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And how did Monbiot know about any of this if not through the media? What does he think the media can actually achieve? I was discussing this with a friend this morning: how did Trump, how do Netanyahu and Johnson, get away with all these scandals which are in the full glare of day through the media? Because basically, people don't care. As with Brexit: look what's happening as a result. Yeah, yeah, we knew all about that. It's still what we want.Originally posted by Jazzrook View Post
Originally posted by Zucchini
It isn't given us to know those rare moments when people are wide open and the lightest touch can wither or heal. A moment too late and we can never reach them any more in this world. -
... an excellent, thoroughly depressing, article by Janice Turner in The Times this morning ("Why Johnson will always get away with it"). One para particularly stood out for me, explaining why Johnson appeals in a way that Starmer doesn't -Originally posted by french frank View Post
"Explaining why Hillary Clinton lost to Trump in 2016, the US journalist Joan C Williams noted that “the white working class resents professionals but admires the rich”. To them, lawyers and teachers are chiding do-gooders, telling them how to live, judging their flaky parenting or flashy homes — whereas the rich don’t pretend to be paragons. Trump, with his model wife, hamburger habit and fake tan, was just a trucker after a lottery win. "
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And https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...allpaper-lying
I'd go along with: "Or maybe the real scandal lies with us, the electorate, still seduced by a tousled-hair rebel shtick and faux bonhomie that should have palled years ago. Americans got rid of their lying, self-serving, scandal-plagued charlatan 100 days ago. They did it at the first possible opportunity. Next week, polls suggest we’re poised to give ours a partial thumbs-up at the ballot box. For allowing this shameless man to keep riding high, some of the shame is on us."
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for him and all that, but in general… (Of course, Freedland is a journalist so wouldn't say "Or maybe the real scandal lies with us, the media", but then, I don't believe the 'real scandal' lies with the media either.)It isn't given us to know those rare moments when people are wide open and the lightest touch can wither or heal. A moment too late and we can never reach them any more in this world.Comment
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Max Hastings wrote in 2019: "the Tories, in their terror, have elevated a cavorting charlatan to the steps of Downing Street, and they should expect to pay a full forfeit when voters get the message". https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...-party-britain. He was on the radio the other day acknowledging not the sad fact that voters haven't got the message but the even sadder fact that they have got the message but don't seem to mind.Comment
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....yes....aroundabout here if you get into such a conversation about 'such things'....i.e. Rollers, Jags, £1000 bottles of wine, , mansions, fishing ponds, statues i.e lush on roller-skates with a Gucci gusset....the answer when I challenge the worth and worthlessness moral view/keeping up with the Jones/consummerism/opulence/decadence/the filling of emptyness .... etc.....................almost everytime their answer is "You are just jealous"....
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....but of course this has a great deal to do with the opposition of all coloured rossets....a soory uncohesive lot....Originally posted by gurnemanz View Postbong chingComment
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Classic "People get the government they deserve."Originally posted by gurnemanz View PostIt isn't given us to know those rare moments when people are wide open and the lightest touch can wither or heal. A moment too late and we can never reach them any more in this world.Comment
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Is it all "don't care". Surely much of it is "I can't I do anything about it"? Given the existence of FPTP the ballot box isn't the solution.Comment
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Why don't opposition politicians get the message? We'll soon be coming up to "13 years of Tory misrule" to be followed by "13 years of Labour misrule". Why do people only elect self-serving politicians? Same with the Republicans and Trump - the 'odd' "honest politician" soon gets mauled.Originally posted by oddoneout View PostIt isn't given us to know those rare moments when people are wide open and the lightest touch can wither or heal. A moment too late and we can never reach them any more in this world.Comment
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What message? FPTP suits the opposition as much as it suits the ruling party as far as I can see.Originally posted by french frank View Post
How can we elect better politicians, let alone a more varied field, under the present system? I live in a deep blue cesspit of 'safe seats' where regardless of what other candidates may be on offer what ends up at Westminster is going to be Tory, even if all the non-tory voters were to unite behind the Labour candidate at a GE. The only slight comfort, if that is the correct term, is that at Town Council level that pattern is slightly different. My ward will return a Tory candidate, the other ward a Labour candidate and there will be a selection of Greens and independents as in previous years I hope. The district council tends to the constituency makeup with 75% Cons.Comment
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That's the way they see it. The message they don't get is the amount of damage and misery that can be caused by a rampant government with an unassailable majority. Why don't they care about that? (I will refrain from being party political hereOriginally posted by oddoneout View Post)
It isn't given us to know those rare moments when people are wide open and the lightest touch can wither or heal. A moment too late and we can never reach them any more in this world.Comment
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... for a long time I have been pretty distrustful of all the much-trumpeted (even with qualifications - "worst - except for all the others that have been tried") merits of democracy as a system. The last ten years have further persuaded me that the virtues of democracy currently have withered to such an extent that I can no longer drag out the usual slogans in its praise
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Must be my natural predisposition towards compromise/cooperation. But as it's not the worst, it's worth pursuing to prevent the worst. Hence reforming the FPTP system. In an ideal (as distinct merely from the real world) a coalition between Labour and Tories represents the largest part of the electorate. Yet 'compromise' between the two is not merely impossible - it's unthinkable. Like having a black cat which is white. It has to be one or the other. Or Schrodinger's cat, now I come to think of it. Is there a quantum solution?Originally posted by vinteuil View PostIt isn't given us to know those rare moments when people are wide open and the lightest touch can wither or heal. A moment too late and we can never reach them any more in this world.Comment
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We ask why the working class has abandoned or betrayed its own best interests. One has to say there is still merit in the old parable of the Faustian pact. Even the ruling classes didn't twig the huge bonus allowing consumerism to burgeon in the 1950s, 60s and 70s would win for them, locking the once solidarity-enforced working classes into eternal debt (initially The Never-Never), denial, and responsibility deferment. The ability of the rich, whose power and influence still rests on ownership and control, lies in their ability to unite against their own disbandment, even though their whole modus operandi relies on the cut-throat competition intrinsic to their system, using the power of state and media friends to misrepresent, ridicule and in the end put down anything that might threaten them and their imposed culture. And the left, including (perhaps especially) the Marxist left (such as me) have shared in that denial, and the rationalised outcomes and reductive theoretical deficiencies therefrom. The one person who it now seems got it right was Herbert Marcuse, who 60 years ago described the modern person mentally shaped, sociologically defined and attitudinally warped by consumer capitalism as One Dimensional Man, and wrote a book about him (and her).
It would be so nice to be able to deny all this in the face of all the growing body of undeniable evidence - of corruption and discrimination past and present against those conveniently scapegoated for purposes of deflection, and the environmental consequences of indiscriminate exploitation for resources natural and human, if only we had the solutions as well as the symptoms well bagged. The past panaceas of working class unity through organised struggle, based on working class communities of living and working, leading to qualitative change and a society, nay world, in which all could thrive according to both means and needs met, were to be sacrificed on the altar of possessions and built-in obsolescence and unsustainability. Now of course even the most rich are at risk in their lives, threatened by climate change and global pandemic even in their tropical hideouts, and by the growing tide of terrorism, born of the failure of the left to convince, and online hackers exploiting the very technology designed to maximise profitability. Which means they are finally as much at the mercy of the elements as those currently in the front line, the mass migrations overwhelming the "best" efforts of control and limitation. Because maintaining capitalism in its most bountiful forms needs to take precedence over the evermore pressingly immediate needs of ecological balance ultimately driving any way of organising life without undermining its support systems, humanity now finds itself faced with the prospect of obliteration unless those in power defer to the wisdom and practicable solution finding abilities of those in the emerging generation, regardless of class and nation, who otherwise face no future.
It is an irony that those aspects of ideology that have lured previous generations into mistaken collective goals and aspirations will have diminishing appeal for those who take heed of Attenborough and Thunberg; they might be our saving grace.Comment
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