and its horrific little dog. Leashed, yes, but biting all the same.

We're much more progressive now than we have ever been and with independence we could finally start to make a change that could be entirely our own. But we'll always have to bear in mind the truths of what we did as a nation and who we profited off to get here.

Maybe we just struggle to come to terms with the greyness of it, the fact there's no good 'us vs them' thing to be had here. Are we in a deeply unfair position in the UK and treated as at best a cash cow to be milked to death? yes. Are we also total bastards in the global history sense? also yes.