The rise of populist, extremist parties in Europe is a predictable result of the insecurity and political paralysis caused by the financial crisis. The recent rise of UKIP in Britain follows this trend, although in a way unique to the conditions of the British political environment.
UKIP began as a "core issue" party - Europe - and exploited the unspoken agreement between the three main parties on Britain's membership in the EU. It's gradual influence, through mostly European elections (while having negligible influence in Westminster elections), was then catapulted after the 2010 general election.
The financial crisis caused a predictable earthquake in many European countries; Greece being the most extreme example, followed by Italy, Hungary and other East European countries. Populism (especially right-wing extremism) has a habit of rearing its ugly head at times of socio-economic uncertainty and political paralysis.
In Europe, mostly ran by the Euro, its effect was that the currency's main paymasters, Germany, became the new bogeyman to those countries most badly affected by the crisis, and most in need of economic assistance. In co-ordination with the IMF, the economies of much of Southern Europe are now effectively part-owned by Germany. In Greece, the neo-Nazi "Golden Dawn" and radical socialist "Syriza" are the two forces rising against the austerity-supporting government. In Italy, the left is back on the rise, after Silvio Berlusconi's right-wing supporters fragment into factions and the country is ran by an unelected German-backed technocracy. In Spain and Portugal, mass civil protest is the main form of opposition to the German-backed austerity programme. In France, the former governing party, the UMP, is reduced to farcical in-fighting, replaced by the even more right-wing FN as the real opposition, while the Socialist government has already lost public respect after little more than six months in power.
The rapid rise of UKIP in Britain (at 15% in polls at the turn of the year) is a little more complicated than the situation in Europe. While in Europe, the main dividing line is between "pro" and "anti" austerity parties, in Britain there is a second axis of polarity - Europe.
When UKIP began as a political force 15 years ago, few people took it seriously. Although it did well in European elections, it was considered as nothing more than a protest vote. And so it may well have remained, if not for the coming-together of three core factors: rising East European immigration, the continued EU consensus by the big three parties, and the financial crisis.
UKIP is popular now because its political positioning is in the right place at the right time. It is anti-EU, anti-immigration, economically libertarian, and socially conservative.
The anti-EU vote has been a thorn in the side of the Conservatives for years, contributing to the downfall of John Major, and causing headaches for party leaders ever since. The issue had never been fully resolved, the party divided between moderates and sceptics. This division in the party over what had seemed a marginal issue (as it was until a few years ago) had cost the Conservatives votes, until the governing Labour party fatally damaged its trust in the public eyes, giving the Conservatives the benefit of the doubt and a chance at government.
But Labour's long legacy of government was such that the Conservatives could still not be fully trusted to win in their own right: in 2010, many voters flocked to the LibDems, from both Labour and the Conservatives, resulting in the Conservative-LibDem Coalition government.
2010 was therefore a game-changer for UKIP, as it effectively left none of the "big three" parties as a suitable "protest vote" against the government - all were tarnished in one way or another. Over in France, the FN is currently benefiting from a similar situation. The steady erosion of the Conservatives competence in government has benefited Labour, who have regained much of their former support by disaffected LibDems; but crucially, UKIP's political positioning is such that it appeals as much to the populist working-class vote as to the disaffected middle class.
By being populist on various social issues (such as gay marriage, wind farms, immigration, and crime), and libertarian on economic issues (Europe, austerity and education) UKIP has cleverly found "cleft issues" that mean they can split the two big parties down the middle. This is how UKIP manages to gain support in both the North and South of England, from former Labour and Conservative voters respectively. This is similar to what the LibDems did only two years ago, but UKIP's populism appeals much more to the working class as they do the "chattering classes". The LibDems really only appealed to the latter, not the former.
To reiterate, UKIP would not have been as popular as they are now if there was no financial crisis and the Conservatives were not in government (with the LibDems). But the situation is as it is, and this is why UKIP is popular. The Conservatives are thus in a double bind: from the party's Euro-sceptics on the right, and the pro-European LibDems on the left. It is an impossible situation for any party to be in, and it is unsurprising that disaffected Conservatives are flocking to UKIP as the "real" Conservaties - which, in a way, they are.
Bearing in mind that there are around a hundred Euro-sceptic MPs in the Conservative party, the next year or two could be bloody. Many of those "Euro-sceptic" Conservatives are UKIP MPs in all but name. Things will only become more and more unstable in government as these impossible differences continue to be unresolved. David Cameron is not a natural leader; he is a follower. This effective power over his own MPs is minimal, as they continue to follow their own agenda (and consider how they will retain their seats in 2015). The debacle of the 1997 election campaign for the Conservatives may well be repeated in 2015 as Cameron continues to repeat the same errors as Major in failing to keep a tight hold of his party's factions.
As things stand, UKIP can expect to continue to grow in support, so that they and the LibDems may well have switched roles by the time of the 2015 election. One realistic outcome in the popular vote in that election is this: Labour 40%, Conservatives 30%, UKIP 20%, LibDems 5%.
The question, as always, it how many MPs UKIP would ever get in Westminster. UKIP has the same electoral weaknesses as the LibDems in the FPTP system - broad national support, but rarely concentrated in one constituency enough to gain MPs. Therefore the best way for UKIP to gain MPs in Westminster in the short-term is to attract defections from the Euro-sceptics.
As I said, there are at least a hundred potential target MPs for UKIP to attract. It depends on how clever Nigel Farage is. UKIP has the potential to change to political landscape of Britain - and propel Britain out of the EU.
In the film "V for Vendetta", the back-story to the plot was how the Prime Minister of the extremist government (the actor John Hurt) came to power - as a maverick Conservative MP who formed his own party, taking advantage of the political and social chaos at the time. Change a few of the details, and the back-story to that film seems worrying-close to the current reality.
Monday, December 31, 2012
Saturday, December 29, 2012
Kaiser Wilhelm's personality, Enver Pasha and World War One
Elsewhere, I wrote an article about psychopathy, its common characteristics, and its effect on society as a whole. In a previous post I also used the example of Stalin here to describe the nightmare of what happens when a psychopath gains power.
World War One has often been described as "a family affair" between the monarchies of Germany, Britain and Russia, whose monarchs were all cousins. The rivalry between Britain and Germany during the run-up to the war is also of the contributing factors, but the direct personality politics of the monarchs themselves has in the past been under-investigated.
British propaganda often demonised Kaiser Wilhelm II as some kind of monster intent on devouring the world. The irony is that, to some extent, these exaggerations were surprisingly close to the truth. To understand how this is possible, and why the First World War came to happen, you only need to look more closely at Wilhelm's personality. As described here:
" superficial, hasty, restless, unable to relax, without any deeper level of seriousness, without any desire for hard work or drive to see things through to the end, without any sense of sobriety, for balance and boundaries, or even for reality and real problems, uncontrollable and scarcely capable of learning from experience, desperate for applause and success,—as Bismarck said early on in his life, he wanted every day to be his birthday—romantic, sentimental and theatrical, unsure and arrogant, with an immeasurably exaggerated self-confidence and desire to show off, a juvenile cadet, who never took the tone of the officers’ mess out of his voice, and brashly wanted to play the part of the supreme warlord, full of panicky fear of a monotonous life without any diversions, and yet aimless, pathological in his hatred against his English mother"
Looking at Wilhelm's personality (and the above description is averagely representative of the various analyses undertaken by biographers), it bears an unnerving correspondence to the common characteristics found in extreme narcissists and psychopaths. While it is unfair to call him a "monster" in the same breath as Hitler or Stalin, his many character flaws played a large part in leading Germany into a self-destructive path to war.
Wilhelm was born into a doting family, but grew a huge complex about competing with his cousins in Russia and Britain, and was determined to make "his Germany" into a power to compete and supersede other European powers. With a tortured relationship with his English mother's heritage and family, this resulted in him using his German-Prussian half of his identity as a crutch for his own fragile and unstable ego. In other words, he used nationalism as a vehicle for his own bloated sense of self-esteem. To make matters worse, he was born with a stunted and deformed left arm, which gave him a huge inferiority complex on top of the unceasing praise he got from his elders. His personality was therefore a ticking time-bomb unlike any of his European contemporaries, waiting for the time when it would inherit the reins of supreme power.
By the time his grandfather, Wilhelm I died in 1888, Wilhelm junior was determined to make his mark, as well as being arrogantly sure of his own capabilities.
The German Empire had grown out of the Prussian Empire, the largest part of a German-speaking Confederation (itself a successor to the former Holy Roman Empire, separate from the Austro-Hungarian Habsburg Empire). In that sense, Germany was very much the "new kid on the block" compared to its rivals, forming into the German Empire after Wilhelm I (a sane and sensible ruler, compared to his grand-son) defeated France in 1871. But by the time of Wilhelm II's succession, the German Empire was still a largely agricultural society; an industrial pipsqueak compared to Britain. Germany's status had nevertheless grown significantly under Bismark, Wilhelm I's chancellor and architect of foreign policy. A natural diplomat, Bismark had tended Germany's initial relative weakness into a position of carefully-worked stability in a few short years. Wilhelm II, cocksure and keen to make his mark, was determined to see Germany rise yet further .
With two years, Bismark had been sacked by Wilhelm II, and quickly attracted the attentions of like-minded amoral extremists, opportunists, sycophants, and misfits.
Surrounded by such a gathering of dangerous personalities, the degradation of Wilhelm's court became well-known, including elements of fetishism, sado-masochism and other perversions. His court, the longer he was in power, became more and more dysfunctional, combining collective insanity with moral depravity. Wilhelm himself was eventually to face a scandal of his own, with rumours swirling about his own sexuality.
Eager to make a colonial empire to rival the other European powers, he decided to build on Bismark's meagre gains in Africa and the Pacific (who had never taken colonies very seriously). Assured of his own capabilities, he often took personal control of diplomacy, and made German foreign policy a see-sawing hostage to his fickle whims; initially he courted the favour of the British Empire, seeing them as natural allies against France. However, when this backfired he turned instead to the autocratic Russian tsar as a natural ally (and personal role model to Wilhelm's singular style of leadership). Again, when this similarly backfired, leaving Germany increasingly marginalized and short on allies, Wilhelm looked elsewhere.
Wilhelm II began to court the Ottomans, who had lost the respect of Britain by the end of the 19th century due to their persecution of the Armenians. Wilhelm had no such scruples, whose grand idea was an empire to rival Britain's in India; more exactly, to build links with the Turks, Persians and Afghans, and instigate an Indian revolt against the British, with Wilhelm as their overlord. This was the purpose of the "Drang Nach Osten", or "drive to the east". Wilhelm's fantasies of being a master of the East while ruling from Berlin was just one symptom of his gross narcissism and unstable character.
To rational eyes, this kind of plot looks mad, unrealistic, and competely ruthless. But many of Wilhelm's ideas were hare-brained and crack-potted. To achieve this, Wilhelm orchestrated the German-financed "Berlin-Baghdad Railway" with the Ottomans, took advantage of Persia's distrust of the Russians and the British (who had effectively made spheres of influence out of parts of the Persian Empire), and organised a vast conspiracy with Indian nationalists. Wilhelm wanted to sow chaos in the British Empire's jewel in order to destroy it as a world power. Although Wilhelm did not want war, it seemed impossible to sane eyes that these aims could be achieved without it. Nonetheless, Wilhelm and his clique did what they could to undermine the British and Russians through a network of conspiracies and spies.
In 1908, Wilhelm received a further boost when the Ottoman Sultan was overthrown in a coup by German-backed militarists, headed by Enver Pasha (a former envoy to Berlin) replacing the old Sultan with his puppet-like brother as the successor. Enver, like Wilhelm, showed signs of mental instability/psychopathy, as he had a dream of a greater Turkish Empire that took in everything between Constantinople and Ulan Bator - equally as mad and unrealistic as Wilhelm's plan, not to mention contradictory to his erstwhile ally's. This conflict of interests, though, would not reveal itself until later.
When the First World War started, Enver was initially cautious about getting involved, but Wilhelm encouraged a "holy war" (Jihad) by the Muslims against the Christians, which was then supported by Enver.
The purpose of this extraordinary step was to invoke those Muslims living under British and Russian rule (in India and Central Asia/ Caucasus respectively) to rise up against their Christian masters, thus knocking them out of the war and putting Wilhelm and Enver in a position of authority. What was the first "Jihad" of the modern age was not fully thought-through in its consequences by Wilhelm, as he somehow imagined himself to be a future Caliph of the Muslims, spreading rumours he had converted to Islam.
Meanwhile, Enver Pasha's regime was becoming pathologically amoral in its war aims and "Jihad", as Enver orchestrated the mass killing and forced marches of the minority Christian Armenian population in the empire. Fearing that they would side with the Russians (some, indeed, had already done so), and taking the message of "holy war" to its logical conclusion, the Armenians became the first (and primary) victims to the the "Drang Nach Osten" policy of Wilhelm, as implemented through Enver's "Jihad". The legacy that these two men sown was the defeat of the Russian Empire in the war, bringing about the conditions that brought the Bolsheviks to power.
Indeed, we can see that not only was World War Two the child of the First World War, but the Second World War's leading dictators, Hitler especially, seemed to share the same psychopathic personalities as Kaiser Wilhelm and Enver Pasha. Hitler's talk of "Lebensraum" or living space for the Germans, echoes much of the earlier dreams of Wilhelm's "Drang Nach Osten" (Drive To The East") at the expense of Russia and Britain, and Enver's dreams of a pan-Turkic empire.
In the end, in the short term at least, both Wilhelm and Enver got off relatively lightly at the end of the war. Wilhelm was accepted exile in Holland, and died there of natural causes; Enver and his cohorts escaped Turkey before they could be hung by the new, pro-Western Sultan in 1918 - to be eventually killed by Armenian nationalists a few years later.
In that sense, we can see that Germany and Turkey's involvement in the First World War (as well as its build-up) was by and large due to the personalities of two men: Wilhelm and Enver.
Both mentally unstable and psychopathic, their countries' share in the horrors of the First World War can be primarily attributed to them. As we know now that the longer-term effects of that war led to the rise of Nazi Germany and (indirectly) to Bolshevik Russia/ The Soviet Union, these two men have a long, dark legacy.
There are many factors that fed the tensions that led up to the First World War, which resulted in a Balkan crisis caused by Serbian terrorists spiraling out of control. However, the chaos that ensued within their nations' own boundaries, and the chaos they caused to others, are primarily the result of these two men's personalities: Wilhelm for ruling the German Empire with a cohort of like-minded amoral megalomaniacs; Enver for hijacking the Ottoman Empire to satisfy his personal vanity and reckless thirst for conquest, taking his country, like Wilhelm, to its self-destruction.
These two deeply-flawed individuals were therefore shared much of the blame for four years of chaos; along with two other psychopaths, Hitler and Stalin, these four were primarily to blame for the majority of human misery caused in the twentieth century: a century of historical events ultimately caused by the "criminal" mind.
World War One has often been described as "a family affair" between the monarchies of Germany, Britain and Russia, whose monarchs were all cousins. The rivalry between Britain and Germany during the run-up to the war is also of the contributing factors, but the direct personality politics of the monarchs themselves has in the past been under-investigated.
British propaganda often demonised Kaiser Wilhelm II as some kind of monster intent on devouring the world. The irony is that, to some extent, these exaggerations were surprisingly close to the truth. To understand how this is possible, and why the First World War came to happen, you only need to look more closely at Wilhelm's personality. As described here:
" superficial, hasty, restless, unable to relax, without any deeper level of seriousness, without any desire for hard work or drive to see things through to the end, without any sense of sobriety, for balance and boundaries, or even for reality and real problems, uncontrollable and scarcely capable of learning from experience, desperate for applause and success,—as Bismarck said early on in his life, he wanted every day to be his birthday—romantic, sentimental and theatrical, unsure and arrogant, with an immeasurably exaggerated self-confidence and desire to show off, a juvenile cadet, who never took the tone of the officers’ mess out of his voice, and brashly wanted to play the part of the supreme warlord, full of panicky fear of a monotonous life without any diversions, and yet aimless, pathological in his hatred against his English mother"
Looking at Wilhelm's personality (and the above description is averagely representative of the various analyses undertaken by biographers), it bears an unnerving correspondence to the common characteristics found in extreme narcissists and psychopaths. While it is unfair to call him a "monster" in the same breath as Hitler or Stalin, his many character flaws played a large part in leading Germany into a self-destructive path to war.
Wilhelm was born into a doting family, but grew a huge complex about competing with his cousins in Russia and Britain, and was determined to make "his Germany" into a power to compete and supersede other European powers. With a tortured relationship with his English mother's heritage and family, this resulted in him using his German-Prussian half of his identity as a crutch for his own fragile and unstable ego. In other words, he used nationalism as a vehicle for his own bloated sense of self-esteem. To make matters worse, he was born with a stunted and deformed left arm, which gave him a huge inferiority complex on top of the unceasing praise he got from his elders. His personality was therefore a ticking time-bomb unlike any of his European contemporaries, waiting for the time when it would inherit the reins of supreme power.
By the time his grandfather, Wilhelm I died in 1888, Wilhelm junior was determined to make his mark, as well as being arrogantly sure of his own capabilities.
The German Empire had grown out of the Prussian Empire, the largest part of a German-speaking Confederation (itself a successor to the former Holy Roman Empire, separate from the Austro-Hungarian Habsburg Empire). In that sense, Germany was very much the "new kid on the block" compared to its rivals, forming into the German Empire after Wilhelm I (a sane and sensible ruler, compared to his grand-son) defeated France in 1871. But by the time of Wilhelm II's succession, the German Empire was still a largely agricultural society; an industrial pipsqueak compared to Britain. Germany's status had nevertheless grown significantly under Bismark, Wilhelm I's chancellor and architect of foreign policy. A natural diplomat, Bismark had tended Germany's initial relative weakness into a position of carefully-worked stability in a few short years. Wilhelm II, cocksure and keen to make his mark, was determined to see Germany rise yet further .
With two years, Bismark had been sacked by Wilhelm II, and quickly attracted the attentions of like-minded amoral extremists, opportunists, sycophants, and misfits.
Surrounded by such a gathering of dangerous personalities, the degradation of Wilhelm's court became well-known, including elements of fetishism, sado-masochism and other perversions. His court, the longer he was in power, became more and more dysfunctional, combining collective insanity with moral depravity. Wilhelm himself was eventually to face a scandal of his own, with rumours swirling about his own sexuality.
Eager to make a colonial empire to rival the other European powers, he decided to build on Bismark's meagre gains in Africa and the Pacific (who had never taken colonies very seriously). Assured of his own capabilities, he often took personal control of diplomacy, and made German foreign policy a see-sawing hostage to his fickle whims; initially he courted the favour of the British Empire, seeing them as natural allies against France. However, when this backfired he turned instead to the autocratic Russian tsar as a natural ally (and personal role model to Wilhelm's singular style of leadership). Again, when this similarly backfired, leaving Germany increasingly marginalized and short on allies, Wilhelm looked elsewhere.
Wilhelm II began to court the Ottomans, who had lost the respect of Britain by the end of the 19th century due to their persecution of the Armenians. Wilhelm had no such scruples, whose grand idea was an empire to rival Britain's in India; more exactly, to build links with the Turks, Persians and Afghans, and instigate an Indian revolt against the British, with Wilhelm as their overlord. This was the purpose of the "Drang Nach Osten", or "drive to the east". Wilhelm's fantasies of being a master of the East while ruling from Berlin was just one symptom of his gross narcissism and unstable character.
To rational eyes, this kind of plot looks mad, unrealistic, and competely ruthless. But many of Wilhelm's ideas were hare-brained and crack-potted. To achieve this, Wilhelm orchestrated the German-financed "Berlin-Baghdad Railway" with the Ottomans, took advantage of Persia's distrust of the Russians and the British (who had effectively made spheres of influence out of parts of the Persian Empire), and organised a vast conspiracy with Indian nationalists. Wilhelm wanted to sow chaos in the British Empire's jewel in order to destroy it as a world power. Although Wilhelm did not want war, it seemed impossible to sane eyes that these aims could be achieved without it. Nonetheless, Wilhelm and his clique did what they could to undermine the British and Russians through a network of conspiracies and spies.
In 1908, Wilhelm received a further boost when the Ottoman Sultan was overthrown in a coup by German-backed militarists, headed by Enver Pasha (a former envoy to Berlin) replacing the old Sultan with his puppet-like brother as the successor. Enver, like Wilhelm, showed signs of mental instability/psychopathy, as he had a dream of a greater Turkish Empire that took in everything between Constantinople and Ulan Bator - equally as mad and unrealistic as Wilhelm's plan, not to mention contradictory to his erstwhile ally's. This conflict of interests, though, would not reveal itself until later.
When the First World War started, Enver was initially cautious about getting involved, but Wilhelm encouraged a "holy war" (Jihad) by the Muslims against the Christians, which was then supported by Enver.
The purpose of this extraordinary step was to invoke those Muslims living under British and Russian rule (in India and Central Asia/ Caucasus respectively) to rise up against their Christian masters, thus knocking them out of the war and putting Wilhelm and Enver in a position of authority. What was the first "Jihad" of the modern age was not fully thought-through in its consequences by Wilhelm, as he somehow imagined himself to be a future Caliph of the Muslims, spreading rumours he had converted to Islam.
Meanwhile, Enver Pasha's regime was becoming pathologically amoral in its war aims and "Jihad", as Enver orchestrated the mass killing and forced marches of the minority Christian Armenian population in the empire. Fearing that they would side with the Russians (some, indeed, had already done so), and taking the message of "holy war" to its logical conclusion, the Armenians became the first (and primary) victims to the the "Drang Nach Osten" policy of Wilhelm, as implemented through Enver's "Jihad". The legacy that these two men sown was the defeat of the Russian Empire in the war, bringing about the conditions that brought the Bolsheviks to power.
Indeed, we can see that not only was World War Two the child of the First World War, but the Second World War's leading dictators, Hitler especially, seemed to share the same psychopathic personalities as Kaiser Wilhelm and Enver Pasha. Hitler's talk of "Lebensraum" or living space for the Germans, echoes much of the earlier dreams of Wilhelm's "Drang Nach Osten" (Drive To The East") at the expense of Russia and Britain, and Enver's dreams of a pan-Turkic empire.
In the end, in the short term at least, both Wilhelm and Enver got off relatively lightly at the end of the war. Wilhelm was accepted exile in Holland, and died there of natural causes; Enver and his cohorts escaped Turkey before they could be hung by the new, pro-Western Sultan in 1918 - to be eventually killed by Armenian nationalists a few years later.
In that sense, we can see that Germany and Turkey's involvement in the First World War (as well as its build-up) was by and large due to the personalities of two men: Wilhelm and Enver.
Both mentally unstable and psychopathic, their countries' share in the horrors of the First World War can be primarily attributed to them. As we know now that the longer-term effects of that war led to the rise of Nazi Germany and (indirectly) to Bolshevik Russia/ The Soviet Union, these two men have a long, dark legacy.
There are many factors that fed the tensions that led up to the First World War, which resulted in a Balkan crisis caused by Serbian terrorists spiraling out of control. However, the chaos that ensued within their nations' own boundaries, and the chaos they caused to others, are primarily the result of these two men's personalities: Wilhelm for ruling the German Empire with a cohort of like-minded amoral megalomaniacs; Enver for hijacking the Ottoman Empire to satisfy his personal vanity and reckless thirst for conquest, taking his country, like Wilhelm, to its self-destruction.
These two deeply-flawed individuals were therefore shared much of the blame for four years of chaos; along with two other psychopaths, Hitler and Stalin, these four were primarily to blame for the majority of human misery caused in the twentieth century: a century of historical events ultimately caused by the "criminal" mind.
Monday, December 24, 2012
Republicans, "The Dark Side", and Terrorism
"Terrorists have seized control of Congress and are holding the US government hostage. The terrorists demand that the government pay them $2 trillion or they will force the government into financial meltdown using their secret weapon"
Sounds like a storyline from a bad Hollywood thriller, but in effect, the above situation, is happening now in the US Congress. The "terrorists" are called Republicans, and they are holding hostage the fate of the US economy.
As explained here the Republicans simply refuse to do business with the government if they do not agree to their demands. Due to the design of the American political system, it means that the US government can in effect be held hostage by the opposing party if they see fit.
As Michael Tomasky explains in the highlighted article, the US system of checks and balances wasn't designed to used for this purpose. The Founding Fathers developed a unique system to prevent tyranny on one hand and discourage anarchic decision-making on the other. While this had led to frustrations from time to time, it is hard to imagine that the political process could be so cynically subverted by one side in order to create inertia and paralysis in the government. But this is what the Republicans have been doing, and have created, as a result.
The paralysis and inertia is designed by a party that instinctively dislikes government, to make the government look ineffective and pointless.
Like minions of the Sith Lord Palpatine in "Star Wars", the Republicans wish to seek out and destroy all that is positive about government in America. To the Republicans, the Democrats, and Obama in particular (if you'll pardon the comparison!) are like the "Jedi", trying to defend the democratic and positive principles of The Republic against the schemes of "The Dark Side", who wish to destroy The Republic and replace it with something akin to an Empire Of Anarchy.
The "Empire Of Anarchy" that the Republicans support is never described as such: like the Sith Lord, they deviously justify their actions for the sake of saving The Republic. They claim that their actions are fighting for the principles that The Republic was founded upon: freedom and limited government. But whatever they might say, their plans create only freedom for the super-rich elite, and anarchy for everyone else.
Democracy, meanwhile, has been conveniently forgotten by these Republican financial terrorists. The majority of the population do not support their views; for the Republican extremists who have hijacked the party (and have done for at least the last twelve years), this is merely a further sign of the righteousness of their path. They are the chosen few who understand the "wider picture", supporting their superiority over the "unenlightened masses" with the idea that the Founding Fathers, too, were wary of the anarchic potential of "full democracy".
This Republican logic is also that found amongst all extremist ideologies - from the Fascist (and Bolshevik) contempt for the softness of "liberalism" (which contemporary Republicanism closely resembles), to the disregard for democracy and their casual attitude to the rule of law. The Constitution and rule of law that Republicans claim to worship is only adhered to when it is convenient, as we found during the tenure of George W. Bush.
What is all the more ironic is that Republicans' disregard for the concept of government is even supported by their own record in office over the past thirty years. Modern Republicanism's "Founding Father" is Ronald Reagan; prior to that, there was more of an agreement on most issues between the two US parties. Considered as a near-deity by Republicans, Reagan's tenure in office was one of gross financial irresponsibility, continued (for the most part) through the tenures of other Republican Presidents, George Bush senior and junior. Put it another way, Republican distrust for government therefore runs into self-hatred, as it was the Republicans who created the circumstances for the financial crisis in the first place. They hate government not only because the Democrats support it, but because they are so bad at it themselves.
It is the Republican neophytes (AKA "The Tea Party"), who are the most selective, disingenuous, and deceptive with these facts: they choose to deify Ronald Reagan and their philosophical inspiration, Ayn Rand, while simultaneously praising and crucifying them whenever the need arises.
In another sense, "The Tea Party" faction that has effectively hijacked the Republican Party, and held the US government hostage to its demands, is a group of nihilists: they seem to believe in very little, finding it hard to rationally explain their thinking, and resort to tactics of posturing to say only what they oppose. They are against government, against taxes, against abortion, gun control, and so on.
The things the are positive towards are very few: the freedom to make money and owning guns seem to be the main ones, which both naturally advantage those who are already rich and those who are suspicious of government and people in general.
The agenda of today's Republicans then is this: simply, to dismantle and frustrate the normal functioning of government, by any means necessary (within the law).
I wonder how much further Republicans would be prepared to go to reach their aims. They are already holding the government to ransom. And if that fails, what then? Does "the law" then become malleable, as it is for those who feel they are above it?
There does appear to be very little in moral terms, between today's Republicans and some terrorists.
Sounds like a storyline from a bad Hollywood thriller, but in effect, the above situation, is happening now in the US Congress. The "terrorists" are called Republicans, and they are holding hostage the fate of the US economy.
As explained here the Republicans simply refuse to do business with the government if they do not agree to their demands. Due to the design of the American political system, it means that the US government can in effect be held hostage by the opposing party if they see fit.
As Michael Tomasky explains in the highlighted article, the US system of checks and balances wasn't designed to used for this purpose. The Founding Fathers developed a unique system to prevent tyranny on one hand and discourage anarchic decision-making on the other. While this had led to frustrations from time to time, it is hard to imagine that the political process could be so cynically subverted by one side in order to create inertia and paralysis in the government. But this is what the Republicans have been doing, and have created, as a result.
The paralysis and inertia is designed by a party that instinctively dislikes government, to make the government look ineffective and pointless.
Like minions of the Sith Lord Palpatine in "Star Wars", the Republicans wish to seek out and destroy all that is positive about government in America. To the Republicans, the Democrats, and Obama in particular (if you'll pardon the comparison!) are like the "Jedi", trying to defend the democratic and positive principles of The Republic against the schemes of "The Dark Side", who wish to destroy The Republic and replace it with something akin to an Empire Of Anarchy.
The "Empire Of Anarchy" that the Republicans support is never described as such: like the Sith Lord, they deviously justify their actions for the sake of saving The Republic. They claim that their actions are fighting for the principles that The Republic was founded upon: freedom and limited government. But whatever they might say, their plans create only freedom for the super-rich elite, and anarchy for everyone else.
Democracy, meanwhile, has been conveniently forgotten by these Republican financial terrorists. The majority of the population do not support their views; for the Republican extremists who have hijacked the party (and have done for at least the last twelve years), this is merely a further sign of the righteousness of their path. They are the chosen few who understand the "wider picture", supporting their superiority over the "unenlightened masses" with the idea that the Founding Fathers, too, were wary of the anarchic potential of "full democracy".
This Republican logic is also that found amongst all extremist ideologies - from the Fascist (and Bolshevik) contempt for the softness of "liberalism" (which contemporary Republicanism closely resembles), to the disregard for democracy and their casual attitude to the rule of law. The Constitution and rule of law that Republicans claim to worship is only adhered to when it is convenient, as we found during the tenure of George W. Bush.
What is all the more ironic is that Republicans' disregard for the concept of government is even supported by their own record in office over the past thirty years. Modern Republicanism's "Founding Father" is Ronald Reagan; prior to that, there was more of an agreement on most issues between the two US parties. Considered as a near-deity by Republicans, Reagan's tenure in office was one of gross financial irresponsibility, continued (for the most part) through the tenures of other Republican Presidents, George Bush senior and junior. Put it another way, Republican distrust for government therefore runs into self-hatred, as it was the Republicans who created the circumstances for the financial crisis in the first place. They hate government not only because the Democrats support it, but because they are so bad at it themselves.
It is the Republican neophytes (AKA "The Tea Party"), who are the most selective, disingenuous, and deceptive with these facts: they choose to deify Ronald Reagan and their philosophical inspiration, Ayn Rand, while simultaneously praising and crucifying them whenever the need arises.
In another sense, "The Tea Party" faction that has effectively hijacked the Republican Party, and held the US government hostage to its demands, is a group of nihilists: they seem to believe in very little, finding it hard to rationally explain their thinking, and resort to tactics of posturing to say only what they oppose. They are against government, against taxes, against abortion, gun control, and so on.
The things the are positive towards are very few: the freedom to make money and owning guns seem to be the main ones, which both naturally advantage those who are already rich and those who are suspicious of government and people in general.
The agenda of today's Republicans then is this: simply, to dismantle and frustrate the normal functioning of government, by any means necessary (within the law).
I wonder how much further Republicans would be prepared to go to reach their aims. They are already holding the government to ransom. And if that fails, what then? Does "the law" then become malleable, as it is for those who feel they are above it?
There does appear to be very little in moral terms, between today's Republicans and some terrorists.
Wednesday, December 19, 2012
The Future Of Britain
Realistically, what is Britain's future as a nation-state and power in the world in the coming decades?
In truth, it is not that hard to make some educated guesses based on what is happening in Britain now, where the direction of global politics is going, and what the predicted trends will be.
As I've said in my earlier post here, Britain in 2012 is a nation-state in stagnation, and socio-economic dysfunction in many of the regions outside of the South-Eastern England. The stagnation is due to the financial crisis, while the dysfunction is a combination of longstanding structural failings in long-term strategic thinking by government and the private sector, exacerbated since 2008.
The British economy since the decline of the manufacturing sector thirty years ago (accelerated by Monetarist/Thatcherite economic policy) has been increasingly dependent on the financial sector as the main driving force behind economic growth. This strategy, backed by the financial sector and followed trustingly by the government ever since, was meant to ensure a stable future for Britain in the 21st century. It has produced the opposite.
Looking at it objectively, this is obvious: it is reckless and naive to rest the hopes of nearly sixty million people on the success of the banking sector. But this is what has happened to British economic policy in the last thirty years.
Britain likes to compare itself economically to Germany, as a comparable economic power. But this is unfair: Germany does indeed have a strong economy, one that these days effectively keeps the Eurozone working and itself from feeling the effects of the economic crisis. But Germany's economy is based on two prongs - its financial sector, yes, but also its vigorous, efficient and dynamic manufacturing sector, that provides a healthy flow of exports.
The British government, under the supervision of the shortsighted financial barons, allowed its manufacturing sector to atrophy and wither. Furthermore, unlike Germany, the British government's attitude to unions has been aggressive, with catastrophic results on union membership and wage stability.
It is often forgotten in Britain that Germany's unions have a seat on the corporate board. This is not seen as an aggressive move on the part of the unions; it is seen as a co-operative approach between employee rights and employer rights. It means that companies make decisions together with their employees, rather than resembling a war-zone. The difference between Britain's workplace and the German workplace could not be greater.
The arrogance of the banking sector and right-wing economists explains how this happened. This combination of arrogance and what I call "post-Imperial complacency", is why Britain:
In truth, it is not that hard to make some educated guesses based on what is happening in Britain now, where the direction of global politics is going, and what the predicted trends will be.
As I've said in my earlier post here, Britain in 2012 is a nation-state in stagnation, and socio-economic dysfunction in many of the regions outside of the South-Eastern England. The stagnation is due to the financial crisis, while the dysfunction is a combination of longstanding structural failings in long-term strategic thinking by government and the private sector, exacerbated since 2008.
The British economy since the decline of the manufacturing sector thirty years ago (accelerated by Monetarist/Thatcherite economic policy) has been increasingly dependent on the financial sector as the main driving force behind economic growth. This strategy, backed by the financial sector and followed trustingly by the government ever since, was meant to ensure a stable future for Britain in the 21st century. It has produced the opposite.
Looking at it objectively, this is obvious: it is reckless and naive to rest the hopes of nearly sixty million people on the success of the banking sector. But this is what has happened to British economic policy in the last thirty years.
Britain likes to compare itself economically to Germany, as a comparable economic power. But this is unfair: Germany does indeed have a strong economy, one that these days effectively keeps the Eurozone working and itself from feeling the effects of the economic crisis. But Germany's economy is based on two prongs - its financial sector, yes, but also its vigorous, efficient and dynamic manufacturing sector, that provides a healthy flow of exports.
The British government, under the supervision of the shortsighted financial barons, allowed its manufacturing sector to atrophy and wither. Furthermore, unlike Germany, the British government's attitude to unions has been aggressive, with catastrophic results on union membership and wage stability.
It is often forgotten in Britain that Germany's unions have a seat on the corporate board. This is not seen as an aggressive move on the part of the unions; it is seen as a co-operative approach between employee rights and employer rights. It means that companies make decisions together with their employees, rather than resembling a war-zone. The difference between Britain's workplace and the German workplace could not be greater.
The arrogance of the banking sector and right-wing economists explains how this happened. This combination of arrogance and what I call "post-Imperial complacency", is why Britain:
- imports the majority of its foodstuffs (because it is cheaper for the huge private behemoths like "Tesco" etc.), forcing the home agricultural sector into penury.
- has an ever-growing "North-South" divide (because the private sector sees Britain outside of the London metropolitan area as an economic inconvenience, forcing an ever-growing "brain drain" from the regions)
- has a dysfunctional housing market from lack of private and public sector planning and motivation. The "North-South" divide means that while house prices in the depressed regions stagnate and some areas become depopulated, the London area becomes massively overcrowded, with an ever-increasing cost of living. It makes Britain an increasingly economically-polarised nation: the regions trapped in a cycle of lower and lower incomes and economic prospects; the capital trapped in a cycle of higher and higher costs. Over time, it means that the two parts of the country may become impossible to reconcile economically, with those in the regions unable to relocate, while those in London unwilling to move to the economically stagnant regions.
- has a mountain of debt, some government-incurred due to bailing-out the banks, some due to government overspending, and the rest due to personal debt brought about through irresponsibility.
- has a fast-growing population, much of it from the families and direct descendants of immigrants. But due to lack of government strategy and planning, there are fewer and fewer places in schools for them, resulting in overcrowding or family relocation simply to find a suitable school.
- Has a generation (or two) of graduates who are to have a mill-stone of debt around their necks for much of their adult life, but without any suitable employment. In other words, Britain is becoming a nation-state of the highly-educated under-employed.
- Has an increasingly dysfunctional employment market, as a result of the combination of points 1,2 and 6, as well as the over-dependence on the financial and (fluctuating) service sector. The number of long-term unemployed is reaching levels not seen for decades, and looks like a "new normal" is emerging of a permanently-unemployable underclass. Furthermore, the proportion of part-time and temporary jobs is increasing, so it appears that Britain will have an increasing portion of the population without stable career prospects.
These issues are all a direct result, in one way or another, of the government's economic strategy of the last thirty years. When you put all your eggs in one basket, as the UK government has done with the financial sector, the result is always predictable. It's simply a matter of time.
So that is the domestic state of affairs in Britain. From that we can make some educated guesses about what will happen to Britain's role in the world.
Britain's future in Europe is the most pressing foreign policy issue these days, and looks likely to dominate until the matter is decided one way or another in a referendum. The weak and directionless leadership of David Cameron, exploited by UKIP's Nigel Farage, is adding to the sense of drift and swift decline of Britain's reputation in Europe. It appears all-but-certain there will be a referendum on the Europe question in the next few years, either before the next election or shortly after. But any UK government is deluding themselves if they think they would be able to "re-negotiate" Britain's terms in the EU. For one thing, it would represent a dangerous precedent to what is a highly-centralised organisation. The EU leadership could not risk the contagion of other nations also wanting to "re-negotiate", leading to a chaotic and unruly clutch of European squabbles.
No, any referendum would be either "in or out"; "out" most likely meaning some kind of "free trade association" similar to that which Norway has with the EU. Judging how things stand, that vote is most likely to be "out", leaving Britain semi-detached from the centralised EU bureaucracy by the end of the decade.
That decided, it would leave Britain more reliant on its non-EU economic partners. In the next five years, we are likely to see the influence of three powers becoming more obviously apparent: China, Brazil, and Turkey.
China is obvious. It's influence in Africa, South America and Europe is bound to increase further, and as the Chinese middle class gradually increases, we can expect to see the effect of the stronger yuan (renminbi). Brazil is becoming an increasing rival to China in Sub-Saharan Africa, taking advantage of Brazil's more benign influence in Africa compared to China's more naked neo-Imperialism. This rivalry is likely to be the next "scramble for Africa", soon to appear in the news. Much of South America looks to be already in the pocket of China, but the Far East is where most experts in geopolitics think any future Chinese conflict may occur. While Japan is not likely to lose its status as the most advanced economy in the world for a fair while yet, a conflict between these two cannot be ruled out, though it may not occur until China itself feels either threatened (by Japanese paranoia towards China) or over-confident (about asserting its claims to disputed naval territories). This all depends on the balance between hawks and doves in the Chinese leadership, and by impression is that, for the time being, the Chinese are happy to be the world's mercantile power, if not its military one.
Having already mentioned Brazil's growing influence in Africa, this will put Europe (and Britain) in a dilemma. Who to support? Brazil is obviously closer to Europe culturally, as well as sharing an apparently benign interest in expanding its trade links to Africa. But the sheer size of China's influence on Europe as well as in Africa, may result in some difficult choices in the coming decade for Europe and Britain. The USA also may face some awkward choices in the coming decade regarding China and Japan.
I mention Turkey because of the Middle East. It already looks like Turkey has had an early advantage in gaining access to the Egyptian economy, due to the "good neighbour" policy of its Islamist government. As well as already gaining an increasing share of trade in the Balkans, Turkey looks likely to do the best out of the legacy of the "Arab Spring". In Egypt, Turkey has already gained friendship with a market of equal population size to itself. Then there is also Syria, which looks likely to become a strong economic partner to Turkey when the civil war finally is resolved one way or another. Turkey already has a strong economic hold on Iraqi Kurdistan. Furthermore, other EU countries may look to Turkey as a more convenient and agreeable trading partner than China for some of its imports. So Turkey's future economic prosperity looks to be secured in the region for the long-term, with its policy of "New Ottomanism".
Where does this leave "post-Imperial" Britain, set to be semi-detached from Europe, and with a dysfunctional economy? Looking at the situation with realism, and looking again at the common links that the USA and the UK share with their shared view of globalisation, it would not surprise me if Britain, in a new period of post-EU uncertainty, turned to its greater Anglophone cousin across the water by the end of the decade, for the warm embrace of combined "Anglophone Neo-Imperialism".
As I'm sure some would be bound to say at that time, "there's more that unites us than divides us".
Monday, December 17, 2012
What the 2011 UK census tells us about post-Imperial Britain
The main points that stand out for me from the 2011 census are:
1) atheism is increasingly the norm,
2) London's white British population is a minority in the city,
3) the immigrant population has increased by around three million in the last ten years,
4) there are now more than half a million Polish people in the UK,
5) the tenant population has increased by more than half.
Britain is a post-Imperial power, and has been since the rapid disintegration of the Empire after the Second World War. In a nutshell, what has happened to the UK since then is the effective implosion of its Imperial society. Whereas in the 19th century, Britain spread its social values to its colonies around the world, after the end of the Empire, its former colonies have sucked back to the "homeland" like a collapsing star sucking matter back in on itself. The "homeland" of the former British Empire is now a teeming microcosm of its former Imperial population.
This was inevitable. And what I write here is neither a condemnation or otherwise: this is simple observation, free of judgement.
An Imperial power the size of the British Empire cannot discard the great majority of its Empire in the space of little more than twenty years and expect to continue unscathed. Until the 1950s, Britain was an island of generally homogeneous white people that still ruled a vast colonial population. But that "Golden Age" of Empire was destroyed by the effects of the Second World War. After the war, the bankrupt "Empire" was shown to be a financial conjuring trick, and suddenly the "homeland" needed more people to re-build the economy. So it turned to the colonial populations.
Britain, like France and Portugal, were European, post-Imperial powers looking for a way to survive when it was clear that Imperialism was no longer financially viable and practical in a Cold War world dominated by two huge continental superpowers, the USA and USSR. For the broken European powers to survive, they pooled their talents around a new Franco-German centre, based on trade. After a couple of false starts, Britain joined the European club, thus put the final nail in the coffin of Imperialism. Britain's last formal colony, Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), was relinquished shortly after Britain joined the European club, the (then) EEC.
Britain, always being largely ignorant of continental politics and society, has been considered the black sheep of Europe. Thus its critical voice was always easy for the others to ignore. The expansion of the former EEC, now EU, into Eastern Europe, has had an immediate effect on the population of the "homeland"; now more than half a million Poles live permanently in the UK - a tenfold increase on ten years previously.
Since the 1990s, Britain's increasing role has been as the "conscience of the world"; in order to replace its middling role in the Cold War, it has largely embraced the American belief in an "open door" policy to immigration. This largely accounts for the unprecedented rise in the immigrant population in the last ten years.
The effect of this on British society in general is clear from the 2011 census. London, like New York, is one half of the Anglophone twin cities of globalisation. These two cities symbolise everything that globalisation represents, and are living examples of it. Boris Johnson is another living example: born in New York, now mayor of London, and a passionate promoter of both cities, and the concept of globalisation generally.
As I've said before, "Globalisation" is the direct result of the Anglo-Saxon economic model propounded by the British Empire and the USA. It is also largely interchangeable with the core ideas of Economic Fascism, as I've also said elsewhere. The fact the "the world lives in London", or New York, doesn't change the fact that the same economic model that brings people around the world together, also makes the rich richer and the poor poorer.
The story of 2011 in Britain is now of economic stagnation in a society of unprecedented diversity. But what this really masks over is the danger of communities in general slipping apart. I don't mean in stark terms of race, religion and so on, but more in terms of more social insecurity, and more psychological distance between people, exacerbated the socio-economic plan of the current Conservative government. As fewer and fewer people can afford to buy homes, or as more and more jobs become temporary and part-time, it makes it more and more difficult to make real roots and develop a real sense of "community". This is the real danger: people no longer talking to their neighbours because they never know who they are (or when they're at home) for long enough, and people not making real workplace connections because they never see the same people from one day to the next.
This is the other story of Britain in 2011. That Britain, long the arch-proponent of globalisation and economic liberalisation, became a victim to it in 2008. But the culprits were not affected, nor punished. It was everyone else who was a victim to it, and the average person on the street who has continued to suffer. This is what accounts for the rise in tenants in the UK, for the first time in living memory, as people see the "homeland" of the former British Empire become a third-rate nation-state. Britain imports most of its goods, manufactures little, and has a national housing shortage; if it were not for the amoral practices of the financial sector in London artificially flattering the state of Britain's economy as a whole, the country would be on a par with failed state.
That said, it is the amoral practices of the financial sector, who have had the ear of government for thirty years, that are responsible for the economic stagnation and social dysfunction outside of the Home Counties.
"Strength in Diversity" is a great slogan for 21st century Britain. Another way of putting it is "The Empire Coming Home". Both are technically correct, but the second is heavy with loaded xenophobia. The stark future facing Britain is not of "rivers of blood" as Enoch Powell said, but of "streets of desolation", as whole areas of the UK gradually turn into economic black holes.
1) atheism is increasingly the norm,
2) London's white British population is a minority in the city,
3) the immigrant population has increased by around three million in the last ten years,
4) there are now more than half a million Polish people in the UK,
5) the tenant population has increased by more than half.
Britain is a post-Imperial power, and has been since the rapid disintegration of the Empire after the Second World War. In a nutshell, what has happened to the UK since then is the effective implosion of its Imperial society. Whereas in the 19th century, Britain spread its social values to its colonies around the world, after the end of the Empire, its former colonies have sucked back to the "homeland" like a collapsing star sucking matter back in on itself. The "homeland" of the former British Empire is now a teeming microcosm of its former Imperial population.
This was inevitable. And what I write here is neither a condemnation or otherwise: this is simple observation, free of judgement.
An Imperial power the size of the British Empire cannot discard the great majority of its Empire in the space of little more than twenty years and expect to continue unscathed. Until the 1950s, Britain was an island of generally homogeneous white people that still ruled a vast colonial population. But that "Golden Age" of Empire was destroyed by the effects of the Second World War. After the war, the bankrupt "Empire" was shown to be a financial conjuring trick, and suddenly the "homeland" needed more people to re-build the economy. So it turned to the colonial populations.
Britain, like France and Portugal, were European, post-Imperial powers looking for a way to survive when it was clear that Imperialism was no longer financially viable and practical in a Cold War world dominated by two huge continental superpowers, the USA and USSR. For the broken European powers to survive, they pooled their talents around a new Franco-German centre, based on trade. After a couple of false starts, Britain joined the European club, thus put the final nail in the coffin of Imperialism. Britain's last formal colony, Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), was relinquished shortly after Britain joined the European club, the (then) EEC.
Britain, always being largely ignorant of continental politics and society, has been considered the black sheep of Europe. Thus its critical voice was always easy for the others to ignore. The expansion of the former EEC, now EU, into Eastern Europe, has had an immediate effect on the population of the "homeland"; now more than half a million Poles live permanently in the UK - a tenfold increase on ten years previously.
Since the 1990s, Britain's increasing role has been as the "conscience of the world"; in order to replace its middling role in the Cold War, it has largely embraced the American belief in an "open door" policy to immigration. This largely accounts for the unprecedented rise in the immigrant population in the last ten years.
The effect of this on British society in general is clear from the 2011 census. London, like New York, is one half of the Anglophone twin cities of globalisation. These two cities symbolise everything that globalisation represents, and are living examples of it. Boris Johnson is another living example: born in New York, now mayor of London, and a passionate promoter of both cities, and the concept of globalisation generally.
As I've said before, "Globalisation" is the direct result of the Anglo-Saxon economic model propounded by the British Empire and the USA. It is also largely interchangeable with the core ideas of Economic Fascism, as I've also said elsewhere. The fact the "the world lives in London", or New York, doesn't change the fact that the same economic model that brings people around the world together, also makes the rich richer and the poor poorer.
The story of 2011 in Britain is now of economic stagnation in a society of unprecedented diversity. But what this really masks over is the danger of communities in general slipping apart. I don't mean in stark terms of race, religion and so on, but more in terms of more social insecurity, and more psychological distance between people, exacerbated the socio-economic plan of the current Conservative government. As fewer and fewer people can afford to buy homes, or as more and more jobs become temporary and part-time, it makes it more and more difficult to make real roots and develop a real sense of "community". This is the real danger: people no longer talking to their neighbours because they never know who they are (or when they're at home) for long enough, and people not making real workplace connections because they never see the same people from one day to the next.
This is the other story of Britain in 2011. That Britain, long the arch-proponent of globalisation and economic liberalisation, became a victim to it in 2008. But the culprits were not affected, nor punished. It was everyone else who was a victim to it, and the average person on the street who has continued to suffer. This is what accounts for the rise in tenants in the UK, for the first time in living memory, as people see the "homeland" of the former British Empire become a third-rate nation-state. Britain imports most of its goods, manufactures little, and has a national housing shortage; if it were not for the amoral practices of the financial sector in London artificially flattering the state of Britain's economy as a whole, the country would be on a par with failed state.
That said, it is the amoral practices of the financial sector, who have had the ear of government for thirty years, that are responsible for the economic stagnation and social dysfunction outside of the Home Counties.
"Strength in Diversity" is a great slogan for 21st century Britain. Another way of putting it is "The Empire Coming Home". Both are technically correct, but the second is heavy with loaded xenophobia. The stark future facing Britain is not of "rivers of blood" as Enoch Powell said, but of "streets of desolation", as whole areas of the UK gradually turn into economic black holes.
Saturday, December 15, 2012
America and "culture wars": the never-ending story
There are many ways in which the USA is culturally distinct from Europe, or the rest of "the West". Perhaps the most well-known point of differentiation is "culture wars".
It is this which divides America down the middle, effectively dividing it into two societies of opposing social beliefs: left-wing "liberals" and right-wing "conservatives". It is for this reason that Presidential elections in the USA often hang on the whim of the "swing states"; those small number of states where the social balance is finely poised between liberals and conservatives.
In this way, America can be described as probably the only continental-sized power whose opposing social ideologies could be conceivably split into two well-defined "states". As a reminder, Korea has been artificially divided by ideology since the Second World War; British India was divided into two states (India and Pakistan) based on religion. So there is plenty of historical precedence.
There is a strong argument, therefore, that America could do itself (and the world) a favour by resolving the "culture wars" issue by simply dividing into two English-speaking, socially-opposite, nation-states. On the one hand, the "liberal" majority areas of the North-east, Great Lakes region, and the West Coast; and the "conservative" majority areas everywhere else between. As as aside, this would be a far more efficient and peaceable division than that between India and Pakistan, as everyone in America knows where the "red" and "blue" states already are. The small number of "swing states" could then be decided by arbitration.
This is a tongue-in-cheek solution, but there is a very serious point here: "culture wars" are what makes America unique in the civilised world. No other country of such power and size is as perpetually divided as America is over social issues (Belgium would be the nearest European comparison, but its issues are linguistic, not social. Belgium was without an effective government for over a year for this reason, but the outside world didn't even notice).
Gun control is just one of them, now brought back into hard focus after another school shooting. The reasons that gun-owning Americans give for justifying their ownership tend be one (or a number) of the following:
1) to defend their property
2) for self-defence
3) to defend against the government
Let's look at those reasons from an objective point of view.
1) "Defending property". Like any other civilised state, America has a fully-functioning (and armed) police force. So there is no rational reason for a private citizen to not trust the efficiency of their armed police force in dealing with property crime. The only alternative reason for gun ownership is to "discourage" property theft by the threat of ultimate force, supported by law. However, it is unclear what preventative effect (if any) gun ownership has on frequency of property crimes; therefore any fear that gun-owners have of being victims of property crime if they didn't have a gun is more an indication of their lack of trust in the police force, and a lack of trust in society in general. It would be useful to know how many burglars are shot in the home opposed the the number of burglaries committed. I suspect the ratio is minute enough to not discourage burglary: therefore the rationale for private gun ownership is flawed.
2) "Self-defence". As with the point above, the reason for using "ultimate force", this time in a life-threatening situation, is due to a lack of trust in society, and a fear of guns in the hands of criminals. This is obvious: if a criminal wants to perpetrate a crime and thinks the victim may be armed, he will use a gun if possible. Again, it is unclear what preventative effect an armed victim has on the intent of the criminal. Most muggings and assaults take place on the street; as the average gun-owning citizen keeps their gun at home, then it renders the point of the weapon futile once they step out the door. Alternatively, they could turn suburban America into a modern "Wild West" movie, but this is what happens in most gang-infiltrated areas anyway. Therefore, the rationale is lost in either case.
3) "Defending against the government". This is the most frightening rationale of the three mentioned, because is infers that the USA is not a fully-functional nation-state. Private citizens carrying guns because they are defending themselves against the government is a situation most commonly associated with civil war. Alternatively, those people believing this are likely suffering from some form of delusional mental disorder.
Talking of "mental disorders", the USA has some of the highest usage rates of "Prozac" and associated drugs in the world. I recently watched a documentary-film called "I Am Fish-head". The film discussed the link between psychopathy (having gained an intellectual interest in understanding and spreading its awareness), lack of empathy, and the rise of emotionally-stabilising drugs like "Prozac".
Psychopathy is a psychological condition I have discussed before, and don't wish to go into the details:suffice to say it is a syndrome that affects somewhere between 1 and 5 per cent of the population, depending on how broadly you measure it. In America, that means there are at least 2.5 million psychopaths in the overall population. It is a condition that has a biological aspect to it, but is generally brought about through environmental factors in childhood. Psychopathy is (generally) a cluster of personality traits: narcissism, lack of morality, deviousness, lack of empathy/emotional emptiness.
The documentary speculated on the link between the emotion-stabilizing effect of "Prozac" and the lack of empathy in psychopaths: does the over-dependence on "Prozac" in America (pushed by pharmaceutical companies onto the medical profession) create an environment that makes psychopathy more likely in the population? It's an intriguing theory.
And in a country where so many people have access to guns, do you really want them to become emotionally empty and potentially devoid of empathy?
It's hardly any wonder that America is such a socially-dysfunctional world power. The right to life; the right to bear arms; Creationism; the "evil" of homosexuality; climate change-denial; the "War On Drugs", the list of issues in the "culture wars" is long and irreconcilable.
To outsiders in other parts of the civilised world, America will always be the great enigma: effectively two opposing societies cleft together; bound together by a shared love of the concept of freedom, torn apart by what exactly that "freedom" actually means.
It is this which divides America down the middle, effectively dividing it into two societies of opposing social beliefs: left-wing "liberals" and right-wing "conservatives". It is for this reason that Presidential elections in the USA often hang on the whim of the "swing states"; those small number of states where the social balance is finely poised between liberals and conservatives.
In this way, America can be described as probably the only continental-sized power whose opposing social ideologies could be conceivably split into two well-defined "states". As a reminder, Korea has been artificially divided by ideology since the Second World War; British India was divided into two states (India and Pakistan) based on religion. So there is plenty of historical precedence.
There is a strong argument, therefore, that America could do itself (and the world) a favour by resolving the "culture wars" issue by simply dividing into two English-speaking, socially-opposite, nation-states. On the one hand, the "liberal" majority areas of the North-east, Great Lakes region, and the West Coast; and the "conservative" majority areas everywhere else between. As as aside, this would be a far more efficient and peaceable division than that between India and Pakistan, as everyone in America knows where the "red" and "blue" states already are. The small number of "swing states" could then be decided by arbitration.
This is a tongue-in-cheek solution, but there is a very serious point here: "culture wars" are what makes America unique in the civilised world. No other country of such power and size is as perpetually divided as America is over social issues (Belgium would be the nearest European comparison, but its issues are linguistic, not social. Belgium was without an effective government for over a year for this reason, but the outside world didn't even notice).
Gun control is just one of them, now brought back into hard focus after another school shooting. The reasons that gun-owning Americans give for justifying their ownership tend be one (or a number) of the following:
1) to defend their property
2) for self-defence
3) to defend against the government
Let's look at those reasons from an objective point of view.
1) "Defending property". Like any other civilised state, America has a fully-functioning (and armed) police force. So there is no rational reason for a private citizen to not trust the efficiency of their armed police force in dealing with property crime. The only alternative reason for gun ownership is to "discourage" property theft by the threat of ultimate force, supported by law. However, it is unclear what preventative effect (if any) gun ownership has on frequency of property crimes; therefore any fear that gun-owners have of being victims of property crime if they didn't have a gun is more an indication of their lack of trust in the police force, and a lack of trust in society in general. It would be useful to know how many burglars are shot in the home opposed the the number of burglaries committed. I suspect the ratio is minute enough to not discourage burglary: therefore the rationale for private gun ownership is flawed.
2) "Self-defence". As with the point above, the reason for using "ultimate force", this time in a life-threatening situation, is due to a lack of trust in society, and a fear of guns in the hands of criminals. This is obvious: if a criminal wants to perpetrate a crime and thinks the victim may be armed, he will use a gun if possible. Again, it is unclear what preventative effect an armed victim has on the intent of the criminal. Most muggings and assaults take place on the street; as the average gun-owning citizen keeps their gun at home, then it renders the point of the weapon futile once they step out the door. Alternatively, they could turn suburban America into a modern "Wild West" movie, but this is what happens in most gang-infiltrated areas anyway. Therefore, the rationale is lost in either case.
3) "Defending against the government". This is the most frightening rationale of the three mentioned, because is infers that the USA is not a fully-functional nation-state. Private citizens carrying guns because they are defending themselves against the government is a situation most commonly associated with civil war. Alternatively, those people believing this are likely suffering from some form of delusional mental disorder.
Talking of "mental disorders", the USA has some of the highest usage rates of "Prozac" and associated drugs in the world. I recently watched a documentary-film called "I Am Fish-head". The film discussed the link between psychopathy (having gained an intellectual interest in understanding and spreading its awareness), lack of empathy, and the rise of emotionally-stabilising drugs like "Prozac".
Psychopathy is a psychological condition I have discussed before, and don't wish to go into the details:suffice to say it is a syndrome that affects somewhere between 1 and 5 per cent of the population, depending on how broadly you measure it. In America, that means there are at least 2.5 million psychopaths in the overall population. It is a condition that has a biological aspect to it, but is generally brought about through environmental factors in childhood. Psychopathy is (generally) a cluster of personality traits: narcissism, lack of morality, deviousness, lack of empathy/emotional emptiness.
The documentary speculated on the link between the emotion-stabilizing effect of "Prozac" and the lack of empathy in psychopaths: does the over-dependence on "Prozac" in America (pushed by pharmaceutical companies onto the medical profession) create an environment that makes psychopathy more likely in the population? It's an intriguing theory.
And in a country where so many people have access to guns, do you really want them to become emotionally empty and potentially devoid of empathy?
It's hardly any wonder that America is such a socially-dysfunctional world power. The right to life; the right to bear arms; Creationism; the "evil" of homosexuality; climate change-denial; the "War On Drugs", the list of issues in the "culture wars" is long and irreconcilable.
To outsiders in other parts of the civilised world, America will always be the great enigma: effectively two opposing societies cleft together; bound together by a shared love of the concept of freedom, torn apart by what exactly that "freedom" actually means.
Saturday, August 25, 2012
Why climate change is good for business: the "new normal" and capitalism
Climate change is in the news in one way or another every week, so it seems. It's more usually called "weather". But even the climate change sceptics (more on them later) cannot deny that all the signs have been there for more than a decade: the gradual melting of the ice cap around the North Pole; increasingly unstable weather conditions (more common and extreme droughts, floods, ice and blizzards); unseasonable weather.
In last five years or so, there has also been a corresponding increase in the cost of food. Fruit and vegetables have seen the greatest increases (many by more than 50% in a year), as well as staples like wheat and corn, fish and red meat. In other words, the cost of even basic food has soared comparative to salaries, while wages have remained static in the developed and developing world. This is a recipe for economic disaster for those at the bottom; it is no surprise that there have been forecasts of food riots in the Third World for some time now. The only ones unaffected are those at the top.
The effect of climate change on the world therefore has had a direct effect on the cost of all forms of food, with the result that food is now more expensive than it has been in living memory. This is the "new normal". At the same time, the same instability from climate change has had an indirect effect on the price of oil: the instability from climate change (droughts in the Middle East or any other extreme weather in an oil-producing region, for example) directly affects other factors that influence the price of oil.
Let's look back again at those climate change sceptics. Who are they? Mostly those who have interests in the energy sector (oil), and their political gimps in parliaments around the world (but mostly in the USA). It is naturally in the interests of "Big Oil" to discredit any scientific theory that might cause damage to their profit margins. Strange, then, how there has been such a huge expansion in oil exploration around the world (from the "tar sands" of Canada to the seas off the Falkland Islands), while the evidence for climate change has been piling up, year after year. And despite this, the price of oil remains stubbornly high; despite the opening-up of the oil sectors into new territories. But again, it is because the oil price is so high, that explains the rationale for the opening-up into areas that were previously seen as unworkable due to the high overheads. And the oil price is so high because of the "new normal" - instability is the "new normal".
This self-perpetuating logic is what feeds on this instability around the world. It also explains why climate change, that keeps the rationale for the instability going, is what keeps those at the top the ones who benefit the most, while they counter-intuitively argue against climate change's very existence. This is the "Double-Speak", like what I alluded to in one of my previous articles here, when I talked about the corporate oligarchy convincing the masses that their virtual slavery was in fact freedom. The climate change that they publicly disavow, is what is making their profits reach new, unsurpassed, heights. Of course, they are well aware of this, and are undoubtedly privately chuckling at this irony.
So, climate change is good for "big business", because it this instability around the world is what keeps them going. Like some kind of "James Bond"-type storyline, the multi-nationals around the world privately rub their hands with glee when there's a hurricane or drought that wipes out a nation's harvest: it means the price will sky-rocket, and the world population has no choice but to pay regardless. If they protest, and create civil instability, this creates a spike in prices elsewhere; thus the multi-nationals will profit in another way. In either case, it's a win-win situation for them, and a lose-lose for everyone else.
This is the "new normal", as our leaders are keen to tell us. That climate change will create permanent "severe weather" around the world; creating further human instability and a permanent increase in food and energy prices. Like a cartel of Bond-like villains, the CEOs of the multinationals are indifferent to the fate of humanity, as they have already "war-gamed" the various potential scenarios, ensuring that they profit from whatever chaos may ensue. This is the environmental chaos that they have publicly denied the existence of for more than twenty years, while privately ensuring that governments around the world do as little as possible to stop it.
The environmental chaos is another effect of the quasi-psychopathic attitude that "big business" has towards humanity and the environment in general. As the corporate oligarchy has created economic chaos through the financial crisis, and yet makes those at the bottom pay the biggest price (in greater job insecurity, the degradation of employment rights, and so on), it is again those at the bottom who pay the biggest price for the corporate oligarchy's public ignorance (but private glee) of the effects of climate change. Ever-increasing environmental and economic chaos is what "big business" dreams of, because it ensures near-permanent high prices, social instability, and an increasing gulf between the haves and the have-nots. The chaos created from this disastrous cocktail paralyses those at the bottom with fear, so focussed on fighting simply to survive and compete against each other that they would not have time to think who had allowed the chaos to happen (and prosper most from it) to begin with.
The "new normal" will continue to be chaos, greater human misery and poverty as long as the multi-nationals, "Big Oil", and all the others, are in control.
In last five years or so, there has also been a corresponding increase in the cost of food. Fruit and vegetables have seen the greatest increases (many by more than 50% in a year), as well as staples like wheat and corn, fish and red meat. In other words, the cost of even basic food has soared comparative to salaries, while wages have remained static in the developed and developing world. This is a recipe for economic disaster for those at the bottom; it is no surprise that there have been forecasts of food riots in the Third World for some time now. The only ones unaffected are those at the top.
The effect of climate change on the world therefore has had a direct effect on the cost of all forms of food, with the result that food is now more expensive than it has been in living memory. This is the "new normal". At the same time, the same instability from climate change has had an indirect effect on the price of oil: the instability from climate change (droughts in the Middle East or any other extreme weather in an oil-producing region, for example) directly affects other factors that influence the price of oil.
Let's look back again at those climate change sceptics. Who are they? Mostly those who have interests in the energy sector (oil), and their political gimps in parliaments around the world (but mostly in the USA). It is naturally in the interests of "Big Oil" to discredit any scientific theory that might cause damage to their profit margins. Strange, then, how there has been such a huge expansion in oil exploration around the world (from the "tar sands" of Canada to the seas off the Falkland Islands), while the evidence for climate change has been piling up, year after year. And despite this, the price of oil remains stubbornly high; despite the opening-up of the oil sectors into new territories. But again, it is because the oil price is so high, that explains the rationale for the opening-up into areas that were previously seen as unworkable due to the high overheads. And the oil price is so high because of the "new normal" - instability is the "new normal".
This self-perpetuating logic is what feeds on this instability around the world. It also explains why climate change, that keeps the rationale for the instability going, is what keeps those at the top the ones who benefit the most, while they counter-intuitively argue against climate change's very existence. This is the "Double-Speak", like what I alluded to in one of my previous articles here, when I talked about the corporate oligarchy convincing the masses that their virtual slavery was in fact freedom. The climate change that they publicly disavow, is what is making their profits reach new, unsurpassed, heights. Of course, they are well aware of this, and are undoubtedly privately chuckling at this irony.
So, climate change is good for "big business", because it this instability around the world is what keeps them going. Like some kind of "James Bond"-type storyline, the multi-nationals around the world privately rub their hands with glee when there's a hurricane or drought that wipes out a nation's harvest: it means the price will sky-rocket, and the world population has no choice but to pay regardless. If they protest, and create civil instability, this creates a spike in prices elsewhere; thus the multi-nationals will profit in another way. In either case, it's a win-win situation for them, and a lose-lose for everyone else.
This is the "new normal", as our leaders are keen to tell us. That climate change will create permanent "severe weather" around the world; creating further human instability and a permanent increase in food and energy prices. Like a cartel of Bond-like villains, the CEOs of the multinationals are indifferent to the fate of humanity, as they have already "war-gamed" the various potential scenarios, ensuring that they profit from whatever chaos may ensue. This is the environmental chaos that they have publicly denied the existence of for more than twenty years, while privately ensuring that governments around the world do as little as possible to stop it.
The environmental chaos is another effect of the quasi-psychopathic attitude that "big business" has towards humanity and the environment in general. As the corporate oligarchy has created economic chaos through the financial crisis, and yet makes those at the bottom pay the biggest price (in greater job insecurity, the degradation of employment rights, and so on), it is again those at the bottom who pay the biggest price for the corporate oligarchy's public ignorance (but private glee) of the effects of climate change. Ever-increasing environmental and economic chaos is what "big business" dreams of, because it ensures near-permanent high prices, social instability, and an increasing gulf between the haves and the have-nots. The chaos created from this disastrous cocktail paralyses those at the bottom with fear, so focussed on fighting simply to survive and compete against each other that they would not have time to think who had allowed the chaos to happen (and prosper most from it) to begin with.
The "new normal" will continue to be chaos, greater human misery and poverty as long as the multi-nationals, "Big Oil", and all the others, are in control.
Tuesday, August 21, 2012
Inside the mind of a psychopath: the psychology of Ian Brady
The appalling murder of five teenage children in Manchester by the serial killer Ian Brady and his female accomplice, Myra Hindley, are the most infamous killings in Britain in the 20th century.
A recent Channel 4 documentary, "The Endgames of a Psychopath", went some way into explaining some of the psychology of Ian Brady, and how he has remained one step ahead of his psychiatrists and advocates during his four decades of imprisonment.
Before I go more into that, and the mind games played by Ian Brady even up till his old age, one thing that marks Brady out as being distinct from other incarcerated serial killers/ psychopaths is that more than ten years ago he published a self-written book analysing the mentality of serial killers, called "The Gates Of Janus". There is an academic review of this book here. As far as I am aware, this is the only case of a convicted psychopath and serial killer publishing an "academic" book about serial killers and their psychology.
The book itself, from what the review mentioned above says, reads like a quasi-academic piece of work, albeit one that is used as a way seeing murder as a morally ambiguous action, using the thinking of Nietzche and others to justify his perspective. In reality, what this means is nonsense, and is often logically contradictory, but that's besides the point. One one side, the book is an exposition of Brady's views on morality in society (and justifications for crime and murder), while also a study of a number of other serial killers, analysed through the mind of another serial killer. What is most striking is what this tells us about Brady's self-perception: like fictional serial killer-psychiatrist Hannibal Lecter, he sees himself as someone above morality, seeing the morality in society as hypocritical, with his as the supreme intellect, able to use it to justify his own actions; and at the same time, (also like Hannibal Lecter) he claims to be altruistically using his "perspective" to help the police and authorities to understand (and therefore more easily identify) other serial killers.
The fact that he was able to convince an agency to publish such a book in the first place is worth pausing over (while the anger caused to the victims' families doesn't bear thinking about, but that is no doubt Brady's point). In his mind, Brady probably saw the fact that his book was allowed to be published as a) proof that society retains a macabre interest in serial killers, and b) that publishers have have as little conscience as he does; meanwhile, it was a way of promoting his own perspective on morality and society, and giving him even further sick gratification from the publicity. So, the publication of the book was a "victory" for Brady on many different levels.
Brady's publication of "The Gates Of Janus" was an ignominious moment in cultural history. Here was where life imitates art: like Lecter, Brady was offering his "experience" and "intellect" to the police and society to offer his "unique perspective". Of course, this is absolute nonsense in reality: like with Lecter in "Silence Of The Lambs", Brady was using it as an opportunity to seize moral and intellectual control over his moral guardians, while playing duplicitous games with authority: this true psychopath seizing any opportunity to advance his cause.
Even Brady's "justification" for the child murders has been contradictory, but again that's part of his cunning and duplicitous nature. In his book, Brady claimed that the killings were not for pleasure: the "pleasure" he gained was from the torture of the children, while the murders were to make sure him and Myra Hindley were not caught - however, Brady also has said that the murders were an "existential experience", while also criticising the moral hypocrisy of society over encouraging state sanctioned violence in the military but discouraging in other areas. Again, we simply see a psychopath playing games with his psychiatrists and watchers: this contradicting is consistent with the continual performance to keep others guessing as to Brady's real psychology and him in control; his justifications differ depending on his whim.
Brady is the nearest thing to an "extreme" living psychopath behind bars in Britain today. His biography as a child and teenager fits in with all the classic behaviour and environmental factors that are seen in developing a psychopathic character. He showed all the early signs of sadism, manipulation and cunning, being involved in petty crime till he got a "legitimate" job as a book-keeper after years in borstal and prison (though he had been intent on using this as a cover for further crimes). It was there he met Myra Hindley, an initially naive and impressionable young woman who he was able to charm and manipulate to completely change her personality and appearance, and into being an accomplice to his horrific crimes. Ever since has he shown no remorse for them.
Ever since incarceration, Brady has been playing games of control with the authorities: like the character Hannibal Lecter, he has been able to, when applicable, charm or terrify his psychiatrists and advocates. He has been able to manipulate the authorities into transferring him into more comfortable surroundings.He has been playing grotesque games of psychological control with his victims' families; by sending letters to them in a disingenuous attempt to re-gain their trust. He even convinced the authorities to allow him back to the scene of the crime in a (no doubt faked) bid to help locate the body of the final, undiscovered victim (while being able to perversely savour the moment and his secret knowledge) . He has been on hunger strike for a number of years in protest to his conditions, hoping to get transferred to Scotland (where he was born and "raised"). And now, in a final twist to the story, has evidently been able to charm and manipulate his advocate into claiming the existence of a letter written by Brady, containing the possible whereabouts of the last undiscovered victim. If this letter exists in reality, no one knows except Brady and the advocate. But now the victim's mother has died without knowing the burial site of her murdered son; no doubt as Brady intended.
Brady's final "victory" is that he has written an auto-biography, which he has given instruction to his solicitors to publish upon his death: thus Brady gets to promote his own perspective on events, espouse his "morality" and justifications further, and provide a further insult to the victims' families from beyond the grave. You really can't make this kind of stuff up.
This whole saga has the feel of some kind of twisted psychological crime thriller - something like Thomas Harris' "Red Dragon" and "Silence Of The Lambs".
But this is reality. And it's true that reality often feels more unreal than fiction.
A more general description of the psychology of psychopaths can be found here.
Other examples of serial killers who may also be called "psychopathic narcissists" can be found here.
A recent Channel 4 documentary, "The Endgames of a Psychopath", went some way into explaining some of the psychology of Ian Brady, and how he has remained one step ahead of his psychiatrists and advocates during his four decades of imprisonment.
Before I go more into that, and the mind games played by Ian Brady even up till his old age, one thing that marks Brady out as being distinct from other incarcerated serial killers/ psychopaths is that more than ten years ago he published a self-written book analysing the mentality of serial killers, called "The Gates Of Janus". There is an academic review of this book here. As far as I am aware, this is the only case of a convicted psychopath and serial killer publishing an "academic" book about serial killers and their psychology.
The book itself, from what the review mentioned above says, reads like a quasi-academic piece of work, albeit one that is used as a way seeing murder as a morally ambiguous action, using the thinking of Nietzche and others to justify his perspective. In reality, what this means is nonsense, and is often logically contradictory, but that's besides the point. One one side, the book is an exposition of Brady's views on morality in society (and justifications for crime and murder), while also a study of a number of other serial killers, analysed through the mind of another serial killer. What is most striking is what this tells us about Brady's self-perception: like fictional serial killer-psychiatrist Hannibal Lecter, he sees himself as someone above morality, seeing the morality in society as hypocritical, with his as the supreme intellect, able to use it to justify his own actions; and at the same time, (also like Hannibal Lecter) he claims to be altruistically using his "perspective" to help the police and authorities to understand (and therefore more easily identify) other serial killers.
The fact that he was able to convince an agency to publish such a book in the first place is worth pausing over (while the anger caused to the victims' families doesn't bear thinking about, but that is no doubt Brady's point). In his mind, Brady probably saw the fact that his book was allowed to be published as a) proof that society retains a macabre interest in serial killers, and b) that publishers have have as little conscience as he does; meanwhile, it was a way of promoting his own perspective on morality and society, and giving him even further sick gratification from the publicity. So, the publication of the book was a "victory" for Brady on many different levels.
Brady's publication of "The Gates Of Janus" was an ignominious moment in cultural history. Here was where life imitates art: like Lecter, Brady was offering his "experience" and "intellect" to the police and society to offer his "unique perspective". Of course, this is absolute nonsense in reality: like with Lecter in "Silence Of The Lambs", Brady was using it as an opportunity to seize moral and intellectual control over his moral guardians, while playing duplicitous games with authority: this true psychopath seizing any opportunity to advance his cause.
Even Brady's "justification" for the child murders has been contradictory, but again that's part of his cunning and duplicitous nature. In his book, Brady claimed that the killings were not for pleasure: the "pleasure" he gained was from the torture of the children, while the murders were to make sure him and Myra Hindley were not caught - however, Brady also has said that the murders were an "existential experience", while also criticising the moral hypocrisy of society over encouraging state sanctioned violence in the military but discouraging in other areas. Again, we simply see a psychopath playing games with his psychiatrists and watchers: this contradicting is consistent with the continual performance to keep others guessing as to Brady's real psychology and him in control; his justifications differ depending on his whim.
Brady is the nearest thing to an "extreme" living psychopath behind bars in Britain today. His biography as a child and teenager fits in with all the classic behaviour and environmental factors that are seen in developing a psychopathic character. He showed all the early signs of sadism, manipulation and cunning, being involved in petty crime till he got a "legitimate" job as a book-keeper after years in borstal and prison (though he had been intent on using this as a cover for further crimes). It was there he met Myra Hindley, an initially naive and impressionable young woman who he was able to charm and manipulate to completely change her personality and appearance, and into being an accomplice to his horrific crimes. Ever since has he shown no remorse for them.
Ever since incarceration, Brady has been playing games of control with the authorities: like the character Hannibal Lecter, he has been able to, when applicable, charm or terrify his psychiatrists and advocates. He has been able to manipulate the authorities into transferring him into more comfortable surroundings.He has been playing grotesque games of psychological control with his victims' families; by sending letters to them in a disingenuous attempt to re-gain their trust. He even convinced the authorities to allow him back to the scene of the crime in a (no doubt faked) bid to help locate the body of the final, undiscovered victim (while being able to perversely savour the moment and his secret knowledge) . He has been on hunger strike for a number of years in protest to his conditions, hoping to get transferred to Scotland (where he was born and "raised"). And now, in a final twist to the story, has evidently been able to charm and manipulate his advocate into claiming the existence of a letter written by Brady, containing the possible whereabouts of the last undiscovered victim. If this letter exists in reality, no one knows except Brady and the advocate. But now the victim's mother has died without knowing the burial site of her murdered son; no doubt as Brady intended.
Brady's final "victory" is that he has written an auto-biography, which he has given instruction to his solicitors to publish upon his death: thus Brady gets to promote his own perspective on events, espouse his "morality" and justifications further, and provide a further insult to the victims' families from beyond the grave. You really can't make this kind of stuff up.
This whole saga has the feel of some kind of twisted psychological crime thriller - something like Thomas Harris' "Red Dragon" and "Silence Of The Lambs".
But this is reality. And it's true that reality often feels more unreal than fiction.
A more general description of the psychology of psychopaths can be found here.
Other examples of serial killers who may also be called "psychopathic narcissists" can be found here.
Monday, August 20, 2012
A philosophy for life
- Live life according to nature.
- Live life according to reason.
- Understand what is good, bad and what does not matter.
- See isolation as the opportunity for self-improvement; every moment as a moment to expand your mind and evolve, as is your nature.
- Apply reason to every possible circumstance – a transaction of goods and services, a moral decision – and take a meaningful outcome.
- The less you control, the freer you become. The liberated man is the man freed of all encumbancies, material and emotional.
- Understand your place in nature. You are but one part of an unfathomably huge organism that is the universe; and you yourself are an organism made of an unfathomably huge number of other organisms. You cannot control the things in the universe, in nature; but you can control how you act upon them. And how you act, if you act with reason, can make you a better person.
- Consider the men that have died with great wealth, but are lacking in true happiness. They might think they have wealth before them, but in their heart, they are far poorer than a joyful bum.
- If you cannot control it, then it does not matter – be indifferent to the indifferent things in life. You gain things, you lose things, circumstances change. Life is fickle, but with reason you can learn to ride circumstance to your better nature. Make the most of circumstance.
- Your senses act on impulse; your mind acts on reason. Use your mind at every point.
- Even when you are gone, you will still be a continual part of nature.
- To be happy, all you need is a well-reasoned mind.
- Remember: possessions have no memory. When you lose them they do not pity their lost owner, or any of their owners. They do not try to find you when you misplace them. Anything above self-sustainance is mere luxury, and wasteful. To be self-sufficient is to act in accordance with nature. Have doubt on the artificial world – of materials, of presumed ethics, of pleasures. Seek your life through nature, and real value, and joy, will come automatically.
- Reason all possibilities: drink if you are thirsty, eat if you are hungry, buy things if you need them. But understand, a human only needs these few things to survive. Your mind may always be hungry for more – knowledge is a good thing. But only commit action to something if it benefits your body and mind. Excess, although pleasurable, is not beneficial: in the long – term, it can shorten your life. Money is only good if it is necessary to the functioning of your body and mind. But money is also the path to excess and wastefulness. Waste should be your enemy – avoid it at every turn. Be content to live by your needs, not your desires. You live for reason, and reason should be your guide.
- Have you ever seen the look on someone’s face when they are eating or drinking? All expression is lost; what they are doing becomes an act of instinct, without thought or emotion. People think that pleasure is meant to be gained from sustainance, but it is merely an act of nature – pleasure is incidental. And when people gorge themselves on food and drink, the supposed pleasureable act is lost to their face – so why do it at all?
- Being indifferent does not mean not caring; it means not worrying or letting things out of your hands overly concern or distract you. Wealth is preferable to poverty, and good health is better than illness – but these things are constantly changing in nature. If you are fortunate to have wealth then do not squander it on useless things, but put it to good reason. But, conversely, do not complain when wealth deserts you – your wealth is only temporary. You will die one day, but your wealth and possesions can be used by anyone and outlive you. Do not let the indifferent rule your life – for your life will also become indifferent; a non-entity to history, quickly forgotten, and wasted. Put your life not to indifferent matters, but to reason. Put your life to good use, for your life is less than the blink of an eye to the constant stream of time. Perform good actions, not for the sake of your reputation or vanity, but because good actions would be returned onto you – bad actions would have precisely the same effect. If you dislike people, people will dislike you back. A person that commits bad acts, even when they have good fortune, always lives in fear – a good person always lives with a clear conscience.
- People sweat, worry and crave for artificial and unnecessary desires of their own making. In an office job, it is impossible to avoid the nature of “office politics”: the constant power play between workers as they each try to get one better than the other. It’s corrosive and damaging – and for what? A little more money, to buy a better car or a bigger house, or an expensive sofa. Why can’t these people just be happy with their natural faculties and needs? The things they become so corrosive over, begin to corrode their own natural freedoms, so that they feel unable to live without these pointless and irrelevant things. Then they die, with all these things around them, trophies of their “success”, thinking they were “winners”, when deep down they know they are unhappy. Why? Because natural needs are limited to nature, but artificial needs are infinite.
- Always test yourself and question the way of the world. Only by testing will you find the path to true knowledge and the ultimate truth. Complacency of knowledge and the truth leads to ignorance. Ignorance should be your enemy if you are to find the path to true reason. Never accept a view unless it is vindicated by true reason and meaning.
- Look around and consider the people you see. As long as their is greed in the world, suffering exists elsewhere: this state is against nature, for greed is not a natural act, and it goes against the principle of reason. This state becomes even more unnecessary and evil when you consider the levels of hardship that must exist in order to support the levels of greed. You can therefore imply that nature could easily provide for the human condition, were people able to exist on reason. For all the greed would be gone, and all needs would be satisfied.
- Understand that gold is worthless, success is vanity – distrust your senses and instincts.
Sunday, August 19, 2012
The "revolution" that never happened: the London Riots of 2011, and the Russian Revolution of 1905
Last month I wrote here about the root causes of the riots that swept through London and England in general over five days in August, 2011.
I also recently read an excellent article in "Newsweek" here, assessing the effect (or lack of) that the riots have had on British psyche.
What were "the riots"? We can't assess their effect if we still haven't figured out why they happened. Prime Minister David Cameron said it was an outbreak of "criminality, pure and simple". In other words, there's no explanation necessary, because it was just criminal opportunism.
To an extent, he is is right that there was an element of opportunism: it was the protests and riots in Tottenham that gave the "opportunity" for anarchy to spontaneously break out across London and England in general. Some people seemed to have suddenly realised that if too many break the law at the same time (through looting and violence), then the justice system is incapable of stopping them.
To the extent that the riots represented an "insurrection", as Darcus Howe called it, this was a "revolution" of anarchy. There was no plan, no agenda - looting was the main activity, along with violence against the police. Everyone involved in the riots was getting involved either for their own personal gain, or to "settle scores" with the police. Order was restored only after a mass mobilisation of the police; justice was only restored after draconian and excessive punishments for meted out on those caught. So "the riots" were a classic case of spontaneous anarchy, taking advantage of a specific situation.
One historical comparison that bears considering is the 1905 Russian revolution; not in the sense that there were very many similarities (there are few), but it's worth considering for the underlying causes; the form of the "revolution"; and the aftermath, or legacy it left.
The 1905 Russian revolution is considered a side-show compared to that in 1917, but in 1905, the Tsarist government faced virtual anarchy in many parts of the empire for a prolonged period of time. The prime spark was the defeat to Japan in the Russo-Japanese War, that caused a massive shell-shock to the establishment and the reputation of the conservative and authoritarian government. With respect for the government dissolved, various "revolutionary-terrorist" groups took advantage of the vacuum of perceived authority to wreak havoc and chaos across the empire: mass strikes were the most common method, though there were many political assassinations, some soldiers also mutinied, and this encouraged other disgruntled parts of society (such as peasants) to try and seize land, or just settle old scores. This was also where the Bolsheviks had their first stab at power, with Stalin playing his own role as mischief-maker in the Caucasus, and Russia's source of oil, Baku.
The government eventually responded, as an authoritarian regime does, with a massive show of power to crush the "revolution" - though much of the "revolution" was anarchy and criminal opportunism disguised behind ideology. The Tsar made some democratic concessions by granting a parliament, but the longer legacy, as we know, was the 1917 Bolshevik revolution - because the Tsar learned too little from the experience of 1905.
Zooming forward to 2011, we see a similar pattern of anarchy stemming from opportunism, but there are still underlying issues like there were in Russia in 1905. As in Russia, the UK has a corrupt establishment (of bankers and a corporate oligarchy) that disguises its self-preservation behind a smokescreen of decency and traditional values, but using the full force of the law to protect its interests if it feels threatened. It preaches these same traditional values (that it itself ignores) to the wider population, while privately being indifferent to their fate, and creating a situation that allows them to prosper but slowly bleeds the "lower orders" white.
Yes, Britain is a "multi-party democracy", but we also are the only Western power that still has a fully-unelected upper house, an electoral system that perpetuates a static political establishment of the same two parties (as has existed for the last hundred years); a value system that discourages a challenging of the status quo; and an economic system that has created the most unequal society in the West, except for the USA (which also has a very similar system).
So, put into that context, what's not for a self-respecting, ordinary British person to dislike? Yes, on the surface, the UK is a "civilised" country; our reputation abroad has come from the British culture that we have fed to the world. But this is a rose-tinted illusion that masks the underlying reality, as I described above.
From the 2011 riots, the British government learned nothing; because it was not listening, and didn't want to listen - just like the Russian Tsar in 1905. All the British government (and the media) wanted to say, just like in Russia in 1905, was that this "anarchy" was about people losing respect for authority and other people. The only way to deal with this was through the iron fist of justice. A year on from the 2011 riots, the London Olympics has dissolved the pessimism that had existed in society, at least temporarily. This has had the effect of distracting people from the underlying issues, but changes nothing.
The fact that the "anarchy" by some of the opportunistic "lower orders" was simply a mirror for the much larger "corrupt anarchy" that existed in the establishment was either forgotten or intentionally ignored: the disproportionate response of the establishment and judiciary to the riots was a response out of existential fear, to make sure that the "lower orders" would not dare to challenge the "moral code" that perpetuates their existence. But as I suggested in my article about the riots last month, if there is no morality at the top, then why should anyone lower down have any?
The riots of 2011 were a damning indictment of the moral collapse and corruption of British society; but more precisely, like the "Arab Spring" of last year, this was opportunism. Neither the "Arab Spring", nor the 2011 riots were predicted by the experts; and yet, the signs were all there under the surface - they just needed a spark. While the "Arab Spring" was about introducing Western-style democracy, the 2011 riots were about a more primeval and selfish instinct that had been unwittingly encouraged in the British psyche - if those at the top are living it large and ignoring the rules, then why not me? What makes those at the top "better" than the rest of us? If the London riots displayed an uglier side of British society, it was because British society had allowed itself to become ugly; because the establishment is ugly.
It took the Russians twelve years to make the Tsarist government pay the price for their ignorance and arrogance in 1905. How long will it take the British people to do the same thing after the "revolution" of 2011?
I also recently read an excellent article in "Newsweek" here, assessing the effect (or lack of) that the riots have had on British psyche.
What were "the riots"? We can't assess their effect if we still haven't figured out why they happened. Prime Minister David Cameron said it was an outbreak of "criminality, pure and simple". In other words, there's no explanation necessary, because it was just criminal opportunism.
To an extent, he is is right that there was an element of opportunism: it was the protests and riots in Tottenham that gave the "opportunity" for anarchy to spontaneously break out across London and England in general. Some people seemed to have suddenly realised that if too many break the law at the same time (through looting and violence), then the justice system is incapable of stopping them.
To the extent that the riots represented an "insurrection", as Darcus Howe called it, this was a "revolution" of anarchy. There was no plan, no agenda - looting was the main activity, along with violence against the police. Everyone involved in the riots was getting involved either for their own personal gain, or to "settle scores" with the police. Order was restored only after a mass mobilisation of the police; justice was only restored after draconian and excessive punishments for meted out on those caught. So "the riots" were a classic case of spontaneous anarchy, taking advantage of a specific situation.
One historical comparison that bears considering is the 1905 Russian revolution; not in the sense that there were very many similarities (there are few), but it's worth considering for the underlying causes; the form of the "revolution"; and the aftermath, or legacy it left.
The 1905 Russian revolution is considered a side-show compared to that in 1917, but in 1905, the Tsarist government faced virtual anarchy in many parts of the empire for a prolonged period of time. The prime spark was the defeat to Japan in the Russo-Japanese War, that caused a massive shell-shock to the establishment and the reputation of the conservative and authoritarian government. With respect for the government dissolved, various "revolutionary-terrorist" groups took advantage of the vacuum of perceived authority to wreak havoc and chaos across the empire: mass strikes were the most common method, though there were many political assassinations, some soldiers also mutinied, and this encouraged other disgruntled parts of society (such as peasants) to try and seize land, or just settle old scores. This was also where the Bolsheviks had their first stab at power, with Stalin playing his own role as mischief-maker in the Caucasus, and Russia's source of oil, Baku.
The government eventually responded, as an authoritarian regime does, with a massive show of power to crush the "revolution" - though much of the "revolution" was anarchy and criminal opportunism disguised behind ideology. The Tsar made some democratic concessions by granting a parliament, but the longer legacy, as we know, was the 1917 Bolshevik revolution - because the Tsar learned too little from the experience of 1905.
Zooming forward to 2011, we see a similar pattern of anarchy stemming from opportunism, but there are still underlying issues like there were in Russia in 1905. As in Russia, the UK has a corrupt establishment (of bankers and a corporate oligarchy) that disguises its self-preservation behind a smokescreen of decency and traditional values, but using the full force of the law to protect its interests if it feels threatened. It preaches these same traditional values (that it itself ignores) to the wider population, while privately being indifferent to their fate, and creating a situation that allows them to prosper but slowly bleeds the "lower orders" white.
Yes, Britain is a "multi-party democracy", but we also are the only Western power that still has a fully-unelected upper house, an electoral system that perpetuates a static political establishment of the same two parties (as has existed for the last hundred years); a value system that discourages a challenging of the status quo; and an economic system that has created the most unequal society in the West, except for the USA (which also has a very similar system).
So, put into that context, what's not for a self-respecting, ordinary British person to dislike? Yes, on the surface, the UK is a "civilised" country; our reputation abroad has come from the British culture that we have fed to the world. But this is a rose-tinted illusion that masks the underlying reality, as I described above.
From the 2011 riots, the British government learned nothing; because it was not listening, and didn't want to listen - just like the Russian Tsar in 1905. All the British government (and the media) wanted to say, just like in Russia in 1905, was that this "anarchy" was about people losing respect for authority and other people. The only way to deal with this was through the iron fist of justice. A year on from the 2011 riots, the London Olympics has dissolved the pessimism that had existed in society, at least temporarily. This has had the effect of distracting people from the underlying issues, but changes nothing.
The fact that the "anarchy" by some of the opportunistic "lower orders" was simply a mirror for the much larger "corrupt anarchy" that existed in the establishment was either forgotten or intentionally ignored: the disproportionate response of the establishment and judiciary to the riots was a response out of existential fear, to make sure that the "lower orders" would not dare to challenge the "moral code" that perpetuates their existence. But as I suggested in my article about the riots last month, if there is no morality at the top, then why should anyone lower down have any?
The riots of 2011 were a damning indictment of the moral collapse and corruption of British society; but more precisely, like the "Arab Spring" of last year, this was opportunism. Neither the "Arab Spring", nor the 2011 riots were predicted by the experts; and yet, the signs were all there under the surface - they just needed a spark. While the "Arab Spring" was about introducing Western-style democracy, the 2011 riots were about a more primeval and selfish instinct that had been unwittingly encouraged in the British psyche - if those at the top are living it large and ignoring the rules, then why not me? What makes those at the top "better" than the rest of us? If the London riots displayed an uglier side of British society, it was because British society had allowed itself to become ugly; because the establishment is ugly.
It took the Russians twelve years to make the Tsarist government pay the price for their ignorance and arrogance in 1905. How long will it take the British people to do the same thing after the "revolution" of 2011?
The Soviet Union was wasted on the Russians; the British would've done it better!
I remember reading Bill Bryson's "Notes From A Small Island" when I was younger. One of the excellent and pointed observations that Bryson made about the UK and the British is he thought that the British have a national psyche that fits in well (better than in other nations) to the psychology necessary for Communism to function.
In other words, he thought the British would've made a "better job" of Communism working properly, as intended. It was a pity, so Bryson thought, that Communism got its revolution in Russia - the British would've made sure it was done properly. Furthermore, behaviour that the British think of their national virtues are exactly the same mentality needed for Communism to flourish.
He mentions a few points to support his theory: that the British are fastidious in following the rules; looking to follow advice from "authority figures" (people in uniform, a tannoy announcement, etc.), is natural to them; the British sense of "making do" is second nature; "mustn't grumble"; the British are easily pleased by things other nations think of as ordinary (like a simple cup of tea sending them into raptures of joy); the modest culinary tradition of Britain lends itself to modest expectations of life in general; the British love of queueing; and so on.
These are Bryson's thoughts; I'd like to indulge a thought experiment and continue this line of thinking. Because I think Bryson was bang on the money in describing the British psyche: in many ways, the British are inadvertent Communist "thought-criminals". Even though Communism has never worked in any country it was implemented in, there is a sense that had the revolution ever come to Britain, we would have made a good job of it; because we're British.
Britain after WW2 was a quasi-Socialist state, until the '70s. The British love of the NHS is undiminished, even well into the 21st century; there is nostalgia for the "good old days" when things in life were more certain.
The British as a nation have many positive and negative characteristics. What is interesting is that those characteristics (either positive or negative) are also commonly found in people and conditions that are in Communism. You can check out British people's fifty most common characteristics here.
Bill Bryson said, jokingly, that the British dress like East Germans. What he means is that the average Briton has little or no dress sense. The British, on the whole, wear clothes for comfort rather than style. Although this has changed over the last twenty years, it's still more than true on a general level: rather than going to Camden Town, or the fashionable parts of cities, but go to a small provincial town, and you'll see people who are not in the slightest bothered about how they look; in some towns, "shell suits" are still being worn; plenty of people still wear shapeless things that belong in the bin. I rest my case.
Then there's the food, and British people's attitude towards it. British food can be very enjoyable and tasty, but ordinary British food is very bland for foreign palates. British people see food in a functional way; enjoyment is secondary. Conversely (but also consequently), because Britons have such a limited range of flavours in their food culture, anything slightly tasty can send them into raptures. This sense of small things making people disproportionately happy is what a Communist regime would kill for.
Then there's the British virtue of "making do". Any Communist government would love to have a population whose natural state is "making do": it makes their job easier if the population naturally makes a virtue of getting by through limited means.
Whenever I've been to "Argos", I've often thought "this is what Britain would be like under Communism". The catalogue shop, a mecca for those of limited financial means, is organised like a shop from government central planning: go to the catalogue and check if its in stock; go and take your ticket to queue for the cashier to pay; take your receipt to wait for your order; pick up your order from the counter. The whole operation is like something from Minsk in 1979; and yet, the people all accept this process with often stoic calm. It's a Communist government's dream.
Also, there are the "pound shops"and "charity shops" that proliferate in working-class suburbs and small towns, and exist in such numbers in no other country in the world (as well as car boot sales). This is another part of the British psyche - another symptom of the concept of "making do", the second-hand culture that would normally exist only in wartime or austerity, but exists as second nature in Britain. It's as though British people are "closet Communists" in denial. The British seem to have an odd fetish for making the most of the least; a national psyche built on frugality and self-denial.
This laudable behaviour, the sense of selflessness and consideration of others, is what makes the British so unique, as well as eccentric (compared to other nations). This puts more meat on the bones of Bryson's thesis. There are also the less laudable parts of British behaviour which people will recognise when I mention them, that fit in with people living under Communism.
The British love to moan, but hate complaining. What I mean is, they love a "good nag" to their relative, friend or neighbour, but hate public confrontations. They would rather eat tasteless, watery soup, and say "The soup's lovely!" when asked by the staff, rather than complain for poor service.
Apart from this habit (which you would normally find in people living under totalitarian regimes), the British also have a liking for nosiness. Called "twitching curtains" in the "50 most common characteristics" this is one of the more unpleasant parts of British behaviour. No wonder then, that Britain has the highest rate of surveillance in the world, if nosiness is considered the norm!
Then there's enjoying other people's misfortune (number 14 on the list). Does this mean that if Britain were a Communist state, it would encourage people to "do one over" on people they didn't like? Let's not get tempted!
There's also "stiff upper lip" - a euphemism for being unable to express our feelings; linked to that is when we do the opposite - not saying what we mean. Civil-service-speak is also our second nature, as well as being overly polite.
So you get the idea. Combining the positive and negative characteristics of the British, you get the feeling that Communism is therefore our natural psychological state, seeing as so much of it matches to what you would usually find in people living under a Communist regime.
Except that we're not living in a Communist regime. And why is that? Maybe "Communism" never grew to greater popular support because the British already have "Communism" living inside their heads much of the time - so why bother putting into practise what is second nature anyway?
If you want to experience what Britain would be like under Communism, you don't need to go very far to experience it. Go to the local charity shop; to "Argos"; watch DIY programmes on TV; above all, go to a traditional British seaside resort (preferably one that hasn't changed in the last twenty years; there are many of them, to experience restaurants where "customer service" and "tasty food" are unknown concepts); or, even better, the "Adelphi" Hotel in Liverpool - said to be the worst hotel in the UK, though it still has an official "four star" rating.
Communism exists in Britain everywhere; you just have to know what you're looking for.
In other words, he thought the British would've made a "better job" of Communism working properly, as intended. It was a pity, so Bryson thought, that Communism got its revolution in Russia - the British would've made sure it was done properly. Furthermore, behaviour that the British think of their national virtues are exactly the same mentality needed for Communism to flourish.
He mentions a few points to support his theory: that the British are fastidious in following the rules; looking to follow advice from "authority figures" (people in uniform, a tannoy announcement, etc.), is natural to them; the British sense of "making do" is second nature; "mustn't grumble"; the British are easily pleased by things other nations think of as ordinary (like a simple cup of tea sending them into raptures of joy); the modest culinary tradition of Britain lends itself to modest expectations of life in general; the British love of queueing; and so on.
These are Bryson's thoughts; I'd like to indulge a thought experiment and continue this line of thinking. Because I think Bryson was bang on the money in describing the British psyche: in many ways, the British are inadvertent Communist "thought-criminals". Even though Communism has never worked in any country it was implemented in, there is a sense that had the revolution ever come to Britain, we would have made a good job of it; because we're British.
Britain after WW2 was a quasi-Socialist state, until the '70s. The British love of the NHS is undiminished, even well into the 21st century; there is nostalgia for the "good old days" when things in life were more certain.
The British as a nation have many positive and negative characteristics. What is interesting is that those characteristics (either positive or negative) are also commonly found in people and conditions that are in Communism. You can check out British people's fifty most common characteristics here.
Bill Bryson said, jokingly, that the British dress like East Germans. What he means is that the average Briton has little or no dress sense. The British, on the whole, wear clothes for comfort rather than style. Although this has changed over the last twenty years, it's still more than true on a general level: rather than going to Camden Town, or the fashionable parts of cities, but go to a small provincial town, and you'll see people who are not in the slightest bothered about how they look; in some towns, "shell suits" are still being worn; plenty of people still wear shapeless things that belong in the bin. I rest my case.
Then there's the food, and British people's attitude towards it. British food can be very enjoyable and tasty, but ordinary British food is very bland for foreign palates. British people see food in a functional way; enjoyment is secondary. Conversely (but also consequently), because Britons have such a limited range of flavours in their food culture, anything slightly tasty can send them into raptures. This sense of small things making people disproportionately happy is what a Communist regime would kill for.
Then there's the British virtue of "making do". Any Communist government would love to have a population whose natural state is "making do": it makes their job easier if the population naturally makes a virtue of getting by through limited means.
Whenever I've been to "Argos", I've often thought "this is what Britain would be like under Communism". The catalogue shop, a mecca for those of limited financial means, is organised like a shop from government central planning: go to the catalogue and check if its in stock; go and take your ticket to queue for the cashier to pay; take your receipt to wait for your order; pick up your order from the counter. The whole operation is like something from Minsk in 1979; and yet, the people all accept this process with often stoic calm. It's a Communist government's dream.
Also, there are the "pound shops"and "charity shops" that proliferate in working-class suburbs and small towns, and exist in such numbers in no other country in the world (as well as car boot sales). This is another part of the British psyche - another symptom of the concept of "making do", the second-hand culture that would normally exist only in wartime or austerity, but exists as second nature in Britain. It's as though British people are "closet Communists" in denial. The British seem to have an odd fetish for making the most of the least; a national psyche built on frugality and self-denial.
This laudable behaviour, the sense of selflessness and consideration of others, is what makes the British so unique, as well as eccentric (compared to other nations). This puts more meat on the bones of Bryson's thesis. There are also the less laudable parts of British behaviour which people will recognise when I mention them, that fit in with people living under Communism.
The British love to moan, but hate complaining. What I mean is, they love a "good nag" to their relative, friend or neighbour, but hate public confrontations. They would rather eat tasteless, watery soup, and say "The soup's lovely!" when asked by the staff, rather than complain for poor service.
Apart from this habit (which you would normally find in people living under totalitarian regimes), the British also have a liking for nosiness. Called "twitching curtains" in the "50 most common characteristics" this is one of the more unpleasant parts of British behaviour. No wonder then, that Britain has the highest rate of surveillance in the world, if nosiness is considered the norm!
Then there's enjoying other people's misfortune (number 14 on the list). Does this mean that if Britain were a Communist state, it would encourage people to "do one over" on people they didn't like? Let's not get tempted!
There's also "stiff upper lip" - a euphemism for being unable to express our feelings; linked to that is when we do the opposite - not saying what we mean. Civil-service-speak is also our second nature, as well as being overly polite.
So you get the idea. Combining the positive and negative characteristics of the British, you get the feeling that Communism is therefore our natural psychological state, seeing as so much of it matches to what you would usually find in people living under a Communist regime.
Except that we're not living in a Communist regime. And why is that? Maybe "Communism" never grew to greater popular support because the British already have "Communism" living inside their heads much of the time - so why bother putting into practise what is second nature anyway?
If you want to experience what Britain would be like under Communism, you don't need to go very far to experience it. Go to the local charity shop; to "Argos"; watch DIY programmes on TV; above all, go to a traditional British seaside resort (preferably one that hasn't changed in the last twenty years; there are many of them, to experience restaurants where "customer service" and "tasty food" are unknown concepts); or, even better, the "Adelphi" Hotel in Liverpool - said to be the worst hotel in the UK, though it still has an official "four star" rating.
Communism exists in Britain everywhere; you just have to know what you're looking for.
Saturday, August 11, 2012
Boris for PM? The bandwagon rolls on and on...
Since I wrote my last article here about Boris Johnson's ultimate ambition, there is even more evidence in the last week that adds weight to the bandwagon, rolling on to an almost self-fulfilling prophecy.
First of all, there are the quotes from the horses mouth. Boris's definitive denials of upstaging Cameron are told to the media with a an evident knowing twinkle in the eye. Then, there's the planned meeting to the Conservative 1922 Committee next month, where Boris will espouse his reasoning for his success in London, and what the rest of the Conservative Parliamentary Party can learn - while no doubt allowing Boris an opportunity to network and gain more influence and popular support. Thirdly, Boris is planning a "world tour" as London Mayor after the Olympics; ostensibly to promote foreign investment in London, but also to give his persona a bigger stage and wider global recognition, like other "pop star" politicians such as Barack Obama. And lastly, and most extraordinarily, even David Cameron himself admitted to Boris's special talents, admitting that it was justifiable for someone like him to want to have the highest ambitions.
This last point, although not commented on heavily in the media, to me appears very telling. It is hard to think of any other sitting head of government being so openly charitable to the main rival and heir apparent to his position, especially from his own party.
It tells me that either a) Cameron privately knows that he's doomed to a successful leadership challenge at some point, and is being a "good sport" by doing what he can to make it an orderly transition, or b) he's been given a quiet word by senior figures in his party to tell him he's doomed, and thus quietly facilitate an orderly transition, or c) he's honestly speaking his mind simply because he's a political amateur and doesn't think about the implications of what he's saying. Any of these three possibilities are telling - the reality may a combination of the three: that Cameron has been hopelessly out-played by events and the duplicitous cunning of Boris.
I wrote about the reasons for Boris' popularity on the streets before. This is also well-explained in another article here, and the reasons why Labour have just cause to be worried (which I also mentioned previously) are explained in this other article here. There is also the darker side to Boris's personality, which is well-hidden under the public, bumbling, eccentric maverick persona. One of his former colleagues called him "shallow, duplicitous, selfish, sociopathic, scheming"; and again, Boris in his own words said "as I have discovered myself, there are no disasters, only opportunities. And, indeed, opportunities for fresh disasters".
There is also the impression given that Boris doesn't have a "plan", has no agenda or political platform, other than his own self-promotion. Like the anarchic character from Batman, "The Joker", Boris just does things, says whatever comes to his mind at that moment, and sees what will happen next. Boris has no clear convictions; he has few real "friends", so insiders say, as he drops interest in them when they are no longer useful to him. He is able to get away with this abject lack of loyalty through his charming personality; his affable, bumbling persona that makes people laugh. He disarms his critics and opponents through a well-worked mask of harmless fun. This is also has the additional benefit of making his rivals (such as the Labour Party when competing in the mayoral elections, or Cameron when assessing his threat to his position) under-estimate his capabilities.
Boris is not stupid; he simply cultivates a persona that lulls his rivals into a false sense of security. With a record as a serial adulterer, as well as the wealth of anecdotal evidence that he can be ruthless with his critics, as well as promoting loyalists at the expense of expertise in the mayoralty, there is therefore an increasing stockpile of evidence that suggests Boris would score highly on the "psychopath check-list".
Clearly, Boris is a smart man and a cunning and ruthless politician, which he hides under a mask of clownish buffoonery. Where does the acting stop, and the "real" Boris begin? Who is the "real" Boris? When he was an MP he was well-known for doing very little in parliament. This tells us he was either lazy, or that he felt the job was beneath him. Either of those being true, this is not a good sign. If it is the first, it tells us he is irresponsible; if it is the second, it tells us he is arrogant. And there have been stories in the news while he's been Mayor of London that suggest the same kind of behaviour continues unabated, on an even larger stage.
While saying publicly that he intends to serve his full term as mayor come what may, everyone knows the disingenuous reality: he is aiming for the top job. Seeing Cameron flailing as PM, the Conservatives, looking around for other inspiration before the next general election, Boris sees his opportunity. His sense of timing is perfect; no doubt as he intended. He knew that being London Mayor during the Olympics would be a great opportunity to show off his unique brand of charisma to a wider audience, while not actually having to be really accountable for anything too important , except for "Boris Bikes", and making the occasional remark about transport, social issues and policing. Boris allowing himself to become London Mayor in 2008 was a great strategic decision, politically, assuming he could be re-elected again so to be mayor in time for the Olympics. All he had to do was bide his time and wait for the right moment.
And so the Boris bandwagon continues. Yes, to those of sane political minds, the prospect of Boris as PM may seem implausible, even ridiculous. But that's precisely what Boris would want you to think! It may be implausible, but looking more and more possible. It may seem ridiculous, but it may soon become inevitable, if events turn right.
The "blonde bombshell" does have an increasing momentum. Don't forget that in times of economic crisis, when the political establishment appears muddled by events, and stifled in a straight-jacket of conventional wisdom, it is the unconventional charismatic mavericks that can find their moment to upstage their rivals. It takes a set of specific circumstances for demagogues to come to power; but those circumstances already exist in the UK today. All it takes is the right man.
And there is only one "Boris".
First of all, there are the quotes from the horses mouth. Boris's definitive denials of upstaging Cameron are told to the media with a an evident knowing twinkle in the eye. Then, there's the planned meeting to the Conservative 1922 Committee next month, where Boris will espouse his reasoning for his success in London, and what the rest of the Conservative Parliamentary Party can learn - while no doubt allowing Boris an opportunity to network and gain more influence and popular support. Thirdly, Boris is planning a "world tour" as London Mayor after the Olympics; ostensibly to promote foreign investment in London, but also to give his persona a bigger stage and wider global recognition, like other "pop star" politicians such as Barack Obama. And lastly, and most extraordinarily, even David Cameron himself admitted to Boris's special talents, admitting that it was justifiable for someone like him to want to have the highest ambitions.
This last point, although not commented on heavily in the media, to me appears very telling. It is hard to think of any other sitting head of government being so openly charitable to the main rival and heir apparent to his position, especially from his own party.
It tells me that either a) Cameron privately knows that he's doomed to a successful leadership challenge at some point, and is being a "good sport" by doing what he can to make it an orderly transition, or b) he's been given a quiet word by senior figures in his party to tell him he's doomed, and thus quietly facilitate an orderly transition, or c) he's honestly speaking his mind simply because he's a political amateur and doesn't think about the implications of what he's saying. Any of these three possibilities are telling - the reality may a combination of the three: that Cameron has been hopelessly out-played by events and the duplicitous cunning of Boris.
I wrote about the reasons for Boris' popularity on the streets before. This is also well-explained in another article here, and the reasons why Labour have just cause to be worried (which I also mentioned previously) are explained in this other article here. There is also the darker side to Boris's personality, which is well-hidden under the public, bumbling, eccentric maverick persona. One of his former colleagues called him "shallow, duplicitous, selfish, sociopathic, scheming"; and again, Boris in his own words said "as I have discovered myself, there are no disasters, only opportunities. And, indeed, opportunities for fresh disasters".
There is also the impression given that Boris doesn't have a "plan", has no agenda or political platform, other than his own self-promotion. Like the anarchic character from Batman, "The Joker", Boris just does things, says whatever comes to his mind at that moment, and sees what will happen next. Boris has no clear convictions; he has few real "friends", so insiders say, as he drops interest in them when they are no longer useful to him. He is able to get away with this abject lack of loyalty through his charming personality; his affable, bumbling persona that makes people laugh. He disarms his critics and opponents through a well-worked mask of harmless fun. This is also has the additional benefit of making his rivals (such as the Labour Party when competing in the mayoral elections, or Cameron when assessing his threat to his position) under-estimate his capabilities.
Boris is not stupid; he simply cultivates a persona that lulls his rivals into a false sense of security. With a record as a serial adulterer, as well as the wealth of anecdotal evidence that he can be ruthless with his critics, as well as promoting loyalists at the expense of expertise in the mayoralty, there is therefore an increasing stockpile of evidence that suggests Boris would score highly on the "psychopath check-list".
Clearly, Boris is a smart man and a cunning and ruthless politician, which he hides under a mask of clownish buffoonery. Where does the acting stop, and the "real" Boris begin? Who is the "real" Boris? When he was an MP he was well-known for doing very little in parliament. This tells us he was either lazy, or that he felt the job was beneath him. Either of those being true, this is not a good sign. If it is the first, it tells us he is irresponsible; if it is the second, it tells us he is arrogant. And there have been stories in the news while he's been Mayor of London that suggest the same kind of behaviour continues unabated, on an even larger stage.
While saying publicly that he intends to serve his full term as mayor come what may, everyone knows the disingenuous reality: he is aiming for the top job. Seeing Cameron flailing as PM, the Conservatives, looking around for other inspiration before the next general election, Boris sees his opportunity. His sense of timing is perfect; no doubt as he intended. He knew that being London Mayor during the Olympics would be a great opportunity to show off his unique brand of charisma to a wider audience, while not actually having to be really accountable for anything too important , except for "Boris Bikes", and making the occasional remark about transport, social issues and policing. Boris allowing himself to become London Mayor in 2008 was a great strategic decision, politically, assuming he could be re-elected again so to be mayor in time for the Olympics. All he had to do was bide his time and wait for the right moment.
And so the Boris bandwagon continues. Yes, to those of sane political minds, the prospect of Boris as PM may seem implausible, even ridiculous. But that's precisely what Boris would want you to think! It may be implausible, but looking more and more possible. It may seem ridiculous, but it may soon become inevitable, if events turn right.
The "blonde bombshell" does have an increasing momentum. Don't forget that in times of economic crisis, when the political establishment appears muddled by events, and stifled in a straight-jacket of conventional wisdom, it is the unconventional charismatic mavericks that can find their moment to upstage their rivals. It takes a set of specific circumstances for demagogues to come to power; but those circumstances already exist in the UK today. All it takes is the right man.
And there is only one "Boris".
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