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Cry, My Beloved Party

Posted: October 13, 2022 in Political musings
Tags: Apartheid, Britain, Liberal Democrats, Liberalism, Liberals, Nuclear weapons, policy development, political policy, politics

For many of us, of a certain age, the modern Liberal Democrats are in many ways unrecognisable from the radical, campaigning Liberal Party of our youth.

We, who grew up forged in the fires of the Young Liberals and the Union of Liberal Students, at the heights of titanic struggles against apartheid, nuclear weapons such as Cruise missiles, Nazi groups active in our major cities and the like, now look on confused and regretful as we seem to have become a polite and almost entirely middle-class debating society, meandering our way through worthy and no doubt well-meaning policy development, but with little to recommend us and seize the public’s imagination, nor, it seems, to excite the majority of our membership.

The EU. An idea whose time has come again.

A classic example was the attitude of our party grandees, who (with the party’s support marooned at the time at 6-8%, so it seems hard to imagine who they thought we were going to offend), failed to lift high the torch for an unambiguous commitment to Rejoin the EU.

This would have been a commitment which would have, at a stroke, differentiated us from both Labour and the Tories, kept the faith with our bedrock supporters, (and many who have drifted from us from time to time, but not entirely left us behind), and, as is now clear, would have unambiguously positioned us to benefit most from the rapid and completely predictable public disenchantment with Brexit.

Instead, we presented (and we continue to present) mealy-mouthed waffle about ‘pursuing the closest possible relationship with the EU’, ignoring the obvious fact that the closest possible relationship, as is clearly enshrined in party policy, by the way, would simply be to ask the British people if they’d now like to Rejoin.

Bang banga boom boom – you’re dead.

Another, more recent example, is our seeming determination to actually maintain or even increase our reliance on nuclear weapons, in direct contradiction to decades of informed scepticism about their worth, and at the very moment that the war in Ukraine surely demonstrates that they are an unusable and irrelevant defence mechanism, redolent of a neo-colonial machismo that bears no resemblance to the position and role of modern Britain.

At the very least, we need a serious, informed debate that doesn’t not rely on knee-jerk machismo, but rather a serious-minded review of all of Britain’s defence options, how to get nuclear disarmament talks re-started, and how to engage with those countries with whom we disagree profoundly, short of threatening to blow each other off the map.

Wither Scotland?

Our passionately presented commitment to Union between the component parts of Great Britain is yet another example of policy inertia.

Admittedly there is little doubt that the party in Scotland is emphatically unionist, (whilst the public are clearly not), which is the Scots party’s absolute right, of course, but the rest of the party simply falls meekly into line.

Indeed, seeking to debate our unionist preference is to light the blue touchpaper on howls of protest for those who argue that it is none of the business of English, Welsh, Northern Irish and international members what happens with Scotland, but only a matter for the Scots party, despite the very obvious fact that with an entwined political culture and economy it most obviously is a legitimate matter for all to consider.

This apparently unshakeable unionist commitment from the party should at least be questioned – especially in the party that championed the very concept of devolution when no-one else was interested, and which, within the context of the EU, should have no fear of a free association of independent nations who have taken upon themselves the right and responsibilities of self-government. It is said in response that we support a Federal Britain, which might indeed be a smart way through the morass, but where do we see this alternative presented with vim, vigour and with much to recommend it to break the “Yes/No” deadlock on independence?

Why are we here?

I put it to you: if we are morphing, in effect, into nothing more than a sort of offend no-one “Tory lite” organisation, then what earthly reason is there for Tory voters to switch to us, when they have a successful and persistent Tory Party in power which they can simply keep voting for?

As the incomparable Tony Benn once said to me, (not that I have always agreed with him, but he had some things very right), “Stephen, there’s no point us pretending to be bastards, because if the public want the bastards in they’ll vote for the real ones, because they know we’re not really bastards, we’re just pretending.”

I had cause to remember that comment after we were savaged for our supine failure to make the Coalition with Cameron work for ordinary folk.

A party in Government which cheerfully discarded treasured policy positions to get along peacefully with its larger partner was always going to be seen as irrelevant and weak, and duly was.

Do we never learn? We must be vibrant, or disappear.

The Liberal radicalism of my youth kept our parliamentary party on its toes, and culminated in Charles Kennedy’s principled and impressive opposition to the Iraq war. That radicalism saw us reach a modern high-water mark for the party in terms of electoral success, just as our earlier opposition to apartheid and cruise missiles saw us become increasingly relevant (and talked about) during the Steel and Ashdown eras.

There was always disagreement – sometimes trenchant disagreement – between the party’s leadership, some of the hierarchy, and our more radical activist members, but the disagreement was acknowledged, and managed, and frequently more radical ideas weaved their way into otherwise somewhat anodyne policy. We weren’t afraid of debate – we lived for it.

This passion for ideas gave us a keener cutting edge, and, for example, bred a generation of community campaigners who truly believed that governing was actually about the welfare of the governed, not those in power, and that structures and procedures had to be put in place to ensure that the levers of power were increasingly put in ordinary folk’s hands, whether in the workplace, in local Government, in planning, or, indeed, yet more broadly. When we cried “Power to the People”, we actually meant it.

So is it actually all over, orange rover?

Unlike some, I now fear that the Party cannot be dragged back to its earlier roots. We have simply lost too many good members to tiredness, premature death, (vale, Simon Titley), cynicism, the other attractions of life, and also to other parties, especially Labour and the Greens, and to a lesser extent the nationalists.

Our main appeal – our raison d’etre – now seems to have collapsed to “We are not the others” … and fair enough, we aren’t, and we know what’s wrong with them … but is apparently not backed up with any successful attempt to define what a resurgent Liberalism could mean for the public, and for the success of the country.

Our internationalism is muted, our industrial policy is never heard, (disgracefully, we did not full-throatily support the rail workers when Labour deserted them), our passion for electoral reform as part of a wider rearrangement of Britain’s political structure seems to have degenerated into little more than whining “but First Past the Post is so jolly unfair to us”, no-one turns to us for breakthrough thinking on modern policy conundrums, (they always used to – we were a constant ferment of new ideas), we are not leading the debate on how to preserve and enhance a national health system become ever more unwieldy and expensive as waiting periods expand exponentially and the seriously ill wait in vain for an ambulance, and whilst I absolutely applaud the party’s commitment to cleaning up Britain’s waterways, is it part of a comprehensive and convincing collection of policies, which the public can articulate when they consider who to vote for, unambiguously demanding ecological sustainability and combating climate change? Or have we now meekly conceded that ground in the public’s mind to the Greens?

Some people will read this article and nod sadly in agreement. Others will rail angrily, (willfully in denial, in my opinion), missing the point that we are unquestionably a pale orange shadow of what we used to be.

Ironically, they will quote recent political successes at me as evidence that things are going well, and insist we need to give it time, we are carving out the centre ground, the electoral calculation may swing our way, and so on and so forth.

But if all that were true, then I ask you in all humility, what would a Government with the Liberal Democrats in it actually do that would be distinctively Liberal, democratic, radical, and courageous?

Have we not assumed a mantle of managerial incrementalism so intrinsically unimaginative and lacking in all boldness, so that if someone handed us the levers of power we would do perilously little with them, and merely nibble around the edges of a system which inexorably seems to create a Britain that is inexorably weaker, less safe, dirtier, unhealthier and less progressive than it was when we led the charge for new ideas?

There was a time, remember, when we marched, at Jo Grimond’s urging, towards the sound of gunfire.

Wave a pop gun at us now and I think we’d run away.

Reflections – not on a monarch – but on her people.

Posted: September 17, 2022 in Political musings, Popular Culture et al
Tags: Britain, funeral, Future of Britain, Kind Charles, London, politics, Queen Elizabeth, Queen's funeral, UK

The queue to file past the Queen’s coffin reaches five miles

What do the current scenes in London and elsewhere tell us
about the state of modern Britain?

Like most of the world, and as a Briton transplanted to the other side of the planet, I have watched on with a mixture of admiration, sympathy, bemusement, concern and some surprise at the British public’s unheralded response to the death of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.

The death of the nonagenarian Queen, which surely should have been expected at some point soon, has produced an outpouring of largely respectful mourning the like of which no modern nation has surely ever seen. As we write, the queue to file past her coffin stretches for up to 24 hours of wet and cold endurance. And still they come.

The very intense public reaction began as soon as rumours of the Queen’s last illness started to spread, with people nervously parsing the fact that BBC presenters were already dressed in black and wearing black tie before any announcement from the Palace, and has been supported, if not driven, by seemingly wall-to-wall 24-hour coverage of the Queen’s life and death on all main media channels.

Trade Unions and political parties have cancelled their Autumnal gatherings, a week’s football was delayed, (but not racing, which the Queen loved, it should be noted), and a myriad of other events small or large have been postponed or simply closed down.

The new King has toured every corner of the British Isles for services of commemoration, attended or abetted by other members of “The Firm”, (as the Royal family is known), receiving a genuinely warm and sympathetic reception, (it seems to this correspondent at least), wherever he has gone.

A very few voices of dissent have been swiftly silenced or marginalised – too swiftly, in the case of one policeman, who has been reprimanded for arresting a lawyer carrying a blank sheet of paper, and thereby sparking a helpful debate about the legitimate limits to free speech and policing of public order.

As modern argot would have it … ‘scenes’.

But at some point, it behoves anyone who cares about the health of society and the body politic to ask, sotto voce, whether such an overwhelming response to someone dying – even someone as rarefied and admired as a 96 year old, 70-year monarch – is actually, somehow, slightly concerning. And even, perish the thought, slightly ‘naff’. Watching some people prostrating themselves on the floor next to the coffin has made for less than comfortable viewing.

However, let us first establish a principle. It is entirely up to people to decide for themselves how to grieve, and not for anyone else to dictate it to them.

And, perhaps equally importantly, grief is a complex emotional reaction which is not reserved for the death of close relatives.

We grieve many things, and the passing of an era surely falls into that category, as well as the passing of the individual who, for many, epitomised that era and was a reliable and imperturbable constant at the heart of it.

The departure of the Queen leaves, we are sure, many people feeling like the constancies of their youth are now emphatically over, and that the future seems now just a little bit more uncertain – a less well-understood and as yet dimly-perceived landscape with one of its most dominant and long-lasting features removed, for ever.

So let us assert this unequivocally and boldly: if people want to turn out for the funeral – a million visitors are expected in central London for the event itself – well, that’s entirely up to them.

One might also ask, though, through simultaneously and quietly murmuring lips, whether the Queen herself might have been slightly discomforted by the scale of the mourning. She was someone who was known to be somewhat sceptical of too much pomp and ceremony, whilst she understood its unique role in British society, and she submitted uncomplainingly to the pressures on her personally.

Although she was apparently very involved in the planning of her own celebration of her life, one nevertheless suspects she might have been somewhat bemused by how utterly the event has consumed British society.

The Queen was never one for public demonstrations of emotion, after all. Her visible restraint after the premature death of her beloved father, and after the death of her long-standing consort Prince Philip, was notable. Many will also recall that she had to be persuaded to involve herself outside the gates of Buck House when Princess Diana died. That was the right decision, but it did not come easily to her.

For one who lived her life in the public eye, she was a remarkably private person.

Not for nothing was the Scottish fastness of the Balmoral estate her favourite place on the planet.

A place where she could live away from the public gaze, and metaphorically let her hair down, wandering or driving the moors with her much-loved dogs and horses.

Accepting, then, that there is no right or wrong way to “do” national mourning, it seems – to our eyes at least – that with its unprecedented outpouring of grief, Britain is also collectively demonstrating an attack of anxiety, which few commentators seem to have the wit or courage to acknowledge.

An anxiety which is entirely reasonable, and predictable.

Recent years have seen many substantial changes and challenges for the British, after all.

A testing time

Covid hit Britain harder than any other comparable country with the exception of the USA. Many, many families lost loved ones, or know of families who did. Not since the Spanish flu epidemic more than a century before has the country faced such a mortal health crisis.

The country has also experienced political and economic upheaval of unprecedented proportion with the controversial and divisive Brexit decision to leave the EU, the consequences or opportunities of which (depending on your point of view) are still being worked through, but unquestionably with significant disruption to travel, shopping, employment, prices and more.

Indeed, the overall economic situation, it is generally agreed, is somewhat dire, with rampant inflation and a cost of living crisis that is seeing Britain’s less well off hit extremely hard.

The rambunctious former Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, a figure of as much scorn and mistrust as he was one of admiration, is gone, (at least for now), finally toppled by his own party.

The new Prime Minister, Liz Truss, is something of an unknown quantity, known hitherto mostly for gaffes and sillinesses, notable mainly for being considered, by electing Tory party members, as the ‘best of a bad bunch’.

The fact that obviously better candidates fell by the wayside because they failed to secure enough support from their fellow MPs before even being submitted to the party’s judgement makes Truss’s accession yet more tricky.

The country is at war with Russia – albeit via its proxy combatant Ukraine – and whatever one feels about that situation, (we are firmly on Ukraine’s side and glad to see the West supporting them), it is nevertheless a worrying time, and the country being threatened directly by an increasingly bellicose Vladimir Putin and his apparatchiks does nothing to calm the nerves.

Ecologically the country is a mess, with millions of tons of raw sewage being pumped into its rivers from overwhelmed water infrastructure.

It’s inner cities are very obviously dirty and grimy, in a poor state of repair, and its road and rail network, and airlines, are creaking alarmingly.

Many of its major cities (and some smaller ones) have effectively declared their centres as ‘no go areas’ at night, with people vocally afraid to risk the street violence and robbery which has become more commonplace with every passing year. Fatal stabbings, in particular, were in 2019 at their highest since records began in 1946.

And the jewel of the British social crown, the National Health Service, is labouring to address the health needs of a 21st century nation with a model forged in the 1940s, which seemingly endless organisational tinkering never seem to adequately address. Ambulances which are supposed to arrive for urgent cases in 11 minutes are now routinely taking over 80. As one often hears people say, “but nothing ever seems to get done“.

Large scale immigration during the EU years, especially from Eastern Europe, sees the native population restless and concerned, despite the very obvious fact that immigration supports a vibrant economy and brings skills to the country that it historically does a poor job of developing itself.

In modern Britain your new plumber, plasterer or brickie is now as likely to come from Gdansk, Riga or Belgrade as they are to hail from Manchester, Swansea or Pontefract. People are happy to enjoy the benefits of an expanded workforce, but anxious about the relocation costs incurred by the social support system as people settle, and instinctively discomforted by hearing a new polyglot of languages as they walk down the High Street.

The very Union itself, especially as regards Scotland, seems on very shaky ground. It would be a brave punter who would bet against Scotland becoming independent in the near-to-medium term, and very few people have any idea what that new model of governance would look like in practice.

Last, but by no means least, the now King Charles III is an unknown quantity, at least in his new role. Will he reach the same heights of service and unflappable courtesy as his mother did? The British people will surely give him every chance, as his reception in the last week has betokened. But he is a very different character to Elizabeth, and despite his long apprenticeship for the role, his accession raises its own questions around continuity and reliability.

And so on, and so forth.

There’s simply been a lot for Britain to adjust to, in the last decade or so. And now, layered onto many other changes, this visible and sad change at the very pinnacle of society. The deeply felt loss of a woman who seemed to constantly and effortlessly send out a calming mixture of affability and stern adherence to duty, under whose stewardship it was surely felt that no matter what else changed, her reliably maternal gaze would smooth troubled waters and help find the country a route through to amicable solutions.

So our reflection on the unprecedented scale of mourning which we have been witnessing is that the Queen has, with her passing, suddenly and sadly become a cipher for the entire basket of anxieties that the British public feel – consciously and unconsciously – and that they are flocking to witness her final journey not just out of deep respect, but also to express a deep sense of unease about the future, which they might have some difficulty articulating, but which they feel nevertheless.

And so be it. No great harm is done by the wearing out of some shoe leather, the drip of rain down exposed necks, or the permanently tuned TV channel. And if the act of mourning assuages both grief and anxiety, as well as expressing deep respect for a life well lived, (and perhaps in contrast to so many others that could be mentioned), then all to the good. But then what?

From next week: the Challenge

The issues Britain faces mean that its leaders – and people – will need to move on rapidly, post funeral, to the business of repairing the increasingly obvious gaps in the social fabric. The business of mourning needs to be swapped for business as usual – and improved business as usual – with some alacrity.

Because to heal society, it’s not enough to walk, head bowed, next to one’s brothers and sisters.

One needs to be actively and intently involved in securing their well-being when they have left the streets and the halls, and returned to their homes and workplaces.

Britons need to be working, with the determination which the Queen undoubtedly embodied, for a better deal for everyone.

Humble or exalted, young and old, from wherever in the scept’red isle they hail from or from overseas, black or white, Christian, Jew, Muslim, Hindu or other, straight, gay, male, female, transgender and gender fluid – a nation for all, truly united in its determination to create a new Jerusalem in its green and pleasant land.

What Britain is now crying out for is an outburst of hope and effort from a people conjoined by what they agree on, and courteously debating that which they do not.

Eschewing cynicism and embracing ‘possibility thinking’.

A positive, active people dedicated to building a better Britain.

Because that dedication, above all, would be something which the Queen, God rest her remarkable soul, would generously applaud.

That is the celebration which Her Majesty’s life truly deserves.

‘-30-‘ … what does it mean?

Posted: March 24, 2022 in Life, Political musings
Tags: -30-, Ernie Pyle, etymology, journalism, Kyiv, language, Oksana Baulina, Russia, typesetting, Ukraine, war, words

I have been following an interesting online discussion about use of -30- at the end of an obituary for a newspaper colleague.

-30- has been traditionally used by journalists to indicate the end of a story or article that is submitted for editing and typesetting.

19th century railway telegraphic code indicated -30- as code for “No more – the end”.

A poignant example appeared in a sketch by famed WWII cartoonist Bill Mauldin who, in paying tribute to equally famed WWII battle correspondent Ernie Pyle just killed in action in the Pacific War by a Japanese sniper, simply drew an old-style correspondent’s typewriter with a half-rolled sheet of paper that showed simply

“Ernie Pyle
-30- “.

This raises the question of why the number 30 was chosen by 19th century telegraphers to represent “the end”. Folk etymology has it that it may have been a joking reference to the Biblical Book of John 19:30, which, in the popular King James Version, appears as: “30 When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, It is finished: and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost.”

Ironic timing, indeed as we read today that a prominent and highly-regarded Russian journalist has been killed during shelling by Russian forces in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv.

Oksana Baulina had been reporting from Kyiv and the western city of Lviv for the courageous Russian investigative website The Insider, the outlet said in a statement. She died while filming damage in the city’s Podil district, it added.

Baulina previously worked for Russian opposition hero Alexei Navalny’s anti-corruption foundation, and had left Russia.

Last year the foundation was outrageously made illegal and branded extremist by the authorities, forcing many of its staff to flee abroad.

One other person was killed and two others injured in the shelling, the Insider said.

Baulina had previously sent several reports from Kyiv and the western Ukrainian city of Lviv. The publication expressed its “deepest condolences” to the reporter’s family and friends.

The debt we owe brave journalists reporting the ongoing massacre of innocents in #Ukraine is massive.

So far Baulina is one of five journalists known to have been killed in a month of war.

In early March Yevhenii Sakun, a camera operator for Ukrainian TV channel LIVE who also worked for the Spanish news agency EFE, was killed during shelling of the TV transmission tower in Kyiv.

Two weeks later US journalist and filmmaker Brent Renaud, 50, was shot dead as he was filming in the town of Irpin outside Kyiv.

And two days later two Fox News journalists – cameraman Pierre Zakrzewski, 55, and Oleksandra Kuvshinova, 24 – were killed when their vehicle was struck by incoming fire on the outskirts of Kyiv.

-30-

What the hell just happened? Chickens came home to roost.

Posted: January 7, 2021 in Political musings
Tags: congress, coup, facts, Fake News, media, Republicans, riot, Trump, unreason

What just happened? Nothing more nor less than the inevitable outworking of what started five years ago, at the Republican primaries before the last election.

American “democracy”, such as it is, allowed Trump – a convicted wrongdoer who does not believe in democracy to begin with, except insofar as it can advance him personally – to hijack the Republican primary process with pure, mindless populism fuelled by constant lies, conspiracy theories and nonsense.

He appealed to the basest instincts of those who felt disenfranchised by the political elite in Washington and elsewhere, which was epitomised in the 2016 general election by an infinitely more qualified and stronger candidate, Hillary Clinton. No lie was too great, no untruth beneath him and his enablers, many of whom sat in the House and the Senate. In due course, the electoral college, an antiquated institution long past its use by date for protecting the interests of smaller states, then delivered him an underserved and bogus victory. (As far right Republican Rand Paul said today, Republicans need to defend the electoral college because “otherwise Conservatives will never win a Presidential election again”.) There was hardly a peep of protest.

Once the fix was in and Trump had lied and cheated his way to power – with the enthusiastic social media support of America’s most pressing enemy, the Russians – he then proceeded to continue to poison the body politics with at least 20,000 proven lies to the American public over four years.

He exhibited the same ruthless obsession with bare-faced lying in the run up to the 2020 election, declaring the only way that he could lose was for the election to be fixed. Again and again he told people he was winning when clearly he was consistently ten per cent behind Biden. Again and again he told lies about the Biden family, about Biden’s mental competence, and about unproven (and subsequently dismissed by over 100 judges) corruption at State level. And again and again he was facilitated and encouraged by those who knew better.

Today, when the Congress met to confirm the electoral college votes that would throw Trump out of office – and back, incidentally, into a morass of State-level court cases, many of which could see him jailed – Trump egged on a “protest rally” of armed extremist supporters to overturn the election result on his behalf, despite the fact that the election result is in and decided, the Congress vote is simply a formality and the Congress has no power to reject the decision.

“And after this, we’re going to walk down there, and I’ll be there with you, we’re going to walk down … to the Capitol and we are going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women,” Trump told the crowd. “And we’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them. Because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong.”

The president told the crowd that the election had been “rigged” by “radical democrats” and the “fake news media.”

And then he added a further measure of defiance mixed with a call to action.

“We will never give up. We will never concede. It doesn’t happen. You don’t concede when there’s theft involved,” Trump said. “Our country has had enough. We’re not going to take it anymore.”

He further said: “You’re the real people. You’re the people that built this nation. You’re not the people that tore down this nation.” And he added in a bit of irony: “Now it is up to Congress to confront this egregious assault on our democracy.” This despite that as had been patiently explained to him by his hand-picked Vice president, Mike Pence, that Congress had no ability to do so.

In the end, the lunatics in the crowd assaulted the Capitol, driven mad by a genuine sense of being deprived, as he must surely have known they would all along. Because this was the ultimate triumph of a process that started a long time ago, and which far too many Republicans and media commentators winked at for far too long.

Despite two tweets calling for respect for law and order – which surely revealed either his mendacious insincerity or his utter detachment from reality – he later seemingly justified the violence, occupation and besieging of the Capitol with this social media missive: “These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long. Go home with love & in peace. Remember this day forever!”

Twitter duly labeled the tweet as follows: “This claim of election fraud is disputed, and this Tweet can’t be replied to, Retweeted, or liked due to a risk of violence.” Later it banned him from further tweets temporarily. Unheard of, and some would say, far too little too late.

Trump told the rioters that he loved them. “We love you. You’re very special.” He told them to go home. Needless to say, they utterly ignored his disingenuous and weak plea and waded into the Capital with weapons.

With poles bearing blue Trump flags, a mob that would eventually grow into the thousands bashed through Capitol doors and windows, forcing their way past police officers unprepared for the onslaught. Lawmakers were evacuated shortly before an armed standoff at the House chamber’s entrance. A woman was shot and was rushed to an ambulance, police said, and later died. Canisters of tear gas were fired across the Rotunda’s white marble floor, and on the steps outside the building, rioters flew Confederate flags.

All this morass of misunderstanding and distress, though, was utterly inevitable. This writer and many others have warned of it repeatedly. As the magma grows in a volcano so the pressure must burst through somewhere. And in that, today’s events are not, in and of themselves, so shocking. As ye sow, so shall ye reap.

But let us hope ALL Americans – indeed all people in mature democracies all over the world – now seriously step back and ensure that Trumpism and all the movements that ape it is and are crushed.

With violence? No.

Populism (which is wildly different from popularity, of course) must be contested with facts. With knowledge. Everywhere. Every time. And also with courtesy for those who disagree with us.

Because be warned: this did not end tonight. And it will not end with the shocked looks and fine words seen from those in Congress, now that it has reconvened.

The fire that has been lit by Trump and his enablers will not be extinguished so easily. After four years of collective insanity 70 million Americans were still prepared to continue to support a known conman and virulent anti-democrat, aided and abetted by those who sought to ride to power on his coat tails, despite the consistent evidence of his failings presented to them in the media and by their friends and neighbours.

Why? Because the media itself had been utterly sidelined as “MSM” (mainstream media) by the Trumpists. As if mainstream media was something to be scared of, or automatically to be mistrusted. How far we have traveled.

No amount of bleating from the media that it was only presenting facts for consideration has ever made it through to the cult members, because they had long ago willingly closed their minds. They chose to believe they were being lied to.

And belief is a powerful thing. It easily and comprehensively replaces rational thought, which is tiring and tedious.

And the disbelief stretched right across the spectrum, so that even rabidly right-wing outlets like the Murdoch-controlled Fox News (itself long responsible for much of the worst Trumpist fake news and apologia over the years) has now joined the mistrusted. Fox’s unforgiveable sin? Accurately calling Arizona for Biden.

That is why this is not over.

A proportion of those 70 million will continue in their delusions, taking their “news” from stations and outlets that don’t even pretend to be purveying news, rather than opinion. And some of them – a tiny minority but big enough to wreak misery and chaos – will continue to make pipe bombs, and to assault legislatures and civic offices and personnel, and there will continue to be physical attacks on individuals and worse, right up to an including assassinations. To be sure, these things have tragically always bedevilled democracy, and American democracy especially. But the wilful dumbing down and manipulation of American politics has now made it worse than ever before. It’s not like America hasn’t had plenty of warning in the past decades. Oklahoma? Charleston church massacre? Pittsburgh synagogue shooting? El Paso? Threats against sitting Govenors?

The trend has long been perfectly clear. For example, the Anti-Defamation League reported that white supremacist propaganda and recruitment efforts on and around college campuses have been increasing sharply, with 1,187 incidents in 2018 compared to 421 in 2017, both far exceeding any previous year. Another example: a June 2020 study by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) reported that over 25 years of domestic terrorism incidents, the majority of attacks and plots had come from far-right attackers. The trend had accelerated in recent years, with this sector responsible for about 66% of attacks and plots in 2019, and 90% of those in 2020.

The failure of the leaders in society, specifically on the right, to confront the forces of un-reason more trenchantly is ultimately to blame, just as was the under-estimation of the pain of the disenfranchised that led to first the Tea Party and then Trump in the first place.

And yes, there have been examples of violence on all sides, and that should be freely admitted.

But the violence has been unequivocally shown to overwhelmingly come from the right, and been facilitated by the weak-kneed response of the right in the media, and the body politic. It’s time they owned it.

American democracy has not failed, yet, but it is still perilously close to failure.

The survival of Congress today should not be celebrated, other than for the fact that it is the starkest of wake-up calls for a country that has long been sleepwalking towards chaos.

Love Story – Highly Commended

Posted: October 28, 2020 in Political musings, Popular Culture et al
Tags: awards, creative, creative writing, Literary Taxidermy, short stories, writing

Close followers of the blog will know that I occasionally enter short story competitions around the globe, ‘subject matter various’. So far I have copped a few finalist guernseys but am yet to win one – but, you know Dear Reader, nothing ventured …

One Finalist award last year was in the excellent Literary Taxidermy competition, where in a wonderfully quirky set up the writers are given the first line and the last line of a famous novel and told to fill in the bit in the middle – last year was Fahrenheit 451. To read that story, buy the anthology here or in any good bookstore.

This year the story prompt was from “Brave New World” by Aldous Huxley, (incidentally the basis of a great new TV series loosely based on the novel), and the stories had to begin with the words “124 was spiteful.” And they had to end with the word “Beloved.”, and be no more than 2,500 words long.

Although the 36 stories that got an “Honourable Mention” did not make it into the final anthology, they all reached the penultimate round of selection, which the judges said was as a result of “impressing our many readers”. So while it’s nice to win every time, it’s also nice to get recognised in this way.

Interestingly, yhe competition was won by another Melburnian, Amanda le Bas de Plumetot, with her story “Cornucopia”. Congratulations to her!

Here’s my entry. Enjoy.

LOVE STORY

124 was spiteful.

Still spiteful, after all this time.

A well of bile and defiance which never ran dry.

He honestly didn’t know why 124 kept it up. Most of the others had been tamed by the continual threats of sudden violence and the total loss of control over their own lives. They were mainly intellectuals. University types. Some businessmen. And various people of power and authority. Even an ex Government minister who had somehow avoided being shot. But while they inevitably subsided into morose submission, 124 retained his nasty edge.

He was sly. He would communicate welcome signs of acquiescence, then suddenly snarl a carefully considered insult, always designed to cut to the quick.

Usually it was about how a man such as he obviously was – a man of erudition, education and compassion – could square away working as a warden in a place like this.

How had he salved his conscience? What did he tell his children he did during the day? How would he feel if his child or mother or friend hung from these dank walls?

Usually he just ignored the jibe, but the truth in 124’s questions hurt. Stung him. He longed to shout that he was as much a prisoner of circumstance as the prisoner himself, because it was not as if the guards had any choice in their assignment. To refuse to serve in the jail was to risk being added to the list of inmates. Not just him, but his family, too.

So he accepted his lot, and tried to do his job without unnecessary cruelty. Lord knew there were more than enough guards in there who reveled in the excesses that their petty kingdoms granted them. In reality, he and the prisoners he tended to were locked in a ghastly embrace not of their making.

Sometimes 124 would let slip information about his life before. He had been a tailor to the great and mighty, creating suits of the finest weft and weave, and crisp khaki uniforms for the Generals. His store in the old town had been well-known – to shop there was to mark oneself as a man of means, and visiting it proclaimed you as a man who did not fear to rub shoulders with regime insiders.

He adopted an air of injured obsequiousness with his clients, as if no-one could truly appreciate his endless labouring for perfection, the results of which were exquisitely fitting clothing with a finish finer than from anywhere else in the City. He would quietly bemoan his failing eyesight and tortured fingers, clucking like an old hen as he moved around the customer making a chalk mark here, inserting a pin there. He would speak sharply to an endless retinue of young male assistants, berating them if they ever moved at anything less than a brisk trot.

He served his customers honey cakes and sweet tea, as was the custom. And, if they asked for it, a single malt lowland whiskey which was secretly shipped to him inside the bolts of cloth from Scotland, served in innocent china mugs for discretion.

Come the revolution, he had been vacuumed up with anyone who had associated with the previous regime. His store was ransacked, and he was incarcerated without anything resembling a fair trial. One of his many assistants babbled that he had often been seen speaking quietly with a secret policeman or officer or politician, his confidences unheard but his manner furtive. Another mentioned the shoe box of cash secreted under the counter, carefully husbanded against a rainy day. During the Terror, that testimony was more than enough for the tribunal. In less than ten minutes it was agreed that he had been informing, likely as not, and hoarding currency to boot. Either could have seen him tied to a post in some courtyard somewhere, blinking in the dawn sun, but as it was, he was flung into jail and forgotten about.

He became “124”.

The number was written in chalk above his head, where he stood or slumped against the bluestone wall, chained by one wrist. In reality, the metal ring and chain was a needless cruelty, as no one had ever escaped from the dungeon under the citadel in the 1200 years since it had first been built by the Crusaders as a forward post. The guard had counted eleven locked doors between the prisoner and the outside world, every one of which was double manned. And no one could tunnel out from any of the cells, as the walls were fifteen feet thick and plunged deep into the ground below the levels the prisoners were held on, and below that there was solid rock.

Prisoners never left their cells, using a steel bucket for their ablutions, which they emptied into a hole in the floor that was the entrance to a hugely long pipe not wide enough for a man’s shoulders to pass through, and which the guards would hose down weekly.

One baleful lightbulb burned in the centre of the room, night and day.

He had a small metal plate, and a single spoon, which he would present to the guard daily for what passed for food in the prison.

He often mused that he would have altogether preferred to have been shot like the others, rather than endure his prisoner’s life. Get it over and done with. 124 had told him once that he would have preferred that, too. He said he would seriously consider killing himself, except as he wore no clothes he couldn’t twist them and hang himself, nor could he contemplate pushing the spoon’s handle into his eye. “Maybe you could do it for me?” he had asked the guard. “You don’t care whether we live or die, or you wouldn’t be here. Could you help me die? Just make it look like I did it, eh?”

The guard had shaken his head sadly and turned away. “See! You’re a coward!”

124’s cries rang down the corridor after him. “You are not a man. You are a coward!”

Laying in bed that night, listening to his wife and daughter sleeping, he knew it to be true. He was a coward in many ways. He had thought of trying to drive over the border, but knew that to do so without good reason would be to invite a bullet to the head from the militia. He knew some who had tried and made it, and some who had tried and disappeared. He knew he did not have the courage to take the risk.

Except, he thought to himself, in times like these, even just to survive took courage. To get up, eat some bread and fruit, go to work, endure the scenes of degradation and fear, and then return home, forcing a smile to his face as he enquired after the girl’s schoolwork, or whether his wife had seen her mother that day. To simply continue with the daily round took all his strength.

Sometimes he wanted to run into the crowded street with its sellers of trinkets and foodstuffs and threw his head back and simply scream. Suck in deep lungfuls of warm, fetid air and scream out his agony. But he knew that to do so would bring his own arrest, and see him shipped to a re-education camp, or worse.

So he endured. Day after grinding day, he endured.

Then there was a day when he walked into the cell, carefully choosing a time when no other guards would disturb them, away from mealtimes or washing the cell, placed a metal chair inside and closed the door quietly behind him. He waited for 124 to look up and engage him. And when he did, he spoke quietly.

“Why do you attack me with your insults and sneering?” the guard asked. “I have never done anything to hurt you. I did not put you here. You must know I do not want to be here. I am a road worker. I lay asphalt. They make me be here. With any other guard, if you spoke to them the way you speak to me, you would be beaten, or worse. Why do you force your anger on me?”

124 sat a little more upright, and studied him, then answered politely.

“You are all I see on any day. After the interrogations, they chained me here, and I have seen no-one but you. I have done nothing wrong, yet they leave me here to rot. I am becoming weaker. I will die here, never having seen the sun again. An injustice has been done to me.” He gestured to the wall with his head. “They have even taken my name away. This insult must be answered, or I will go mad. So tell me: who should I be rude to, if not you?”

The guard considered carefully.

“But I am a prisoner here as much as you. Shedding your anger onto me is unjust. I treat you courteously, and do not inflict needless unkindness. Should you not treat me more kindly in return? They broke a man’s leg the other day because he swore at them. And they have not set it. I think he may die from pain and sepsis. I do not behave like this, do I?”

124 looked at him with a blank expression. After a long while, he spoke intently.

“But you are complicit in their wickedness. You are not the worst of the worse, but you are here, are you not? Yes, you treat me with common courtesy, perhaps, but how is that adequate redress for what has been done to me? You are a lackey. You are no different to the Kapos who shovelled the bodies into the crematoriums in the Nazi death camps, in return for the right to live a few weeks longer. Yes, perhaps your guilt is a little less, by degree, but no more. You are a log in the wall of the state they have erected. You are but a cog in the machine, and you allow yourself to be used by that machine. Your very submission to them is endorsement of what they do. This is why I insult you. What else can I do? It is the only way that I can resist. And if I do not resist, then I am complicit, too. Am I not?

He gestured to the man sitting on the chair.

“It is not personal. You are there.” Then he rattled his chain. “And I am here.”

124 shrugged. He left.

That night, he lay very still, pretending to sleep, and thought about what had been said to him. His eyes stared at the ceiling above him, though he saw nothing. Around four in the morning he rose and made himself a cup of tea. His wife found him sitting at the table nursing the cup hours later. She went to him in concern, for it was obvious he had been crying. But no matter how she urged him, he would not tell her what was wrong. Eventually he washed himself in their small bathroom, and left for work. Before leaving he kissed his wife and daughter and looked into their faces tenderly.

Walking to the jail, he made two small purchases. When he arrived, he engaged the front desk sergeant in conversation about the previous evening’s football game, because he knew the sergeant cared for his team more than life itself. He agreed it had been a hard fought battle, but the sergeant’s team had won through with superior fitness and effort. He moved on to his duties still able to feel the sensation of the sergeant’s firm handshake.

124 looked up as he came in. It was cold in the cell in the early morning, and he shivered. Later it would be unbearably hot. That was the way of it.

He spoke firmly.

“I have been considering what you said to me yesterday,” he announced. “And I have decided I must do more to help you. You know you will never be allowed out of here?”

124 looked up, surprised at this development. He shrugged and nodded. He knew it.

“They cannot risk you telling what you have seen here. And they have no interest in you anyway. They may kill you, as they have hung many at the main prison, in groups I am told, or you may simply be left here. Actually, they may have forgotten you.”

He paused, fingering the chalk in his pocket.

“What is your name?”

124 looked down, sadness in his eyes. His voice, when it came, was very different to his usual bitter tone. He almost whispered.

“It is Saleem Muhammed, good sir. Mr Muhammed. Named after my father: he was Saleem too. All the men in my family are called Saleem.”

He walked forward, and with his sleeve he rubbed out the “124” on the wall above the prisoner’s head. Then he carefully wrote Saleem Muhammed on the wall and stepped back.

“Like this?” he enquired, pointing to the wall. 124 turned and looked where he had written.

“Yes,” he said,” in wonderment. “Just like that.”

The guard let the piece of wood secreted in the sleeve of his shirt descend into his hand, and before 124 turned back to him he brought it down on the back of his head with all the strength he could muster. When the prisoner fell, he ignored the blood and brains spattering on his legs and kept hitting him. He kept beating his head until eventually he felt sure the thing was finished.

When he went back to the Sergeant, he explained that 124 had obviously found a piece of chalk from somewhere and engaged in forbidden behaviour by writing his name on the wall. He had then been insulting to the guard, using foul language. He had no alternative but to punish him severely, but he feared he might have killed him.

His superior inspected the scene and accepted without question that a piece of wood had been lying nearby and had conveniently come to hand.

“He deserved it,” he observed sourly, and rubbed out the name that the guard had written there just a little while before. How fleeting had been 124’s dignity, the guard thought.

“We’ll get rid of him. Go clean up. Take the rest of the day off. You did right. Didn’t think you had it in you. Well done.”

He gratefully accepted the offer.

At home, he reassured his wife and child that the blood was not his, and all was well. He offered no further explanation, and they knew he would not. But when he was clean and changed, he held his wife’s face in his hands hand and gently murmured:

“You are my world. You and the child. My whole world. Please never forget that.”

He paused. This was unlike him, he knew.

“You are …

He struggled to say it just right.

“Beloved.”

Being a true historickal account of the women of America

Posted: October 17, 2020 in Life, Political musings
Tags: abortion, Birth control, congress, contraception, discussion of female empowerment, empowerment of women, freedom, health, medicine, Planned Parenthood, politics, poverty, Republicans, Trump, Women, women's rights

Woman with child