tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-729325146406109372024-02-19T09:50:03.563+00:00Position ReservedPosition Reserved - amateur philosophical and political news and reflections ...
"Qui non intelligit aut discat aut taceat"Tim Pendryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03079486837930544558noreply@blogger.comBlogger156125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-72932514640610937.post-60926485621659162432023-09-23T19:50:00.001+01:002023-09-23T19:50:43.325+01:00Alternatives to the Current Political Order Part 5 - Piddling Around On the Margins of the System: Liberal Reformers<p><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u x1yc453h" dir="auto" style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">This latest review is fairly simple - just a list of six 'parties' (<i>I have removed the Foundation Party, a pro-Brexit and anti-lockdown populist conservative party that strongly emphasised process, because its website seems no longer to be functional)</i> who think that all our problems will be solved if we changed the nature of democracy. This, of course, is ridiculously simplistic. </span></p><p><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u x1yc453h" dir="auto" style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">These ideas tend to come from politically naive middle class 'engineers' who do not understand that the key changes necessary to transform national governance need not be radical (such changes are unlikely to be adopted in any case and are fraught with real world unintended consequences) but should simply be changes to how existing representative democracy is managed so that it is made more informed, more independent of influence and community-accountable. The root of our problems lie in the corrupted nature of the classic liberal democratic political party and its relationship to the executive, the market and the media rather than representative democracy itself. It does not lie in our lacking an 'ideal (Platonic) constitution'.</span></p><p></p><div><div dir="auto"><div class="x1iorvi4 x1pi30zi x1swvt13 xjkvuk6" data-ad-comet-preview="message" data-ad-preview="message" id=":r6jo:"><div class="x78zum5 xdt5ytf xz62fqu x16ldp7u"><div class="xu06os2 x1ok221b"><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u x1yc453h" dir="auto"><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">The great flaw in the 'process reformers' (and also of many libertarian socialists, activists and anarchists) is that they think that all their fellow citizens should necessarily be interested in politics. Instead, we need a democracy that is responsive to the interests and concerns of the population at large precisely so that they have no or minimal need to be involved in practical administrative politics. Therefore none of these will make the short list or the watch list but they are presented here to show that there are a fair number of frustrated middle class reformers lurking in the political undergrowth and that you should feel free to join them if it is in your nature to be a political nerd.</span></div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li style="text-align: left;"><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Movement_for_Active_Democracy" target="_blank">The Movement for Active Democracy</a></span></p></li><li style="text-align: left;"><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_Network" target="_blank">The Independent Network</a> (most famously associated with journalist Martin Bell) which </span><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u x1yc453h" dir="auto" style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">sounds lovely in theory but independence is not in itself a sign of administrative talent or sound policy.</span></p></li><li style="text-align: left;"><p><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u x1yc453h" dir="auto" style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><a href="https://dd2024.org" target="_blank">The Direct Democracy Movement</a> </span><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">which proposes radical direct democracy and quotes Elon Musk and Tyson Fury as radical democratic libertarians.</span></p></li><li style="text-align: left;"><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><a href="https://yourvoiceparty.org.uk">Your Voice Party</a> </span></p></li><li style="text-align: left;"><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><a href="https://abluerevolution.org/manifesto" target="_blank">A Blue Revolution</a> is <span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u x1yc453h" dir="auto"><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u" dir="auto" lang="">populist party centred on Lincolnshire that seems most concerned about debt. The long website reference to De Bono's theories of mind suggests that we
are in the world of human resources and managerialism despite the
democratic thrust. The potentially creepy part is the complaint that
"the current political system wastes a lot of energy arguing and
debating." Arguing and debating is how we resolve conflict without
recourse to weaponry. Maybe this is putative Platonic technocracy in action!</span></span></span></p></li><li><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><a href="https://voxpopgov.com" target="_blank">Vox Pop Gov</a> is an attempt to have mass populist
democracy through technology but misses the point that principles,
values and general direction should be in direct accord with the popular
will but not so implementation. Implementation requires experienced and informed management. The national level of political, technical
and general education is so poor that this would be a disaster,
certainly with our irresponsible media and manipulative interest groups
leading the debate. This is politics as 'Strictly' or 'Love Island'.</span></p></li></ul><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><div class="xv55zj0 x1vvkbs x1rg5ohu xxymvpz"><div class="xmjcpbm x1tlxs6b x1g8br2z x1gn5b1j x230xth x9f619 xzsf02u x1rg5ohu xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x193iq5w x1mzt3pk x1n2onr6 xeaf4i8 x13faqbe"><div class="x1y1aw1k xn6708d xwib8y2 x1ye3gou"><div class="x1lliihq xjkvuk6 x1iorvi4"><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u" dir="auto" lang="" style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><div class="xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><div class="x1lliihq xjkvuk6 x1iorvi4"><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u" dir="auto" lang="en" style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><div class="xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">What
this group of 'process' political parties tells you is that there is
(if you add to them the huge number of small local and resident-based
parties) a considerable amount of discontent amongst the hard-pressed
white collar middle classes that is already going nowhere as far as
resolving the fundamental problems of a failing representative democracy
is concerned. </div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">Instead of challenging representative democracy to do
better through guided and technically specific reforms to increase
accountability and reduce the influence of special interests (which at
least Reform UK is prepared to talk about albeit unsatisfactorily), most
of these 'parties' are offering technical fixes that reek of unintended
consequences. These anxious middle middles are politically naive and
none (not even their processes) can be taken very seriously.</div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div></div></span></div></div></div></span></div></div></div></div><div><div class="xv55zj0 x1vvkbs x1rg5ohu xxymvpz"><div class="x3nfvp2 x1n2onr6 xxymvpz xh8yej3"><div class="xdl72j9 x1iyjqo2 xs83m0k xeuugli xh8yej3"><div class="xmjcpbm x1tlxs6b x1g8br2z x1gn5b1j x230xth x9f619 xzsf02u x1rg5ohu xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x193iq5w x1mzt3pk x1n2onr6 xeaf4i8 x13faqbe"><div class="x1y1aw1k xn6708d xwib8y2 x1ye3gou"><div class="x1lliihq xjkvuk6 x1iorvi4"><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u" dir="auto" lang="en" style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><div class="xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">My
sense is that these tend to be white collar graduate managerial,
professional or technical types frustrated with both a national politics
they barely comprehend (but think they must be expert in because they
are expert in something else) and with local politics which are,
democratically, a standing joke to anyone with a sense of humour. They are often mid-level local business consultants, in small service businesses or in areas like marketing or human resources. They want both liberty and order and they think these are easily reconcileable through process reforms alone. They
become 'political nerds' because they are psychologically used to and
trained in 'process' and think process can be applied to politics.</div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">Of course, politics is not like that - it is 'struggle'. Such types
are uncomfortable with confrontation and struggle from the get-go yet confrontation is necessary for any form of political progress. Our problem today is not too much struggle but too little under a political class with shared values who fixed a dysfunctional system in their favoour. They
are not interested in the economic struggles of the working or lower middle class because
they are relatively secure if anxious that they may not always be so. Their 'slippages' come from slow
declines in respect, status and even revenue that they put down to
failures of process in an act of internal misdirection. They do not put
down their slow worrying decline and anxieties to great socio-economic and technological change but
to failures of management - if they (as relative juniors in the managerial system)
were better managed (they believe), then all would be well. Thuis, they think, new
political managerial processes are required and these will solve all problems</div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div></div></span></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><div><div class="xv55zj0 x1vvkbs x1rg5ohu xxymvpz"><div class="x3nfvp2 x1n2onr6 xxymvpz xh8yej3"><div class="xdl72j9 x1iyjqo2 xs83m0k xeuugli xh8yej3"><div class="xmjcpbm x1tlxs6b x1g8br2z x1gn5b1j x230xth x9f619 xzsf02u x1rg5ohu xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x193iq5w x1mzt3pk x1n2onr6 xeaf4i8 x13faqbe"><div class="x1y1aw1k xn6708d xwib8y2 x1ye3gou"><div class="x1lliihq xjkvuk6 x1iorvi4"><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u" dir="auto" lang="en" style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">One useful comment from a reader of an earlier draft can be added here:<i> "The
first things that came to my mind when reading this [last paragraph] was the
growing use of 'stealth taxation' (e.g. the above-inflation increases in
alcohol duty, for example) prior to the 'credit crunch' of 2008; the second was the
accelerated shift towards rentier capitalism post-'credit crunch' and
the ways in which 'austerity' policies facilitated such a shift. Those
individuals from the less monied portion of the middle classes were
essentially frogs being boiled slowly by the economic elite." </i>The frogs in this case are beginning to notice that they are being boiled but are simply calling for the pan to be filled with fresh water.<br /></div></div></span></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></span></div></div></div></div></div>Tim Pendryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03079486837930544558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-72932514640610937.post-54964085804835821112023-09-16T20:31:00.005+01:002023-09-16T20:40:15.759+01:00Alternatives to the Current Political Order Part 4 - Assessing the Emergence of the 'Far Right'<div style="text-align: left;"><div><div class="x1iorvi4 x1pi30zi x1swvt13 xjkvuk6" data-ad-comet-preview="message" data-ad-preview="message" id=":r3aj:"><div class="x78zum5 xdt5ytf xz62fqu x16ldp7u"><div class="xu06os2 x1ok221b"><p><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u x1yc453h" dir="auto"></span></p><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u x1yc453h" dir="auto"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><i>The methodology of our investigation has been covered in a <a href="https://positionreserved.blogspot.com/2023/06/alternatives-to-current-political-order.html" target="_blank">previous blog posting</a>.</i></span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u x1yc453h" dir="auto"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: times;"> </span></span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u x1yc453h" dir="auto"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">It is time to look at the parties of the 'Far Right' that operate within the bounds of democracy</span><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u x1yc453h" dir="auto" style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><span> (even if some on the centre-left insist that they do so only barely)</span></span><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">. My definition of Far Right is different from that of liberals who insist on including populists and right-wing conservatives <a href="https://positionreserved.blogspot.com/2023/08/alternatives-to-current-political-order.html" target="_blank">in the category</a>. I do not. The central part of my own definition makes them difficult to include in my analysis as serious contenders for power or for key policy ideas but not for the reasons more mindless liberals think. I am not interested in liberals' ignorant dismissal of anything that fails to fit into their group-think but merely dismiss as 'fascist' as if a reference to Mussolini's Italy in the interwar period tells us anything useful about British politics in the twenty-first century.</span></span></div></div><p></p><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a"><div style="text-align: left;"><p><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u x1yc453h" dir="auto" style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><span>My definition tends to emphasise the absolute essentialism of such parties rather than their claimed negative attitude to democracy - as race, nation or religion. The Left have their equivalent in class and the centrists in their belief in the market and the liberal State. Classical liberals, populists and libertarians might feel the same about individual freedom. The organic nation, class, State and market are evidenced political realities and individual freedom a reasonable aspiration. However, religion may be an evidenced social reality but depends on the irrationalism of faith while race as central idea in politics is now demonstrably a scientific absurdity although it might reasonably be replaced with some sense of organically derived culture. Instead of white or black race, we now might see talk of white or black culture which creates room for (say) the Black Panthers or even the Aryan Brotherhood insofar as they express themselves in those terms. </span></span></p></div><div style="text-align: left;"><p><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u x1yc453h" dir="auto" style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><span>Those latter, of course, are not found in the UK. They would not be counted worth considering in any case since they do not have a practical democratic politics underpinning them. Arguments about culture, shorn formally of race, certainly do emerge in populist circles yet we have already noted in our previous review that a major role is played in populism and right-wing conservatism by middle class ethnic activists and, as we shall see, Britain First is at pains to demonstrate itself as anti-racist in contradistinction to the BNP. My approach to the Far Right (you will see a similar approach to the Far Left later) is to ask whether often deliberately manufactured liberal prejudices are actually correct and whether any of these parties might possibly have 'ideas' that would allow them to fall into our future watch list (alongside the Populist Party and the Heritage Party) or even be allowed greater recognition. The four ostensibly Far Right entities we have looked at are:</span></span></p></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a"><div style="text-align: left;"><p><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u x1yc453h" dir="auto" style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><span>* The English Democrats [ED] (which might reasonably be considered populist)</span></span></p></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a"><div style="text-align: left;"><p><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u x1yc453h" dir="auto" style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><span>* The British National Party [BNP] (with its pan-European adjunct The Alliance for Peace and Freedom)</span></span></p></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a"><div style="text-align: left;"><p><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u x1yc453h" dir="auto" style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><span>* Britain First [BF]<br /></span></span></p></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a"><div style="text-align: left;"><p><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u x1yc453h" dir="auto" style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><span>* The National Housing Party [NHP]<br /></span></span></p></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a"><div style="text-align: left;"><p><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u x1yc453h" dir="auto" style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><span>Of the four, the BNP and BF can be disregarded not only because they are ideologically so extremely essentialist but because they are diametrically opposed to the general trend in British political culture which may have its resentments and disappointments and be profoundly concerned about wokery and mass migration but is fundamentally uninterested in racism and radical nationalism and instinctively tolerant. As we note below, if either attained serious power, it would be a sign that the existing system had completely collapsed or at least was on the verge of collapse. The authorities seem more frightened of the last, the atavistic BF, whose policies on paper do not actually appear as unreasonable as liberal commentators would like us to think. Its aggressive attitude to Islam, however, is tantamount to a potential declaration of religious war on whole communities in a country where the pass was long since sold on mass immigration and where there is no way now to challenge what has come to pass without triggering violence that would not serve the British people whatever their background. It is quite simply not functionally useful to anyone. <br /></span></span></p></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a"><div style="text-align: left;"><p><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u x1yc453h" dir="auto" style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><span>The ED and NHP are way stations between populism and the 'essentialist Far Right'. Both are canaries in the coal mine of politics with the potential to channel either English resentments at the compromises required to maintain the Union or specific discontents about the conditions of the working class as the Tories return true to type. We could theoretically put both on the watch list but the concerns that the NHP wish to address are equally matters of interest to the populist and right-wing conservative forces we have identified elsewhere. The NHP duplicates the efforts of more viable others perhaps with a few caveats. Our decision, however, is to add the ED to our recommended watch list because a specifically English reaction to the decline of Britain is something to be studied in more detail as a possibility. <br /></span></span></p></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a"><div style="text-align: left;"><p><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u x1yc453h" dir="auto" style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><span><i>The English Democrats <br /></i></span></span></p></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div class="xv55zj0 x1vvkbs x1rg5ohu xxymvpz"><div class="xmjcpbm x1tlxs6b x1g8br2z x1gn5b1j x230xth x9f619 xzsf02u x1rg5ohu xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x193iq5w x1mzt3pk x1n2onr6 xeaf4i8 x13faqbe"><div class="x1y1aw1k xn6708d xwib8y2 x1ye3gou"><div class="x1lliihq xjkvuk6 x1iorvi4"><div class="xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs"><div style="text-align: left;"><p><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u" dir="auto" lang="en" style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">The
<a href="https://www.englishdemocrats.party/">English Democrats</a> share many of the positions of right-wing populists
(and, as we have noted, should perhaps be classed with them). There are
the same concerns with migration, 'freedom' and veterans but adopted
within an English national framework. In a sense, it is less for
something than against the inclusion of England within the British State
machinery. This has some merit, especially if the Scottish Question
gets out of control in the next few years. It has actually moderated its
position from independence to support for an English Parliament and so
should be on the watch list for that reason alone.
It sits somewhere between Reform UK and the Far Right and has been
subject to some infiltration from the BNP. It is <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Democrats">very unstable</a> but if it stabilises on the right side of populism
under the right leadership it could revive on any English resentment of
the policies of the British State. On our marker policy, Ukraine, it
has tended towards a diplomatic silence (probably because the nationalist Right is
split on the issue) but there are clues from its Twitter stream that it
resents the flow of funds and resources to Ukraine. <br /></span></p></div><div style="text-align: left;"><p><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u" dir="auto" lang="en" style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><i>The British National Party</i> <br /></span></p></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><div class="x9f619 x1n2onr6 x1ja2u2z x78zum5 x2lah0s x1qughib x6s0dn4 x1a02dak x1q0g3np x1pi30zi x1swvt13 xykv574 xbmpl8g x4cne27 xifccgj"><div style="text-align: left;"><div class="xv55zj0 x1vvkbs x1rg5ohu xxymvpz"><div class="xmjcpbm x1tlxs6b x1g8br2z x1gn5b1j x230xth x9f619 xzsf02u x1rg5ohu xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x193iq5w x1mzt3pk x1n2onr6 xeaf4i8 x13faqbe"><div class="x1y1aw1k xn6708d xwib8y2 x1ye3gou"><div class="x1lliihq xjkvuk6 x1iorvi4"><div class="xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs"><div style="text-align: left;"><p><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u" dir="auto" lang="en" style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">The
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_National_Party" target="_blank">BNP</a> is a biologically racist party which is unlikely
ever to change its position and would not be trusted to have done so
even if it claimed that it had. Whatever we might think of any particular policies (and
few if any are attractive), this core is so at odds with the instinctive
good-humoured tolerance of the British people and its folk memory of
fighting fascism in the early 1940s that, although the Party might
exploit immigration and cultural conflict as well as indigenous white
working class discontent (where there are justifiable reasons for policy
concern), the only way this Party could achieve any form of meaningful
power would be if there was a cataclysmic collapse in competence within the
existing system. Sadly, the leadership of the existing system cannot be
relied upon in this respect so it becomes imperative to ensure that
alternative forces are available to block the return of divisive racial
politics and cultural atavism. </span></p></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div class="xv55zj0 x1vvkbs x1rg5ohu xxymvpz"><div class="xmjcpbm x1tlxs6b x1g8br2z x1gn5b1j x230xth x9f619 xzsf02u x1rg5ohu xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x193iq5w x1mzt3pk x1n2onr6 xeaf4i8 x13faqbe"><div class="x1y1aw1k xn6708d xwib8y2 x1ye3gou"><div class="x1lliihq xjkvuk6 x1iorvi4"><div class="xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs"><div style="text-align: left;"><p><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u" dir="auto" lang="en" style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">We
should also note that the BNP is part of a Far Right European
International, the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alliance_for_Peace_and_Freedom">Alliance for Peace and Freedom</a>, that tends to back Russia whether Russia likes it or not. This makes it doubly problematic because it appropriates legitimate
criticism of 'Western' (European elite) foreign policy towards Russia and links it to
extreme right-wing nationalism.</span></p></div><div style="text-align: left;"><p><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u" dir="auto" lang="en" style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><i>Britain First </i><br /></span></p></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div class="x1lliihq xjkvuk6 x1iorvi4"><div class="xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs"><div style="text-align: left;"><p><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u" dir="auto" lang="en" style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u" dir="auto" lang="en"><a href="https://www.britainfirst.org" target="_blank">Britain First</a> is only fascist in the eyes of the polemicists of the Left. On closer examination, it is, in fact, committed
to democratic politics and is anti-racist (the relevant and prominent part
of its web site is very explicit in being anti-racist with pictures of
ethnic identity supporters) but it is also Christian Nationalist and
intensely anti-Islam at the Far Right fringe of the so-called
'counter-jihad'. It is only interesting if you have decided that radical
militant Christianity is your thing and you consider Islam an
existentialist threat to your country. Indeed, its members talk in such terms
of religious war that one might reasonably fear that it would bring the seventeenth century's horrors
forward in time. It is for this reason that the State watches it as a threat and not because it is anti-democratic (fascist). The threat is the theoretical if unlikely possibility that a population under pressure could vote it into office to 'deal with' the consequences of neo-liberal mass migration. <br /></span></span></p></div><div style="text-align: left;"><p><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u" dir="auto" lang="en" style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u" dir="auto" lang="en">There are sound secular and even liberal reasons to be
doubtful about the growing influence of Islam in the West but, if you
are not sold into militant Christianity, you might be equally doubtful
of the influence of Christianity itself or even organised political
Judaism. This religious and sectarian essentialism (partly originating
from Northern Irish politics) clearly worries the 'authorities' (which
is never a reason in itself to abandon something) but we should perhaps
all be worried by something whose growth could result not in legislative
change but the potential for possibly unintended violence in the streets. </span></span></p></div><div style="text-align: left;"><p><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u" dir="auto" lang="en" style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u" dir="auto" lang="en">However, it has to be said that, in other respects, its claimed
principles seem to be largely reasonable. Its
detailed policies are radical but do not seem to be unduly extremist.
The same practical concern applies to Britain First as to the BNP - if
ever it became a serious political force, it would not be on its merits
but on the total collapse in acceptability and competence (and perhaps we are
not too far from the latter) of the existing political system. Just as
the BNP tries to appropriate Enoch Powell (incorrectly) as part of its
brand so BF tries to appropriate Trump (equally incorrectly). And BF (it must not be forgotten) is a 'revisionist' breakaway from the BNP. <br /></span></span></p></div><div style="text-align: left;"><p><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u" dir="auto" lang="en" style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u" dir="auto" lang="en">These
appropriations enable liberals to make a a superficial labelling of Powell as a racist and
Trump as a fascist which are both incorrect. For the background to Britain
First, by all means read <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Britain_First" target="_blank">Wikipedia's coverage</a> but make a point of checking out its own web site since there is some
reasonable suspicion that the usual suspects at Wikipedia has an interest in making it sound
worse than it may be. If it was not so avowedly Christian Nationalist,
its policy prescriptions might have been interesting enough to put it on
the watch list but, as its stands, the reasonable
aspects of the Party hide an unreasonable faith-based ideology. But make your
own mind up.</span></span></p></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div class="xv55zj0 x1vvkbs x1rg5ohu xxymvpz"><div class="xmjcpbm x1tlxs6b x1g8br2z x1gn5b1j x230xth x9f619 xzsf02u x1rg5ohu xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x193iq5w x1mzt3pk x1n2onr6 xeaf4i8 x13faqbe"><div class="x1y1aw1k xn6708d xwib8y2 x1ye3gou"><div class="x1lliihq xjkvuk6 x1iorvi4"><div class="xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs"><div style="text-align: left;"><p><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u" dir="auto" lang="en" style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">As
with the BNP, there is a distinct risk of Britain First being part of
an appropriation of the Ukraine issue for Far Right purposes which would
halt the necessary critique of Western (Centrist) foreign policy by
associating it with 'fascism'. The Russian position that the Ukrainians
are backed by Neo-Nazis (the 'Bandera' claim), which is not entirely
false if often very much exaggerated, is muddied considerably by BF's support for Russia that is <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/britain-first-russia-paul-golding-duma-parliament-far-right-a8984521.html">linked to neo-nationalist and orthodox elements in the Duma</a>. </span></p></div><div style="text-align: left;"><p><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u" dir="auto" lang="en" style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><i>The National Housing Party </i><br /></span></p></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div class="xv55zj0 x1vvkbs x1rg5ohu xxymvpz"><div class="xmjcpbm x1tlxs6b x1g8br2z x1gn5b1j x230xth x9f619 xzsf02u x1rg5ohu xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x193iq5w x1mzt3pk x1n2onr6 xeaf4i8 x13faqbe"><div class="x1y1aw1k xn6708d xwib8y2 x1ye3gou"><div class="xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs" style="text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: left;"><p><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u" dir="auto" lang="en" style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">The
smallest player on the list is the <a href="https://www.nationalhousingparty.uk">National Housing Party</a> which majors
on the nexus between lack of housing, immigration and liberal obsession
with human rights. The implication is that the right to housing (social
housing) is being denied because of liberal middle class prioritisation
of abstract rights. The Party targets the culturaly conservative
working-class, pensioners and veterans - a common mix of interests for
the British Right. It does not appear to have more than an eclectic
range of policies but also does not seem to be particularly harmful. Nor
is it very large although very active on social media. </span></p></div><div style="text-align: left;"><p><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u" dir="auto" lang="en" style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">It might be on a watch list to help identify trends
in public discontent amongst working and lower middle class constituencies
but our existing recommendations in Part 3 probably do this adequately. Where it scores is on its apparent concentration on housing which all the major neoliberal parties have neglected and where problems are set to get much worse thanks to a combination of out of control illegal immigration, high interest rates and lack of construction. Needless to say, any campaigning they do is carefully ignored by the centre-left and centre-right mainstream media. </span></p></div><div style="text-align: left;"><p><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u" dir="auto" lang="en" style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">The populist Right or Left Party (see Part 3) that can put together a cogent, credible and communicable plan for national housing for the working class could probably make it redundant over night. Its
position on the marker policy of the Ukraine War is to see Western
engagement as part of a globalist mission which seems to be a pattern on
the Far Right. Its policies are an amalgam of right and left-wing and could
even be seen as the most right wing element of any working class social democratic revival. In our view, it is too small to count but it
might act as another canary in the coal mine indicating levels of discontent -
but not enough to include in our watch list. </span></p><p><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u" dir="auto" lang="en" style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"> </span></p></div><div style="text-align: left;"><p><span style="font-size: large;"><i><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u" dir="auto" lang="en"><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u x1yc453h" dir="auto" style="font-family: times;"><span>The
next review will concentrate on a range of new process-driven
liberal-centrist parties, none of which is likely to achieve any
significant power although perhaps some of them might be added to our watch
list as sources of ideas on constitutional change which might then be taken
up by other radical reformers on the Left or the Right or even amongst
more intelligent and less narcissistic centrist politicians who want to
avoid eventually being hanged from lamp-posts if the state of the
country deteriorates much further.</span></span></span><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u" dir="auto" lang="en"> <br /></span></i></span></p></div></div><p></p></div></div></div></div><div class="x9f619 x1n2onr6 x1ja2u2z x78zum5 xdt5ytf x2lah0s x193iq5w xeuugli xsyo7zv x16hj40l x10b6aqq x1yrsyyn"><div class="x9f619 x1n2onr6 x1ja2u2z x78zum5 x2lah0s x1qughib x6s0dn4 xozqiw3 x1q0g3np xcud41i x139jcc6 x4cne27 xifccgj"><div class="x9f619 x1n2onr6 x1ja2u2z x78zum5 xdt5ytf x2lah0s x193iq5w xeuugli x150jy0e x1e558r4 x10b6aqq x1yrsyyn"><div id="focused-state-composer-submit"><span class="x4k7w5x x1h91t0o x1h9r5lt x1jfb8zj xv2umb2 x1beo9mf xaigb6o x12ejxvf x3igimt xarpa2k xedcshv x1lytzrv x1t2pt76 x7ja8zs x1qrby5j"></span></div></div></div></div></div>Tim Pendryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03079486837930544558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-72932514640610937.post-28085174619500128332023-08-06T18:25:00.002+01:002023-08-06T19:53:41.598+01:00Alternatives to the Current Political Order Part 3 - Emergent Alliances Against The System?<p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">There has been a long delay since the first two parts of this investigation because we wanted to assess changes in the overall political situation that might be relevant to the process. You may need reminding of what we are about. Our current situation was covered <a href="https://positionreserved.blogspot.com/2023/05/alternatives-to-current-political-order.html" target="_blank">in a Blog Post in May</a>. If anything, things have got worse. The Government is struggling to deal with problems of its own making. The economy faces, according to the Bank of England, three years of zero growth. Inflation is only slowly coming down and interest rates are rising. We are stuck in an unwinnable war that drains our Exchequer and undermines the global trading system. The Labour Opposition is flaccid and offers more of the same. The public is alienated from its political class. The methodology of our investigation was covered in a <a href="https://positionreserved.blogspot.com/2023/06/alternatives-to-current-political-order.html" target="_blank">Blog Post in June.</a></span> </p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Changes in the last three months were sufficient to delay analysis. We should note a number of factors that make a major change to our political system more likely <u>after</u> the failure of a Labour or Coalition Government (in other words somewhere around 2030) rather than as a result of the expected 2024 Election. This latter election is likely to be less interesting than the 2024 elections (Presidential in the US and European Parliamentary) elsewhere for one very simple reason - our national political culture still cannot get out of the mind-set of the solution to a bad Government being simply its replacement with an equally likely to fail Official Opposition. In order to effect serious change not only does the Tory Party be seen to have failed but Labour or whatever amalgam of established parties emerges out of the election must also be seen to fail. The key phrase is 'seen to fail' since, like a frog slowly boiling in water, the atomised British electorate has a tendency to fear radical change and to accept slow decline and moderate privation (or short term unstable asset growth and moderate taxation) rather than face the facts of national decline and weakening social cohesion. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">In other words, if failure is not dramatic, there is a risk that the Buggin's Turn of British politics will continue for generations while the nation sinks remorselessly into provincial status at a global level (which may be no bad thing) and infrastructural collapse, mounting social conflict and deteriorating morale (which are very bad things) without any decisive action being taken</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">So what has happened in recent months? <i>First</i>, the situation of the Government has seen no recovery, its leading figures are scuttling and looking for new opportunities and there is no enthusiasm for its probable successor. <i>Second</i>, electoral revolt has started on specific single issues - initially on ULEZ and implicitly Net Zero. <i>Third</i>, Farage is back in play leading a highly focused anti-woke campaign on de-banking that has thrust him back into prominence on the national political stage. <i>Fourth</i>, national populism in Europe is becoming more viable and more aggressive in its challenge to the dominant liberal system (although it has its own internal contradictions) while Trump seems to be strengthened rather than weakened by the legal warfare operations being undertaken against him. <i>Finally</i>, the Ukraine War, although low on electoral priorities, looks like another elite failure of policy to follow the failures in Afganistan and Iraq. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">In this context, the official Left has little to say that is not an opportunistic attempt to exploit the Centre-Right's troubles - the message is merely that Labour will be more effective than the Tories at managing a broken system (which is in itself barely credible) rather than being the agent of questioning whether anyone can be effective under a nineteenth century constitution underpinning a twentieth century state under conditions of twenty-first century complexity. In this context, only the populist Right appears to have something to say that might get public traction and it is poorly led in the absence of Farage.<br /></span></p><div class="x9f619 x1n2onr6 x1ja2u2z x78zum5 x2lah0s x1qughib x1qjc9v5 xozqiw3 x1q0g3np x150jy0e x1e558r4 xjkvuk6 x1iorvi4 xwrv7xz x8182xy x4cne27 xifccgj"><div class="x9f619 x1n2onr6 x1ja2u2z x78zum5 xdt5ytf x193iq5w xeuugli x1r8uery x1iyjqo2 xs83m0k xg83lxy x1h0ha7o x10b6aqq x1yrsyyn"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">The first of our five 'investigations' was, therefore, of "around nine broadly centre-right challengers to the Tory status quo" but including the Social Democrat Party which is arguably centre-left. The intention was to short list from the four or five categories under review (see relevant posting) and present them as a set of rational alternatives to the existing parties that dominate Parliament and which are clearly failing or may be expected to fail the British people. As we will see in a later blog posting, there is one potential serious alternative on the Left but the blunt truth is that, so long as the 'Corbynista Left' quixotically insists on blind loyalty to the Labour Party in the hope of take-over one sunny day, the energy for real change is mostly on the Right.<br /></span></div><div class="x9f619 x1n2onr6 x1ja2u2z x78zum5 xdt5ytf x193iq5w xeuugli x1r8uery x1iyjqo2 xs83m0k xg83lxy x1h0ha7o x10b6aqq x1yrsyyn"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"> </span></div></div><div><div dir="auto"><div class="x1iorvi4 x1pi30zi x1swvt13 xjkvuk6" data-ad-comet-preview="message" data-ad-preview="message" id=":r3eo:"><div class="x78zum5 xdt5ytf xz62fqu x16ldp7u"><div class="xu06os2 x1ok221b"><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u x1yc453h" dir="auto" style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">The SDP is definitely interesting. Reform UK, derived from Farage's earlier efforts but currently without his active involvement, has the more potential. The SDP could perhaps win a seat or two (it has a strong presence in Peterborough) but only Reform can strip votes from the Tories and from the Labour Red Wall to create a phalanx of MPs under FPTP that could be decisive in coalitional negotiations. Their commitment to proportional representation gives us the prospect of a pragmatic single issue alliance in Parliament with the Liberal Democrats that could transform British politics.</div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">The fact that the SDP and Reform UK have announced an electoral alliance in advance of 2024 means that Reform UK are the best option for the material destruction of the Tory Party while the SDP permits 'revolutionaries' (in the context described in earlier postings, where there is no truly left-wing alternative, to support that destruction but from a moderate centre-left position and then hope to strengthen that position so that their guns can be turned on Labour and the Liberal Democrats at a much later stage.But this is a long game. The problem is that, without funds and reach (including dedicated activists), the danger is that sympathetic voters might simply remain at home or even vote for the least worst option in the establishment parties and implicitly endorse a broken system for another five depressing years.<br /></div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><br /></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">In this context, there should be an honourable mention for Fox and Daubney's Reclaim Party which might be regarded as part of the emerging populist coalition and which has the virtue of having the right attitude to the hysteria surrounding Ukraine. Although an out-rider organisationally, it provides a convenient home for those concerned about freedom of speech and the widespread manufacture of consent. However, its recent by-election vote was derisory and its cultural politics only resonate with a small minority as a voting issue - many more may agree with it but not enough to push economic interests aside. It could perhaps deliver 2% of the vote to someone who could use it better.<br /></div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">We might also note as interesting the minor anti-globalist right wing green party The Populist Party (in case it develops legs in the discontented Tory heartlands) and the populist right wing Heritage Party (because it seems to have the only coherent set of policies related to the Ukraine crisis on the centre-right despite probably being a tad too right wing even for most thinking populists). These last two parties both have some organisational potential and the latter appears to offer a threat to Reform UK. The damaging effect of sectarianism on the Right matches its effects on the dissident Left. <br /></div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">From this perspective 'revolutionary bourgeois' Leftists who cannot relate to what we call the 'real' Left (to be covered in a later blog posting) should contemplate joining the small SDP to strengthen it for the future while 'revolutionary' Rightists, swallowing some doubts about the influence of the Johnsonite troglodytes, should be attracted pragmatically to Reform UK, backing it to replace the Tories on the back benches in order to effect some key reforms. Those more concerned with core individual freedoms and resistance in the culture wars might consider a third member of the emergent coalition - Reclaim - but the chances of this making an impact are slight now.</div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><br /></div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">The reference to the Johnsonite Troglodytes is important because the radical dissidents on both Right and Left have the same problem - infiltration by the discontented elements in the main establishment parties in such a way that the revolutionary potential of 'real' Left and national populists is shattered by the presence of these essentially conservative forces. For the newly emergent working class parties on the Left (see later blog postings), the danger is of a rush of urban liberal-left excitable public sector graduate Corbynistas trying to create the eco-liberal party they wanted Labour to become and disenchanted with Starmer. </div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">For Reform UK (and so for the SDP) the risk is a rush of Tory pseudo-populists creating a new Party of war-mongering Atlanticists in return for a primitive small business low tax policy package based on an unworkable Trussanomics. The Tory pseudo-populists will be faced with a choice of capturing the Tory Party after defeat or taking over Reform UK. Such an outcome is likely not to be good for major national reconstruction - the parallel in Europe is the traditionalist conservatism of Meloni. For the discontented Left, the risk is of becoming Red-Greens on speed run by activists and graduates with no working class links. <br /></div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">But here we are only concerned with the centre-right populist challenge to the mainstream. In the next few weeks we will move on to look at the Far Right (where the probability but not certainty is of rejection as unviable for electorsal purposes), then to some centre 'process-driven' parties and thence to challengers to the Labour Party on the Left and to some single issue parties that we may perhaps add to the 'watch list'.But let us look at the centre-right contenders more closely. <span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u" dir="auto" lang="en">In the next couple of
weeks, I will be looking at the Far Right before moving on to the Centre
and Left.</span></div></div></span></div></div></div></div></div><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><i><a href="https://sdp.org.uk" target="_blank">The Social Democrat Party</a></i><br /></span></p><div class="x9f619 x1n2onr6 x1ja2u2z x78zum5 x2lah0s x1qughib x6s0dn4 x1a02dak x1q0g3np x1pi30zi x1swvt13 xykv574 xbmpl8g x4cne27 xifccgj"><div><div class="xv55zj0 x1vvkbs x1rg5ohu xxymvpz"><div class="xmjcpbm x1tlxs6b x1g8br2z x1gn5b1j x230xth x9f619 xzsf02u x1rg5ohu xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x193iq5w x1mzt3pk x1n2onr6 xeaf4i8 x13faqbe"><div class="x1y1aw1k xn6708d xwib8y2 x1ye3gou"><div class="x1lliihq xjkvuk6 x1iorvi4"><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u" dir="auto" lang="en" style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><div class="xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">The
Social Democrat Party is not the same as the Social Democratic Party of
the 1980s. This merged with the Liberal Democrats in 1988 but saw a
surviving breakaway group implode in 1990 only to be re-formed under yet
another breakaway group, emerging as a syncretic combination of
centre-left economics and centre-right cultural policies. It is small
but cogent in its policies which can be studied in summary in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Democratic_Party_(UK,_1990%E2%80%93present)" target="_blank">Wikipedia</a>. </div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">It has undertaken an electoral pact with Reform
UK in advance of the 2024 Election suggesting that it is positioning
itself as the left-wing (socio-economically) of any revival of British
populism. In policy terms it broadly meets the criteria laid out in our
initial posting with one exception - a strong historic allegiance to
NATO which fails to understand perhaps that the NATO of the era of
Dennis Healey and David Owen is very much a different animal from the
NATO of constant mission creep and complex global alliances that
bring the UK back into responsibility for politics and war East of Suez.
We consider this naive but not politically stupid since the majority of
voters are equally naive. </div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">In all other respects, their policies are
sensible. The entire package would not be a million miles away from
the normal position of the moderate wing of the old Labour Party in the
pre-Thatcher era. Although organisationally it seems quite competent, it
is severely underfunded and relies on a dedicated team of outsiders so
it really needs to show that it can exploit any populist resentment of
the existing political class without being outplayed by the more
ruthless Reform UK. Despite doubts about its foreign and defence policy
(on the grounds of naivete in the modern world), the SDP gets
shortlisted as a potential long term challenger to the dominance of the
current bunch of clowns and comic singers. It is, however, a long play. </div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div></div></span></div></div></div></div></div><div><div class="xv55zj0 x1vvkbs x1rg5ohu xxymvpz"><div class="x3nfvp2 x1n2onr6 xxymvpz xh8yej3"><div class="xdl72j9 x1iyjqo2 xs83m0k xeuugli xh8yej3"><div class="xmjcpbm x1tlxs6b x1g8br2z x1gn5b1j x230xth x9f619 xzsf02u x1rg5ohu xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x193iq5w x1mzt3pk x1n2onr6 xeaf4i8 x13faqbe"><div class="x1y1aw1k xn6708d xwib8y2 x1ye3gou"><div class="x1lliihq xjkvuk6 x1iorvi4"><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u" dir="auto" lang="en" style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><div class="xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">The
position on Ukraine (which we have made a marker during this process)
is, in fact, considered and measured. It suggests the SDP have some understanding
of NATO's mission creep but it clearly fails to understand the historical
context for the invasion. Nevertheless, this position is vastly more
intelligent (given the realities of British public ignorance) than that
of the rest of the official political class.</div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> <div class="x1lliihq xjkvuk6 x1iorvi4"><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u" dir="auto" lang="en"><div class="xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><a href=" https://www.reformparty.uk" target="_blank">Reform UK</a><br /></div></div></span></div></div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><div class="x1lliihq xjkvuk6 x1iorvi4"><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u" dir="auto" lang="en"><div class="xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">The major contender for changing the structure of politics remains Reform UK, albeit that it is weak without Nigel Farage as Leader. It is successor party in turn to first UKIP and then the single issue The Brexit Party. Each
iteration becomes more politically sophisticated and more capable of
moving towards some sort of power although the latest version of British
populism is largely dependent on the possible collapse of the Tory Party
before 2024. </div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">This means that a broad-based single-issue Party (based on
leaving the EU) has had to transform itself into a right-wing populist
party with a broader base of policy aiming to capture the discontented working class who
feel betrayed by both Labour and the Tory elite and the lower middle class Tory vote that simply feels betrayed. The class
tensions are evident: they push Reform UK into a mix of right wing
economics, aspirational libertarianism and cultural conservatism. </div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">The
tension in this is expressed by the difference of position on the marker
policy of Ukraine between current leader Richard Tice, who adopts a
nationalist 'Western' line suitable for the Johnsonite trogs he needs to
attract and Farage, the populist king-in-waiting, whose
own public pronouncements show more sophistication and understanding of
what is really going on. In other words, Reform UK (which is already
capturing disillusioned Tories) is forced into becoming more Tory than
it should be in order to get any chance of breaking through to
Parliament in sufficient force to ensure proportional
representation (which will break the monopoly of power of the three
corrupted establishment parties) in, no doubt, cynical alliance with the
liberal-Left. </div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">The electoral alliance with the SDP is thus rational
because the SDP can theoretically hold more left-wing and state interventionist
eurosceptic votes in trust and each can lend the other sufficient of its
base to divide non-Leftist political dissent between them. The SDP is
the weaker link and Reform UK better organised and financed but Reform
UK has to be on the short list for all its faults as the home for more
centre-right 'revolutionary' spirits. However, it is hard to see how the SDP could remain allied to Reform UK if the Ticean appeal to discontented Tories results in the adoption of absurd Trussonomics.<br /></div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">I would personally regret that
Farage seems (understandably) not to wish to return to front-line politics (although his righteous rage at de-banking might indicate a potential change of heart). I
find Tice's neo-Johnsonianism faintly ridiculous except as a strategy
for smashing the Tory Party, Nevertheless, this is the operation most capable of
breaking the spine of the current political structures and getting a
debate on change which includes the prospect of a proportional
representation decision capable of terminally weakening the three failed 'parties
of State' and returning more power to the wider population. <div class="x1lliihq xjkvuk6 x1iorvi4"><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u" dir="auto" lang="en"><div class="xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div></div></span></div></div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><div class="x1lliihq xjkvuk6 x1iorvi4"><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u" dir="auto" lang="en"><div class="xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reform_UK" target="_blank">Wikipedia</a> gives again a useful summary of the history and policies of Reform UK.
Despite the Thatcherite economics (in contrast to the SDP), not only
does it offer sensible policies in other areas but permits some
important leeway for national interest economic interventionism as well
as constitutional radicalism closer to the position of the Left.</div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><div class="x1lliihq xjkvuk6 x1iorvi4"><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u" dir="auto" lang="en"><div class="xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">Tice's
and so the Party's current position on the current international crisis
adopts <a href="https://twitter.com/reformparty_uk/status/1518212825952440321">the mythology of the West</a> but remains critical of 'lack of
preparedness'. It actually contains wiggle room for a more sophisticated
position closer to that of Farage but its purpose is to reassure
Johnsonite right-wing trogs in the Tory Party that their idiotic foreign
policy will not be disrupted in the hands of Reform UK. This may be
unfortunate but it is logical since Reform UK is much less interested in
the Eastern bloodlands and pleasing Washington than in national
regeneration, keeping out of the EU and democratic reform. It has a
Trump aspect though that risks realigning the UK even more firmly with
Washington under a populist Presidency.</div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><div class="x1lliihq xjkvuk6 x1iorvi4"><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u" dir="auto" lang="en"><div class="xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">Farage's more intelligent but dissident position on Ukraine can be studied <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2YCtFeCxVU">online</a>. Given public sentiment and the mass of propaganda pouring out of the
establishment media where we see Tory elites, pro-Europeans and
Atlanticists combining on a narrative that must not be questioned,
Farage is almost certainly wise to remain in the background on this
issue and await events.</div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><a href="http://nationalliberal.org" target="_blank">The National Liberal Party</a><br /></div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div></div></span></div></div></div></span></div></div></div></span></div></div></div></span></div></div></div></span></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><div><div class="xv55zj0 x1vvkbs x1rg5ohu xxymvpz"><div class="xmjcpbm x1tlxs6b x1g8br2z x1gn5b1j x230xth x9f619 xzsf02u x1rg5ohu xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x193iq5w x1mzt3pk x1n2onr6 xeaf4i8 x13faqbe"><div class="x1y1aw1k xn6708d xwib8y2 x1ye3gou"><div class="x1lliihq xjkvuk6 x1iorvi4"><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u" dir="auto" lang="en" style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><div class="xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">The
third on our Stage 3 list is the National Liberal Party which is
ideologically attractive as classic liberalism with a strong sense of
the importance of national self-determination. It seems to be largely
London-focused but organisationally very weak - a classic case of
placing ideas ahead of political reality. Reluctantly in some ways, we cannot take it seriously because the likelihood of it making any
significant impact even within London is small. </div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><a href="https://adfparty.uk" target="_blank">The Alliance for Democracy and Freedom</a><br /></div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><div class="x1lliihq xjkvuk6 x1iorvi4"><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u" dir="auto" lang="en"><div class="xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">The
Alliance for Democracy and Freedom is one of a number of populist right
wing parties that have appeared in the wake of Brexit. It appears to
represent many of the concerns of the angry lower middle class -
eusoscepticism, anti-lockdowns, farming and fisheries concerns.
migration, anti-net zero and international aid, support for military
veterans combined with a broadly welfarist agenda alongside libertarian
economics. What is striking is how many small start-up parties have a
leadership cadre made up of ethnic minority British nationalists (see
NLP immediately above). </div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">The best way to regard the ADF is as a source of
policy ideas (like the NLP , the ADF strikes me as an ideas rather than
an organisational party) but largely for the more right wing populist
side of the 'revolution'. This is not a serious contender for effecting
major change. In addition it is in danger, like many new small right
wing parties, of getting trapped in discontents that may be short term
in nature when political change is best ensured by hooking activists and
voters not into expressions of immediate anger or outrage but into a
long term determination to change the conditions of existence, </div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">The Party
is strangely silent on recent foreign policy events which may suggest a
struggle to square right-wing impulses in the street with what had
stood as opposition to any embroilment in European defence. It is
probable that there is a serious split in the interpretation of the
world between Johnsonites who are essentially Atlanticist Cold Warriors
with some notion of 'the West' and Faragists who are essentially
nationalist isolationists with a more restricted view of national
defence as defence of the nation. </div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">We have seen above how Reform UK has
to try and square these policy tensions in order to attract Johnsonites
while keeping Faragists queiscent in order to gain power. Whatever the
AFD believes, it looks as if another response to these tensions, in a
country whose consent for NATO expansion has been thoroughly
manufactured by state psychological operations and the media, is one of
silence until it all blows over. That, of course, is not good enough
when there is a direct correlation between the central problem of the
cost of living crisis and an inept foreign policy. This cannot be taken seriously for organisational reasons but also because of this evident
failure of nerve during the 'polycrisis'.</div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><a href="https://www.reclaimparty.co.uk">Reclaim Party</a> <br /></div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> <div class="x1lliihq xjkvuk6 x1iorvi4"><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u" dir="auto" lang="en"><div class="xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">Reclaim
is yet another small populist party which tends to give primacy to
cultural politics, notably freedom of speech. It might be called more
Faragist than Reform UK nowadays but it is clear that there are good
relations between the two parties. It might be considered a vehicle
for pulling together 'culture wars' activists for a voice in any
emergent Reform UK-led populist success. It could be argued that it is
part of an informal coalition that includes the centre-left SDP as well
as Reform where differences of emphasis and economic policy are
overridden by a broadly shared ideology of national self-determination
and a cultural politics geared to 'British working and lower middle
class norms'. </div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">It gets an honourable mention (see our introduction) and a place on the short
list as a potential home for those concerned primarily with cultural
restoration rather than economic policy and on the basis that it is part
of the 'transvaluation of values' required to contain and dismantle our
national security state and its strategies of manufactured consent.</div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><div class="x1lliihq xjkvuk6 x1iorvi4"><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u" dir="auto" lang="en"><div class="xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">Laurence
Fox, founder and leader of Reclaim, <a href="https://www.indy100.com/celebrities/laurence-fox-putin-russia-nuance" target="_blank">easily passes the Ukraine test</a> if
only for causing total outrage at The Indie for having the most
intelligent reaction yet to the deification of Zelensky. In this sense
he is a foreign policy Faragist, will refuse to apologise (which in itself endears him
to me in an age of liberal buttock-baring at the first sign of offence)
and acts as a possible counter-balance to the growing troglodyte Tory element
transferring to Reform UK. </div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><div class="x1lliihq xjkvuk6 x1iorvi4"><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u" dir="auto" lang="en"><div class="xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><a href="https://www.libertarianpartyuk.com Liberty and Prosperity | Libertarian Party | UK" target="_blank">The Libertarian Party</a><br /></div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">The
Libertarian Party is what is says on the tin and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_Party_(UK)" target="_blank">represents</a> a
right-wing non-populist middle class position of small government and
low taxes. It has made little political progress and is not taken
enormously seriously except as the representation of an intellectual
position. If you are a libertarian of this type, you are probably a
member of the Tory Right already. </div></div></span></div></div></div></span></div></div></div></span></div></div></div></span></div></div></div></span></div></div></div></div></div><div class="x78zum5 xv55zj0 x1vvkbs"><div class="x3nfvp2 x1n2onr6 xxymvpz xh8yej3"><div class="xdl72j9 x1iyjqo2 xs83m0k xeuugli xh8yej3"><div class="x1rg5ohu xr9ek0c x1n2onr6" data-ft="{"ftmd_400706":"111112l"}"><div class="x1n2xptk xkbpzyx xdppsyt x1rr5fae x1tlxs6b x1g8br2z x1gn5b1j x230xth x78zum5 x1q0g3np x1iyjqo2 xozqiw3 x6ikm8r x10wlt62 x1n2onr6"><div class="x78zum5 x1tkz30p xdt5ytf x2lah0s xjp8j0k xl56j7k x47corl x1n2onr6 x183tlwk"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span><div class="x1lliihq xjkvuk6 x1iorvi4"><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u" dir="auto" lang="en" style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><div class="xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">The
Libertarian Party certainly does not pass the Ukraine test with its
somewhat militarist concept of a citizen conscript army on the Swiss
model - these policies too are indistinguishable from the far reaches of the
establishment Tory Right. The reference to this policy has unfortunately disappeared from the internet so it may have changed since the late Spring. <br /></div></div></span></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><div class="x78zum5 xv55zj0 x1vvkbs"><div class="x3nfvp2 x1n2onr6 xxymvpz xh8yej3"><div class="xdl72j9 x1iyjqo2 xs83m0k xeuugli xh8yej3"><div class="x1rg5ohu xr9ek0c x1n2onr6" data-ft="{"ftmd_400706":"111112l"}"><div class="x1n2xptk xkbpzyx xdppsyt x1rr5fae x1tlxs6b x1g8br2z x1gn5b1j x230xth x78zum5 x1q0g3np x1iyjqo2 xozqiw3 x6ikm8r x10wlt62 x1n2onr6"><div class="x78zum5 x1tkz30p xdt5ytf x2lah0s xjp8j0k xl56j7k x47corl x1n2onr6 x183tlwk"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="x78zum5 x1tkz30p xdt5ytf x2lah0s xjp8j0k xl56j7k x47corl x1n2onr6 x183tlwk"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><a href="https://englishconstitutionparty.com" target="_blank">The English Constitution Party</a><br /></span></div><div class="x78zum5 x1tkz30p xdt5ytf x2lah0s xjp8j0k xl56j7k x47corl x1n2onr6 x183tlwk"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="x1lliihq xjkvuk6 x1iorvi4"><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u" dir="auto" lang="en" style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><div class="xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">The
English Constitution Party is a right wing English nationalist populist
party but committed to democracy (it might pass for the Far Right
'Andrew Bridgen' wing of the Tory Party) It gives the initial impression
of being primarily for rather cross pensioners and it is anti-vaxxer
and anti-immigration. It is on the verge of being classed as Far Right
(which we will deal with separately). There is as much of an argument
for English nationalism as for Scottish nationalism so it should not be
disregarded on those grounds but only as something that marginalises
itself with its own policies. <div class="x1lliihq xjkvuk6 x1iorvi4"><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u" dir="auto" lang="en"><div class="xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div></div></span></div></div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><div class="x1lliihq xjkvuk6 x1iorvi4"><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u" dir="auto" lang="en"><div class="xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">Curiously,
with its radical anti-globalist agenda which merges with that of some
left-wing parties (to be studied later), the ECP actually passes the
Ukraine test but swings too far in the direction of conspiracy theory,
almost certainly because of its interpretation of NWO control over
Ukraine and extreme view of the national self-determination rights of the Donbas, Crimea
etcet. as Russians. Athough its position was originally published in
2014, it was re-published to make a point <a href="https://englishconstitutionparty.com/2023/01/09/ukraine-article-from-9-years-ago" target="_blank">in January</a> before the invasion
so we do not know exactly what the position is on the invasion itself.</div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><div class="x1lliihq xjkvuk6 x1iorvi4"><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u" dir="auto" lang="en"><div class="xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><a href=" https://www.populistparty.co.uk" target="_blank">The Populist Party</a><br /></div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">The
Populist Party is a new lower middle class anti-globalist right wing
Green Party which has a strong localist and ecolgical approach to
politics but interprets this through espousing some right wing policies
including immigration control and protection of the green belt. It is
hard to judge what appeal, if any, this Party may come to have so we are
putting it on a 'watch list'. Logically it is a threat to rural Tory
votes and, if it grew, one might expect the informal Reform UK coalition
to adopt its policies or find some other way to appropriate it. We can
find no reference to Ukraine on its web site but its stance of armed
neutrality suggests a critical attitude towards NATO. </div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><a href="https://heritageparty.org" target="_blank">The Heritage Party</a><br /></div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div><div class="x1lliihq xjkvuk6 x1iorvi4"><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u" dir="auto" lang="en"><div class="xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">Finally
we must note another London-based right wing populist party led by a
partially ethnic minority British politician, The Heritage Party, which
emerged out of the Brexit Party. Accusations of racism directed at the bulk of the populist wing of the Right look
increasingly absurd in relation to the facts of their activist
memberships. Their candidate actually beat Reform UK in the Hartlepool
By-Election so they should not be dismissed outright but the anti-vaxxer
position ensures that they will be classed as Far Right by the media regardless of
any other policy positions.</div></div></span></div></div></span></div></div></div></span></div></div></div></span></div></div></div></div></div></div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span><div><div class="xv55zj0 x1vvkbs x1rg5ohu xxymvpz"><div class="xmjcpbm x1tlxs6b x1g8br2z x1gn5b1j x230xth x9f619 xzsf02u x1rg5ohu xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x193iq5w x1mzt3pk x1n2onr6 xeaf4i8 x13faqbe"><div class="x1y1aw1k xn6708d xwib8y2 x1ye3gou"><div class="x1lliihq xjkvuk6 x1iorvi4"><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u" dir="auto" lang="en" style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><div class="xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">They
undoubtedly pass the Ukraine test with <a href="https://twitter.com/davidkurten/status/1596957701682053120" target="_blank">a very clear set of policies</a>
that actually link sanctions and the cost of living issue and propose a
reasonably long term policy strategywith a strong No Net Zero focus.<br /></div></div></span></div></div></div></div></div><div><div class="xv55zj0 x1vvkbs x1rg5ohu xxymvpz"><div class="x3nfvp2 x1n2onr6 xxymvpz xh8yej3"><div class="xdl72j9 x1iyjqo2 xs83m0k xeuugli xh8yej3"><div class="xmjcpbm x1tlxs6b x1g8br2z x1gn5b1j x230xth x9f619 xzsf02u x1rg5ohu xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x193iq5w x1mzt3pk x1n2onr6 xeaf4i8 x13faqbe"><div class="x1y1aw1k xn6708d xwib8y2 x1ye3gou"><div class="x1lliihq xjkvuk6 x1iorvi4"><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u" dir="auto" lang="en"><div class="xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"> </span></div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><br /></div></div></span></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><div class="x9f619 x1n2onr6 x1ja2u2z x78zum5 xdt5ytf x2lah0s x193iq5w xeuugli xsyo7zv x16hj40l x10b6aqq x1yrsyyn"><div class="x9f619 x1n2onr6 x1ja2u2z x78zum5 x2lah0s x1qughib x6s0dn4 xozqiw3 x1q0g3np xcud41i x139jcc6 x4cne27 xifccgj"><div class="x9f619 x1n2onr6 x1ja2u2z x78zum5 xdt5ytf x2lah0s x193iq5w xeuugli x150jy0e x1e558r4 x10b6aqq x1yrsyyn"><div id="focused-state-composer-submit"><span class="x4k7w5x x1h91t0o x1h9r5lt x1jfb8zj xv2umb2 x1beo9mf xaigb6o x12ejxvf x3igimt xarpa2k xedcshv x1lytzrv x1t2pt76 x7ja8zs x1qrby5j"></span></div></div></div></div></div>Tim Pendryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03079486837930544558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-72932514640610937.post-83473522311927841602023-06-10T14:35:00.003+01:002023-06-10T14:35:25.077+01:00Alternatives to the Current Political Order Part 2 - Categorising Our Targets<div><div dir="auto"><div class="x1iorvi4 x1pi30zi x1swvt13 xjkvuk6" data-ad-comet-preview="message" data-ad-preview="message" id=":r3lt:"><div class="x78zum5 xdt5ytf xz62fqu x16ldp7u"><div class="xu06os2 x1ok221b"><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u x1yc453h" dir="auto"><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Given (to recapitulate Part I) that none of the currently significant political parties in the UK appears to be capable of dealing with the our extended national crisis, our mission was to research all parties that existed on the Electoral Commission, weed out some categories as irrelevant and prepare short lists of possible candidates for replacements of either the Tory Party or the Labour Party or both without allowing their current equally second-rate rivals (Green, Liberal Democrat, SNP) to displace them. The alternatives had to meet certain fairly loose policy criteria (see Part I) and be at least theoretically capable of sufficient organisation to make a difference.</span></div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"> </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">For convenience, I repeat that I excluded: a) local resident-based parties (although the Independent Network may be included under 3. Process-Driven Parties below), b) all trivial or one person parties despite the temptation to consider the late Count Binface possibly more useful to the nation than most MPs, c) single issue parties with four exceptions for their gadfly possibilities, d) parties of the liberal left clearly committed to unravelling Brexit and falling into the open maw of mindless pro-NATO positions (which excludes nearly all Green and middle class graduate centre-left operations), e) essentialist right-wing parties that believe in the mythology of the Christian West, were Christian nationalist or white supremacist or were obsessed with cultural politics at the expense of socio-economic reality. Interestingly this latter sort of nonsense can be found deep within the Tory Party which has elements that are more Far Right than some organisations generally regarded as Far Right - of which more may be said later in the series.<br /></span></div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"> </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">This left us with four large categories worth further investigation in order to eliminate more operations as well as allowing us to give honourable mentions to some single issue gadflies. </span><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u x1yc453h" dir="auto"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Four
or five single issue parties are likely to be noted but
without any expectations that they will be more than change some
attitudes in other parties over time.</span></span><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"> The four main categories are: </span></div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"> </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">1. Around nine broadly centre-right challengers to the Tory status quo</span><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u x1yc453h" dir="auto"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"> which look as if they may meet the policy challenges of the day</span></span><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"> (I have included the <i>Social Democrat Party</i> in this Group although it might class itself as centre-left and as a challenge to the Labour status quo). The other most noticeable name on the list is <i>Reform UK</i> but this is in the query basket because under Richard Tice it has appeared (so far) to be more concerned with attracting Johnsonite Tories (precisely the worst sort of people as far as the national interest is concerned given the abysmal failures of his administration) whereas Nigel Farage had been able to maintain a much stronger independent challenge to the establishment Tory Party. The very recent resignation of Boris Johnson from Parliament suggests a very serious risk that the chances of a dynamic challenge to the existing system from the democratic alternative Right could be weakened in the effort to win his populist vote by mimicking his policies and attitudes. We will deal with that later.<br /></span></div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"> </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">2. You may be surprised to find that I am looking at six allegedly Far Right parties even though I would guess nearly all will be counted out eventually for 'essentialism' about the nation, Christianity or race. This is because, while I could easily exclude most Far Right organisations for the reasons already suggested, my research suggested a) some of these groupings had some interesting ideas that should not be dismissed outright simply because the liberal mainstream media had decided to traduce them, b) the term Far Right is imposed on some of them (and centre-right challengers) as a political warfare operation by liberals and should be resisted as manipulative and, in some cases, false and c) what was an unacceptable organisation some thirty or forty years ago may have transformed significantly (evolved) in the meantime. I doubt whether any will survive the final cut but they should be given the chance. I found far more 'evolution' (from essentialism to populism) on the Far Right than the Far Left, much of which seems to have ossified somewhere around 1989. </span></div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"> </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">3. We have a third group of seven process-driven operations who seem to have no policies other than democratic transformation. I am deeply suspicious of some of these as stalking horses for left-liberalism but my greatest doubt lies in the belief that piddling around with democratic processes (other than proportional representation) will solve anything fundamental or deal with the crisis of our time which is the manipulation of minds by centres of socio-economic power and the need for political organisations that are committed to clear policies that can be explained to voters and gain their assent under conditions of full information. Nevertheless this curious liberal phenomenon of believing in process requires further investigation and may (if its policies were more intelligent) change one day the prospects for at least one of the failed mainstream parties which <i>sometimes</i> does have determinable policies beyond its slavish adherence to European federalism - the Liberal Democrats. As it things stand, either I will sweep away this group after closer study or produce an analysis with links so that the 'political engineers' amongst my readers who still believe that process is what politics is all about can come to a view.</span></div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"> </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">4. The largest group is the most unstable. It compromises 12 separate Left and Far Left organisations, In policy terms, it is probably the group with which I have most intellectual and emotional sympathy. However, a) half of these seem to be groupuscules trapped in ancient ideology and b) those that are not have a tendency to drift into the worst sort of liberal leftism as they grow and as graduate middle class activist engagement and influence increase. I would hope to whittle these down to perhaps two or three that look most likely to be both the most adaptive to socio-economic and political reality and the least likely to become the play thing of the usual suspects in the petty graduatocracy that is at the heart of the run-down of the nation. The internationalism of this group is no problem insofar as its ideal remains inter-nationalism and is cast in terms of co-operating nation states against imperialism and against process-driven liberal federalisms. This must also require some analysis of the role of the disenfranchised Corbynistas who are as dangerous in their potential to neuter the Left as the Johnson populists are on the Right. If anything is likely to endorse the power of the failed Centre in the eyes of an exhausted and demoralised public, it is the emergence of graduate left wing activists and petit-bourgeois Tories as the leading representatives of an alternative politics. <br /></span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"> </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">The next stage is to separate out these categories, analyse each and report on them separately. The final short list will be drawn from those that survive this process. </span></div></div></span></div></div></div></div></div><div><div class="x168nmei x13lgxp2 x30kzoy x9jhf4c x6ikm8r x10wlt62" data-visualcompletion="ignore-dynamic"><div><div><div><div class="x1n2onr6"><div class="x6s0dn4 xi81zsa x78zum5 x6prxxf x13a6bvl xvq8zen xdj266r xktsk01 xat24cr x1d52u69 x889kno x4uap5 x1a8lsjc xkhd6sd xdppsyt"><div class="x6s0dn4 x78zum5 x1iyjqo2 x6ikm8r x10wlt62"><span aria-label="See who reacted to this" class="x1ja2u2z" role="toolbar" style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><span class="x6s0dn4 x78zum5 x1e558r4" id=":r3m0:"><span class="x6zyg47 x1xm1mqw xpn8fn3 xtct9fg x13zp6kq x1mcfq15 xrosliz x1wb7cse x13fuv20 xu3j5b3 x1q0q8m5 x26u7qi xamhcws xol2nv xlxy82 x19p7ews xmix8c7 x139jcc6 x1n2onr6 x1xp8n7a xhtitgo"><span class="x12myldv x1udsgas xrc8dwe xxxhv2y x1rg5ohu xmix8c7 x1xp8n7a"><span class="x4k7w5x x1h91t0o x1h9r5lt x1jfb8zj xv2umb2 x1beo9mf xaigb6o x12ejxvf x3igimt xarpa2k xedcshv x1lytzrv x1t2pt76 x7ja8zs x1qrby5j"></span></span></span></span></span></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><div><span class="x4k7w5x x1h91t0o x1h9r5lt x1jfb8zj xv2umb2 x1beo9mf xaigb6o x12ejxvf x3igimt xarpa2k xedcshv x1lytzrv x1t2pt76 x7ja8zs x1qrby5j" style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>Tim Pendryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03079486837930544558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-72932514640610937.post-58677539557655262642023-05-21T14:40:00.004+01:002023-06-10T12:13:49.038+01:00Alternatives to the Current Political Order Part 1 - Introduction<p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">There is widespread discontent across the so-called 'West' with the workings of 'liberal democracy'.This is not a turn from democracy by any means but rather a sense that a political elite, buttressed by media and institutional structures disconnected from the voting population, is unresponsive and incapable of running extremely complex and interconnected societies. It is a crisis of representative democracy when representation no longer accords with public sentiment and the machinery that the representatives are supposed to manage on our behalf is out of their control. The lack of responsiveness is thus two-fold - our representatives have become creatures of a system they no longer fully understand and they have lost the will to represent those who elect them as they wish to be represented.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">However, this is not going to be yet another impotent moan from another atomised individual in an impotent population. Such moans are simply ranting expressions of frustration and they generally change nothing. Atomisation means that there are few levers for individuals to exert power over the political process especially where all the institutional structures through which influence might be exerted are equally detached from us through professional bureaucracies and managements with no strategic national or community purpose - and that includes trades unions, churches and, above all, the five established major parties (if we include the Greens and the SNP). In all such cases professionalised bureaucracies and closed elites relate to each other within a similar conforming framework and compete for their own purposes - the survival aims of themselves. </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">The only solution - other than an equally impotent strategy of violence such as we saw in the Capitol Hill Riots or the street explosions in France over pensions reform or protests against the placement of illegal immigrants in particular localities regardless of local wishes - is organisation but how do you organise resistance and reform when the agents and institutional structures of those claiming to reform society are themselves part of the problem, themselves embedded in a collapsing and dysfunctional system? One solution is stop thinking in terms of the value of each successive election where Tweedledum is invariably replaced by an equally incompetent Tweedledee and where politics has become a circus in which you cheer on one side only because they appear to be the lesser evil than the other side. The political cycle repeats like a broken national dishwasher where the dishes still come out dirty at the end.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">The instinct of many people is just to rant away on social media and think that is politics. Meanwhile the mainstream media paint a distorted picture of reality and then try to undermine what little functionality is left in the system through sustained trivia. Many others are steadily withdrawing from the system in distaste no longer wishing to be complicit in the farce that is contemporary liberal democracy. I did not bother to vote in the recent local elections for that latter reason - my vote was futile since all it allowed me was a choice of four similar representations of dysfunctionality in a system that was already fixed in favour of our local bureaucracy and centralised authority. We are leaning towards the situation under the Soviets where 'contested' elections merely meant choosing between paper candidates amenable to current ideological 'reality'.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">I have identified three fundamental flaws in late capitalist liberal democracy and they are not 'capitalism' (despite what the Left likes to believe) or 'the deep state' as conspiracy (despite what many Right populists want us to believe). They are the corrupting effects of the businesses we call media and higher education, the bureaucratism of a state machinery and institutional structures whose prime purpose is sclerotically to preserve the system rather than transform it and the decadent state of the British political party which is now little more than a brand alternating between factions where the factions have no idea how to run anything effectively and are wholly disconnected from the populations they purport to represent. Much of this combines into the surprisingly large interconnected 'new elite' identified by Matthew Goodwin but the problem is even more structural than he implies. This analysis may unfold further in future blog posts but is not the purpose of the current series.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">The question to hand is what can be done to counter control of the machinery of government by a failed 'educated' but incompetent and narcissistic factionalised elite whilst ensuring that democracy actually exists rather than is just a name used as rhetorical cover for the current playground of activists, lobbyists, managers and political professionals. Time and time again, we come up against the core of the problem that no one will face - Parliament and the way our representatives are chosen and are accountable at the point where legislation is made and the executive and its policies are approved, crutinised and controlled. Above all, it is Parliament that has failed and is failing.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">This is not the time to go all 'liberal nerd' and come up with weird and wonderful 'solutions' based on constitutional tinkering. Citizen's Assemblies, for example, are just shuffling the deckchairs on the Titanic. I would have no problem with FPTP if it delivered competent, tough representatives who could explain reality to the people and yet enforce the wishes of the people within reality on the State. At the moment FPTP is not delivering and it looks as if it cannot deliver because of structural issues related to the nature of the political party, its choice of candidates and its supine approach to the media and its own ideologues. Proportional representation reluctantly becomes a necessity to break the power of the existing powers and let new blood into the decision-making process. Primaries look as if they could remove power from committee cliques manipulated from the centre. AI might be helpful in elucidating what the people want and in political education but none of these solve the essential problem which is a cultural failure that could take decades to reverse and where it may already be too late.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">And this is the point. We are now talking about a long game. The 2024 election will be fought over by the usual suspects and whoever wins is going to be dysfunctional and incompetent because the system has been built to be so. Any political programme to restore the nation along democratic lines is a long play involving a deliberate over-turning of the existing form of liberal democracy (notably the parties) and weakening of the power of the current cultural elite and media alongside improved mass political education that by-passes our half-witted and trivialising media caste. This requires the courage to put forward alternative ideas with the aim of shifting cultural and political power away from the existing elite (accepting the dreadful necessity of occasional compromises) in a process that may not bear fruit until 2030 or even 2035 during which period the existing sclerotic and bankrupt elite will have ample opportunity to 'fix' the system through regulation, legislation and psychological operations to block change.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">So, from where will a peaceful democratic and non-violent revolution emerge (with always the option of street action if the system fixes go over a red line? The negative observers who say this is not possible must bear in mind that national democrats are in the position of the progenitors of the Chartists in the 1830s, the Labour Movement in the 1880s, the suffragettes in the 1890s and the Greens in the 1970s - and yet all those movements achieved a considerable amount in the subsequent fifty tears. Of course, democracy, the labour movement, feminism and the greens have all horribly degenerated in recent years but all four developments were socially constructive and, no doubt, national democracy would degenerate equally by the end of the century if it succeeded. The point is that national democracy and improved mass political education are needed now and, if a movement eventually create its own nemesis having done its job too well, this is how our species works - it fights for progressive change, the change becomes sclerotic, the sclerosis creates a challenge and the challenge becomes the next progressive change until it too needs replacement. </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">In this series, we are going to avoid the nostrums of specific tinkering reform because the point is to get a thousand flowers to bloom, to break the stranglehold of a failed elite (or rather network of interlocking elites) and then to cherry pick the winning combinations for a national democratic revolution that will synthesise what actually serves our nation and population from both the current Left and Right. So let us start with one of the great problematics of our time - the political party. This is because only the political party, tragically, has the potential organisation and will and approval (through the Electoral Commission) to displace the clowns and comic singers of the five daft parties that we are stuck with.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Of course, we must not be naive. The alternative parties will also have their fair share of clowns and comic singers but our aim is not to change humanity (which will always promote clowns and comic singers to the top of its system out of ignorance and laziness) but to change the system within which humanity expresses itself. We need clowns and comic singers who can actually make us laugh rather than rant like a BBC Radio 4 'comedian' or send tens of thousands into a meat grinder like the President of Ukraine and who can sing the songs the people like to hear. We need to be able to switch them off or get them off the stage quickly if they lack talent. We need, in fact, a creative revolution in politics much as we get such revolutions periodically in popular culture. <br /></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u x1yc453h" dir="auto" style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"></span></p><div class="xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u x1yc453h" dir="auto" style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><span>So, I decided to analyse all the parties registered by the Electoral Commission (except the plethora of local residents' associations, the vast bulk of single issue loons who do not understand how politics actually works and the obvious comedic loons who probably do but are just in it for the laughs) and then assess them on just seven broad if controversial grounds:-</span></span></div></div><p></p><div style="text-align: left;"><div><div class="x1iorvi4 x1pi30zi x1swvt13 xjkvuk6" data-ad-comet-preview="message" data-ad-preview="message" id=":r3pr:"><div class="x78zum5 xdt5ytf xz62fqu x16ldp7u"><div class="xu06os2 x1ok221b"><p><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u x1yc453h" dir="auto"></span></p><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u x1yc453h" dir="auto"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">1. Their general position on Ukraine/NATO - do they see the dangerous farce that is 'defence of the West' and how it is leading us towards penury and possibly war? If there is anything that demonstrates best the sheer incompetence of a ruling elite, it is the conduct of an ideological international relations strategy based on populist sentiment and ignorance about the actual conditions that led to the war in the first place.<br /></span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u x1yc453h" dir="auto"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"> </span></span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u x1yc453h" dir="auto"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">2. Do they understand that a strong State is required to control borders and organised crime and that only a strong State will deal with the biggest challenges of the twenty-first century - including mass migration encouraged by weak-minded liberals and greedy business interests and the rise of artificial intelligence? In other words, do they get that a strong state requires the recapture of sovereignty by the people through the recapture of Parliament regardless of liberal ideology.<br /></span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u x1yc453h" dir="auto"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"> </span></span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u x1yc453h" dir="auto"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">3. Will they maintain Brexit as an exercise in national self-determination? This is not about Remain or Leave but about democratic respect for the results of the 2016 Referendum and the failure of the bulk of the political class to respect popular democracy and implement the will of the people with systematic determination because that is what the population voted for.<br /></span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u x1yc453h" dir="auto"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"> </span></span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u x1yc453h" dir="auto"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">4. Will they challenge the negative stance of our cultural elites to our inherited identities and free choices and maintain the right of all to dissent from prevailing elite ideology? This is important because, holding the levers of power, the existing system is trying to hide its dysfunctional nature behind ever more authoritarian and manipulative measures through ever more intrusive regulation and legislation with the paradoxical and self interested connivance of the mainstream media.<br /></span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u x1yc453h" dir="auto"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"> </span></span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u x1yc453h" dir="auto"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">5. Are they committed to building a prosperous 'one nation' where public service is fairly rewarded, public services are fairly funded but efficiently run (not for the benefit of the managerial classes) and where the genuinely vulnerable are cared for on the basis of an open and entrepreneurial economy in which, in turn, energy and innovation are rewarded? In other words, do they have a sense of the 'commonwealth' which means a necessary war on poverty, ignorance and disadvantage and respect for the working classes and their values as much as the middle class and theirs.<br /></span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u x1yc453h" dir="auto"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"> </span></span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u x1yc453h" dir="auto"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">6. Do they understand that resilience and eco-sustainability is a national issue and is being neglected in the rush to signal virtue at a global level with inappropriate extreme business-oriented Net Zero policies? Globalist solutions should be restricted only to the essential as direct state-to-state negotiations rather than be subject to huge and foolish international bureaucratic interventions that take no account of the realities of power in the world - our useless leaders have ended up not with the world government they dreamed of but two armed blocs competing at the expense of the developing world and at the cost of our own peoples.<br /></span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u x1yc453h" dir="auto"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"> </span></span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u x1yc453h" dir="auto"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">7. Are they organisationally capable in the long run of displacing our incompetent and increasingly corrupted political class no matter how small and insignificant they may be at the moment?</span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u x1yc453h" dir="auto"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"> </span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u x1yc453h" dir="auto"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">This series of postings will unfold over the next few weeks and cover as many segments of the political market as follows with as much objectivity as I can muster. The process will be controversial because I am not going to accept common media assessments of the so-called Far Left or Far Right but will investigate their merits and demerits on their own account. When the project is completed (indeed as it progresses) I hope to have provided an eventual short list of candidates for engagement and support ranked in some reasonable order. </span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u x1yc453h" dir="auto"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"> </span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u x1yc453h" dir="auto"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">I think we can safely say that the Tories, Labour, the Liberal Democrats, the Greens and the SNP will not be on that list (even if I was Scottish). All five of those parties are 'busted' for different reasons - the Tories are provenly inept at almost everything they have touched under successive Prime Ministers, Labour has become a grim exercise in power-grabbing under a second-rate cypher, the Liberal Democrats lied to their student vote over a decade ago and lying is in their constitutional make-up as opportunists, the Greens have turned into neo-conservatives in their desperate play for elite respectability and the SNP, well the SNP ... 'nuff said!<br /></span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u x1yc453h" dir="auto"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"> </span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u x1yc453h" dir="auto"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">There are likely to be perhaps six or seven candidates for engagement, a shopping list or menu if you like, with at least one to suit any particular revolutionary taste - and, eventually, one of these will displace the Tories and one of these will displace Labour and either Labour or the Tories will displace the Liberal Democrats. It may take many decades although perhaps not at the rate required by a country crumbling under the most inept elite since the last days of the Roman Empire. The key takeaway is that it is time for all of us to consider detaching ourselves from the parties we have been told to support for so long as electoral cannon fodder or out of a ridiculous tribal loyalty some of us might better reserve for Arsenal or Aston Villa and find opportunities for new parties that can compete and struggle to transform our nation through transforming the terms on which we, the people 'do politics'. </span><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div></div><p></p></div></div></div></div></div>Tim Pendryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03079486837930544558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-72932514640610937.post-91599600117018746722023-05-13T13:21:00.007+01:002023-05-21T14:42:18.976+01:00A WARNING TO THE INTREPID! - The Chilling Effect of Corporate Social Media Censorship and the Matriarchal State<p style="margin: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Recently I found myself apparently guilty of 'hate speech' in one of my own administered <i>Facebook</i> Groups (as if its members
were not all known to me and sophisticated adults). It was, of course, nothing of the kind (see below). I have had similar experiences with the comments allowed (or rather not allowed) on <i>The Guardian</i> and <i>Financial Times</i>. Others have had similar experiences here on <i>Blogger</i>. In my most recent case, this was expressed as a threat to the very existence of the Group. Nothing happened of course, the 'offending' item simply disappeared, murdered by either an algorithm or some young under-paid dim-wit in some back office but the threat got me thinking about the 'chilling effect' on freedom of speech from such implied threats. </span></p><p style="margin: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"> </span></p><p style="margin: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Perhaps the 'West' may not be a<i> patriarchal</i> authoritarian 'tyranny' like China or Russia (at least as they are seen in our popular mythology) but is instead becoming a manipulative <i>matriarchal</i> variant. Perhaps it is deviously in the process of becoming more totalitarian by stealth than its 'evil' (apparently) rivals. Instead of having clear rules with clear punishments (which I can deal with) we have the <i>mauvaise foi</i> of desperate attempts to tell us we are all free (which is only a half truth at the best of times) and then exert social control through hints and passive aggression, weak threats and subtle pressures to effect behaviour change. In psychological terms we have the worst of the traditionalist masculine in one bloc replaced by the worst of the traditionalist feminine in the the other. </span></p><p style="margin: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"> </span></p><p style="margin: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Our authorities seem to be too weak to control us directly. They do it through pressure exerted through corporate mummies and institutional set-ups. Daddy is a coward so Mummy has to be brought in to exert discipline over the kids (that's us, folks!). Like good little children in a conservative household, we are shamed into compliance or made guilty after the fact or (if we are to have any fun or freedom or learning experience) we have to become devious law and rule breakers hoping to get away with a bit of naughtiness and not get caught. It is not only our behaviour and language that is controlled in this way within a rather weird liberal/progressive pseudo-theocracy but increasingly our thoughts (something the 'tyrannies' actually do not tend to tamper with). </span></p><p style="margin: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"> </span></p><p style="margin: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">We have to be <i>right thinkers </i>in order to ensure <i>right speech</i> and<i> right behaviour </i>because Daddy (the State) is too weak and cowardly to wield the whip and impose good behaviour let alone good speech on us. In the eyes of our political culture we are not adults but children who have to be frightened, cajoled, rewarded and lied to in order to ensure that we do not go wild and ask all the questions that developing children should be asking about authority and our environment. Our punishments are generally light - exile, isolation, exclusion - rather than the Gulag. Everybody just takes it on the chin not realising that they are frogs slowly being boiled on the hob. The Western State is the ultimate bad parent no less than the Eastern tyranny - in our case, the absent father who relies on the corporate mother to bring up the children.<br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"> </span></p><p style="margin: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">In fact, there was probably no immediate danger to the <i>Facebook </i>Group in question although I am
sure there are people (including the usual suspects in the psy-ops fraternity) who would love to close the Group down. What was happening was a 'warning' designed to weaken the force of inconvenient debate and to confirm that our freedom existed on sufferance and not by right. The Group in question consistently challenges the given narratives about events in the bloodlands to
the East whose mismanagement threatens us all with nuclear immolation. In fact, much of that debate has, in any case, shifted to <i>Telegram</i> which, of course, Keir Starmer wants to close down as a 'progressive' (God help us!). Perhaps he thinks Number Ten is a walk in if only he can appear more conservative and authoritarian than the failed and confused Conservatives. Depressingly, he may be right. Most voters seem terrified of real freedom. <br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"> </span></p><p style="margin: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Perhaps
I should suggest caution in particular uses of emotional but still non-harmful language and let the
algorithms train us like a dog owner trains its hound but I am disinclined to give way. If my Group members are courageous enough to defy the imposed narratives about (say) the 'War' as other Groups' members in my territory are courageous enough to defy given narratives about politicised science and art, diversity and even equality or gender and identity, because they think for themselves in reasoned and intelligent ways, then I am 'd----d' if I am going to act like Mummy's proxy. I would rather kill off the Groups entirely when that day comes, stick to <i>Telegram</i> until they destroy that too, cultivate my garden and wait for the whole system to implode as all sclerotic cultures eventually do. I am old enough not to care over much if Western civilisation collapses under the weight of its own malice and ineptitude.<br /></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"> </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">As I say, there was
no hate in the relevant comment. It simply made the point that I opposed
conscription by any Government under all but the most extreme circumstances and
possibly not then. I made it clear that I would be personally protective of
anyone evading conscription if at all possible no matter which country they
came from. <i>Facebook</i> may simply have taken exception to a standard and rather mild British expletive (never forget that <i>Facebook</i> comes out of an American psychological and cultural
bubble) which was directed at State entities and certainly not at individuals
or identity groups. It was a mild expletive found elsewhere on Facebook without effect so perhaps suspicions should be roused about another agenda. To be fair, the algorithms do not seem to be very bright (although in saying that perhaps that I am demonstrating hate speech towards algorithms!). AI is unlikely to improve things since the people who are programming AI are the people trying to control our mental mapping.<br /></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"> </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Be aware that all
the big social media sites except perhaps <i>Truth Social </i>and <i>Twitter</i> (and this last is looking uncertain after the latest CEO appointment) are running scared
at the moment as the European Union and the British Government are intending or
undertaking major legislative campaigns to 'control' what information we can have
access to. This is not such a problem in the US with its First Amendment although those freedoms are also under constant lawfare pressure from 'liberals' and the Federal State. There is a tinge of Emergency Powers legislation lurking
in the anterooms of some of these campaigns since we seem to be positioned in a 'phoney war' situation that
could turn into a shooting war at any instance without any of us having much of a say in the matter any more than we did in 1914 or 1939. </span></p><p style="margin: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"> </span></p><p style="margin: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Elites know that there is
substantial doubt about where we are heading and a lot of resistance to the narrative that they wish to
promote. The mainstream media, of course,
are broadly on side with that narrative as they were on, say, Vietnam for the bulk
of that war. This time around, social media provides an alternative narrative that almost
certainly reflects social reality - society in general is quite simply more indifferent to claims
about Ukraine and Russia than people like Ben Wallace and Tom Tugendhat would like. There are larger oppositional minorities at this
stage in the context between our empires than at the equivalent stage of (say) the
Vietnam imbroglio.</span></p><p style="margin: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"> </span></p><p style="margin: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">The evident fear in the
system is that populations could switch from a large majority for the elite
narrative to a large majority against it (which is exactly what happened in the Vietnam War in the US) and so destabilise a system
that was put in position in stages over some seventy years to benefit large-scale capital and a self-reinforcing political caste and which is now failing
abysmally in terms of both cultural governance and economic stability. Controlling social media and encrypted communications like <i>Whats App</i>, <i>Telegram</i> and <i>Signal</i> are becoming of vital importance to established political elites as Starmer's outburst in the Commons has indicated. <br /></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"> </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">That switch in
sentiment in the Vietnam War, in a country where free speech is guaranteed by the First
Amendment, took place in barely nine months and changed history without benefit of social media so we can see why they are rattled in the White House, Brussels and Whitehall. The existing system in the UK and
Europe has a great deal at stake in using any weapon at its disposal to ensure
that it does not lose control of power or policy, citing in an exaggerated way both disinformation and particular and real
but still often marginal forms of abuse as excuses for increased social control of
the free social media. </span></p><p style="margin: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"> </span></p><p style="margin: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Instead of Daddy moving on on the abuses directly (after all, it is a bit rich for the British State to claim moral guardianship after its sustained failure to deal with care home child abuse or widespread fraud), the legal framework is created to frighten Mummy into doing the job for it. Major platforms have
to be complicit in this because they are businesses and not public services.
The legislative and regulatory power of existing elites is sufficient to
seriously affect their profitability and a recession may well be on the way. They have no option in the game of survival. <br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"> </span></p><p style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Certainly, as Mick Lynch pointed out today, the working population and even the lower middle classes are getting much poorer even as the asset rich get richer and while large corporations make ever-increasing profits on high inflation and war booty. Algorithms too are just defensive blunt instruments that can be designed to be
'conservative' (in fact, 'conservatism' is the cultural liberal agenda and the 'progressive' business-friendly politics that got us into the mess we are in in the first place) and defensive of
corporate interests.</span></p><p style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"> </span></p><p style="font-family: Calibri; margin: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">In short, you cannot
take your freedom of expression for granted nor your ownership of your invested
information on social platforms nor that arbitrary power will not be exercised to
exclude you from a platform if you cannot behave along prescribed lines. If I
get censored again (I do not intend to be deliberately provocative but I will never hide my
honest opinon reasonably expressed), then you know it is political.</span></p>
Tim Pendryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03079486837930544558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-72932514640610937.post-15759931405611181522023-05-06T18:30:00.001+01:002023-05-06T18:30:21.100+01:00The Press - Problem Rather Than Solution<p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span>Those who know their Heidegger will be aware of the concept of Gerede or 'idle chatter', the fallen and inauthentic mode of speech used in every day life. In fact we cannot do without it. It is essential to social cohesion which is an inauthentic necessity as far as the individual is concerned but has its own authenticity as one element amongst many in constructing a framework of relations within which individuality can express itself. To speak of 'Gerede' is not to take a moral or value standard against it but simply to note that it is fallen and inauthentic in respect to 'Dasein' - the human being whose mind cannot be known by other minds and who cannot know other minds and (to express the grim aspect of Heideggerian philosophy) must face their own death alone. This aloneness of death applies to the late Queen Elizabeth II as much as to the man who dies more obviously alone in a hospice in some small town without relatives or friends. Social Gerede includes our commentary on the deaths of others and their doings. </span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span>What does all this have to do with the media? Only that our responses to events as social chatter have always had to deal with a 'higher level' of inauthenticity and fallen-ness which is the chittter-chatter of journalists and intellectuals as 'public discourse' where the cohesion being encouraged is not that of the ordinary human relations designed to help us get things done in the world and survive but the cohesion of a ruling caste that is simultaneously determined on its own hegemony and terrified of losing control of the chatter in case loss collapses that hegemony. The recent Coronation of King Charles II was an object lesson in these matters - private reactions bonding families and communities at the lowest level in a dialectic with a myth in which ancient mystery had been replaced with the magic of 'glamour' and a higher level traditional discourse that bonded society through the marriage of Church and State and the subordination of the political to the socially cohesive irrational.</span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span>The mediation between these worlds is (as the word implies) the media but how many of us were thoroughly irritated by the inane chatter from journalists that we heard before, during and after the Coronation - and that we hear before, during and after every major event, inbetween the music we hear on radio and programmed as nothing more than inane chatter on broadcast channels and in newspaper columns. This mental wall paper, democratised through social media (which mainstream journalists use but deeply resent as rival to their hegemonic control of information flows and opinion), is not only inane but serves a dysfunction in simultaneously communicating socially cohesive messaging from above while anarchically destabilising society in order to provide more fuel for the chatter. </span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span>As fossil fuels are said to pollute and heat up our planet so the sheer scale of inane chatter pollutes and heats up our society - and yet, despite the fact that we are told we must restrict ourselves in the use of carbon, there is no attempt to restrain or manage this inane chatter which might be likened to a memetic Ponzi Scheme with the worst offenders now demanding social restrictions on potential worse offenders to come to protect their own collapsing monopoly on idiocy. The mainstream media, in short, and the politicians, in their attacks on the platforms are not interested in turning inane chatter into something educational, analytical, factual and thoughtful but only in preserving their own right to offer what they see as a vaguely more rational form of inanity rather than give that right of inanity to all of us.<br /></span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span>Some months ago, journalists
got terribly excited about some of their type being picked up
by the police at a highly disruptive eco-demonstration. Journalists
like to stoke outrage in their readers but are never so outraged as when one of their own gets into trouble. I am not
interested here in the specific case. I don't know the facts of an
essentially trivial incident any more than I care about George Galloway's or Matt Hancock's
appearances on popular TV shows. The probability is that, under
pressure, the police made a mistake which they then had to unwind, that
the 'Press' were intrusive on an operation in which perhaps lives and
certainly individual safety were at stake and that there was no
intention whatsoever by the 'State' to limit the freedom of the Press
on that day and in that place. </span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span>More concerning should be that a pub which represented the livelihood of a family has had to close down because a couple of holier-than-thou corporations refused to supply them with key product thanks to publicity about a stupid police raid on their collection of golliwogs. The politicians caused the police to blunder, the media created hysteria and the 'corporate liberals' stepped in to destroy a small business. That is the 'regime' in a nutshell - confused authority, inept politicians, narcissistic journalists and complicit Uriah Heep-like capitalists creating a vortex of destruction for the 'little man'. </span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span>We might also cite the idiocy around the Oath of Allegiance to the Coronation. It always was voluntary. It was a relatively minor addition to the Service put forward in good faith by Church and Crown almost certainly at the behest of the former (which has been busy turning the event into a soft power assertion of its own authority). An oath is serious to some (mostly to the military). Trivial to others (mostly the public). It was a nice idea for traditionalists without negative implications for sceptics. If you can't say it, don't take up your invitation to Westminster Abbey and stay silent at home. The media turned something voluntary, restricted in force to a few hundred people in an Abbey and private for most people into a divisive 'story', adding yet another brick of negativity into our dying culture. <br /></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span>In the eco-case, the poor Plods were trying to find a way to restore the
freedom to travel safely of significant numbers of people while not
endangering the life of any narcissist who decided to protest at their
expense. The arrests of protesters before the Coronation are more troubling perhaps except that, on further thought, this tiny minority of activists were not actually putting forward arguments for republicanism and creating a political organisation capable of winning elections to impose it in accordance with the will of the people but simply ruining the day for a lot of other people and risking violence and disorder during a difficult high security operation. After all, there are some worse people even than activists and journalists out there.</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span> </span></span></p><p style="margin: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span>Perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps the police are on the verge of
imposing monarchical tyranny (rather than rank stupidity) and perhaps the Press are the only effective barrier
between ourselves and authoritarian rule but I think not. England is
England, marked out more by blunders than malice. The Press have no interest but advertising revenue, jobs for journalists, telling tales (rather than the mysterious 'truth') and allowing their posher end to rant at their owners' expense. The
frustration for the public was that the eco-protests caused real
distress and
misery for many individuals and that they existed in good part because of a
collusive
relationship between protesters and the media, creating a vicious cycle
in
which more outrageous protests get more publicity which encourages more
protests. Instead of a cycle of socially cohesive idle chatter with space for criticism, a transmission belt from below as well as from above in stabilising society and reforming it, we have cycles of inane chatter which destroy social cohesion and block off intelligent analytical criticism of society when and wherever it fails. There is a sound criticism of monarchy in the UK and there are dipshit protesters at the margins and the latter always destroy the ability of the former to be heard.<br /></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span>Here is another example. If you believed the media, the Passport Office is in total disarray and the civil service is falling apart. This is the accepted version doled out to people with no immediate connection to the service based on the complaints of the few in a genuinely complex system. Yet, in our household, two passport applications were handled effectively within three weeks and my request for some facts on pension arrangements was delivered in writing within the promised time-scale. Freedom
increasingly seems to be defined by the 'right' of activists to engage in performative street 'art' at the expense of others and by the 'right' of the media to tell 'stories' where stories are as likely to mean 'lies' as the word is often used in popular parlance as not. The half-baked accounts of the Ukraine War are simply the relation of one-sided dossiers issued by psychological operations specialists. NGOs produce 'papers' designed to manipulate. Journalists lap up PR material. We live in a miasma of story-telling. <br /></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span> </span></span></p><p style="margin: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span>This 'freedom' to engage in a concatenation of half-truths helps to enable a presumed right to interfere in other peoples' lives, insult
their values beyond fair reason (of which Pussy Riot behaving badly in an Russian
Orthodox Church must be exemplar) and place people at risk. All on
the dubious basis that (for example) direct extreme action (say) got the
women the vote as opposed to reliance on civil disobedience, peaceful
protest and political action ... you know, the hard way but the sure
way. African-American strategies to win civil rights are models of their kind in which major social change took place because a
mass of people (like women) needed it and not because a few crusties
or obsessives wanted it. In fact, extreme direct action put back the suffragette movement whose final victory was inevitable on the strength of the social forces involved.<br /></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span> </span></span></p><p style="margin: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span>We
have seen a similar destructive relationship between terrorism and the
media. Terrorists can be assured of sometimes hysterical coverage
creating fear
and anxiety that then expresses itself in over-reaction by the
authorities who
then restrict the civil liberties of everyone except the media who are
at the
root of creating the initial crisis of anxiety in the first place. Unlike most people, I am not hysterical about terrorism. Exhausted
doctors and truck drivers are more of a threat to me and my family than
loons with a bomb. But the Islamist errorist wave of the 1990s and 2000s was never adequately analysed in the media as a) the fruit of inept foreign policy, b) a marginal threat to the vast majority of the population for the vast majority of the time, c) an opportunity to whip up hysteria by special interests to ensure budgetary allocations and d) a greater opportunity for ambitious technocrats to get their noses in the trough. The media never really exposed a) or made b) clear and were wholly complicit in the pursuing the ambitions of those concerned with c) and d).<br /></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span> </span></span></p><p style="margin: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span>It
seems that terrorism was also a terribly convenient excuse for the
authorities to impose excessive surveillance and social controls and
to build huge industrial-security complexes creating jobs for the pals. The media have been as important in creating a less pleasant and authoritarian society as they have been in stoking up the war-mongering of the neo-cons and the absurd foreign policies of a bunch of NATO incompetents.
Radically, I would go so far as to say that the role of the media is also to ensure that we forget the right
of violent resistance where there is a radical imbalance of power and
where power resides in an authority that is not accountable to its
subjects. Let me explain the issue here which is that any regime must work or be subject to the Mandate of Heaven and fall. Western liberal democracy today and its accountability is a Potemkin Village, We have reached the tragic point where only the media may be gluing the paper together at the same time as it is playing with matches around it. </span></span></p><p style="margin: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span> </span></span></p><p style="margin: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span>The media have taken on the role of making power accountable on paper but they do nothing of the kind in actuality. Indeed, the media is part of Power. Its interest tends to be merely in maintaining politics as a soap opera and getting political scalps in an eternal game of political musical chairs. National liberation remains a worthy struggle as does the
overthrow of tyrannies from within (without foreign interference) or
foreign occupation but, honestly, Britain today is, if anything, at the
other end of the tyrannical spectrum, not a tyranny but an unstable mess. What we need now is to face this fact and start to reform how we do things within our ancient traditions where they do not get in the way. It is the media that are getting in the way. </span></span></p><p style="margin: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span> </span></span></p><p style="margin: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span>Britain is a failing State led by bunglers but with the opportunity
for us all (even if inadequately taken) to overthrow the bunglers
through effective political organisation and persuade the slightly less
stupid bunglers through argument and peaceful protest. Of course, the
fact that we invariably replace one set of bunglers with another is not
the point ... being a democracy, we could theoretically remove all bunglers if we were not
so lazy, distracted and poorly educated even if we did not do so. We willnot do so because we are lazy, distracted and poorly educated and that's just how it goes. But we could still have a more effective, more intelligent and more capable elite whose first allegiance was, at least in principle, to the People rather than to its own class or to the liberal internationalist and neoliberal ideologies that got us into the mess we are in in the first place. </span></span></p><p style="margin: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span> </span></span></p><p style="margin: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span>A strong State serving a strong People would place social cohesion alongside justifiable analytical criticism (not emotional performance art) at a premium. The media has become
complicit in our collective weakness and so complicit in the dodgy panicked attempts of the authorities to plug holes in the dam
holding back anarchy instead of building new and stronger dams. Our freedoms are in danger because of the media more than we will accept. As we say, the issue must be whether our ruling caste has the Mandate of Heaven or not. If it does, it should be accepted, If it does not, it should be overthrown. We are at the point, thanks to weak politicians, narcissistic activists and the media, where what should be preserved is moving into territory where overthrow becomes not merely a possibility but may become a duty one day. We are not there yet but the almost inevitable failure of the next Government and world conditions may bring us close to the precipice ... pushed constantly in that direction by an irresponsible media!<br /></span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"></p><p style="margin: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span>Of course, this
problem of the media as hysterical licence in the face of a weak State
holding together a collapsing society is probably not fully resolvable in a free society and freedom must remain a core value in our society. But freedom always collapses when society collapses. Perhaps the chaos of social media will do the job for us. The
benefits of a free and open media
usually and generally outweigh the risks created by such a media and the benefits of freedom of speech, responsible protest and free political organisation are unarguable but we should be under no
illusions
about what is going on here. The mainstream media have become a socially
corrosive and destructive element in society (far more than the claimed
negative effects of social media) about which nothing can be done under the current regime just
as,
ultimately, a weak State can do little effective to deal with social
corrosion -
whether poverty, illegal migration, administrative incapacity, lack of
resources, terrorism (when it is determined enough),
organised crime or destructive protest. </span></span></p><p style="margin: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span> </span></span></p><p style="margin: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span>Why?
Because certain liberal interest
groups ensure that it will not even discuss appropriate and
proportionate
action in legislatures. (The appalling quality of our political class is another issue for another time). We
are slipping into a vortex of social collapse as a result. The media
represent an important
trigger for that collapse because it self-censors any radical voice with the ability to deal with the issues head-on. New ideas are systematically silenced as inconvenient or uncomfortable. The media are no longer (to the extent that they ever did)
acting as
responsible reporters of fact and analysis but, instead, only as hungry creators of narratives designed to excite and trigger strong emotions in
order to
attract eyeballs. We are now all supposed to emote and judge complex
political and international issues on the basis of individual 'stories'
which appeal to our 'humanity' but apparently not to our reasoning
capacity. As a result, we get fables, fairy stories at worst and the
'profession' (actually a 'trade') is filled with desperate narcissists
looking at the main chance because their employment is precarious and
their moral sense is constructed from the rules of their profession and
nothing higher.
</span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span>
</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span>So,
let journalists fight the struggles for other journalists' 'freedoms' but I
suspect many of the rest of us may think there are other more important battles
to fight. We might be inclined to fight their own solipsistic wars about Freedom of the Press more vigorously if only the
media itself was a little morally correct and a lot more active in supporting the real heroes who are
prepared to strip away the hypocrisies and lies of official systems (such as Assange) rather than
dedicate their limited resources to promoting extreme actions by non-state small-scale actors and attractive figureheads like 'Greta'. </span></span></p><p style="margin: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span> </span></span></p><p style="margin: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span>The flow of journalists in and out of political offices
also creates embedded conflicts of interest. There was the depressingly easy
acceptance in the Thatcher era of 'honours' by Editors. There is the
noticeable and shameful degree to which the BBC bends itself to the
narrative of the political establishment. There is the flow of funds
into 'campaigning' journalism that clearly meets the agenda of Western fixers
in the international relations world. There is the back-scratching and
back-biting involved in leaks and sources designed to break this or that
political spine or promote the career of this or that rising
manipulative psychopath. There is the aura of terror for individuals and
corporations if some small blunder is exploded into a 'story' that
wrecks careers out of all proportion to the 'crime' and disrupts any
ability to solve a problem and move on. We often have visions here of the media with
firebrands and pitchforks setting out to vanquish a monster as if we
lived in a Universal horror movie. <br /></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span> </span></span></p><p style="margin: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span>And
yet so much is swept under the carpet or not investigated because it is
too complicated or inconvenient for the short term mentalities and
butterfly minds of the media. There is the length of time it took to
investigate child abuse in the care home sector, the lack of interest in
the details of the crisis in the NHS rather than its results, the lack
of interest in the weird and wonderful financial wheezes that pop out
now and then to threaten the stability of the capitalist system on
which we all currently depend to survive, the easy acceptance of any bit of
propagandistic crud issued out of Kiev, the lack of investigation into
the relationship between inflation and dumb foreign policy decisions and
the utter disinterest in the structures and meaning of organised crime
and its relationship to illegal migration until thousands start bobbing
in little boats over the Channel in a perverse parody of Dunkirk.<br /></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span> </span></span></p><p style="margin: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span>As
to the lost heroes, Julian Assange is now
in danger of being sent to rot in an American jail after many years of
vicious
persecution yet he exposed serious wrong-doing in a way rarely done
by a
mainstream media protective of its symbiotic relationship with 'sources'.
He is flawed but has not deserved this level of cruel and vengeful
persecution. Instead of fighting for Assange (after all, he is not
'one of them'), the mainstream media ignore him as inconvenient. They
prefer to worry not about getting more honest truths out of a dodgy
system but 'maintaining their sources' and backing manipulative
campaigners trying to provide us with yet more half truths to pile on
the punter like Pelion on Ossa. It is a system of complicity in which a
game of mutual manipulation has long since departed from both truth and
social responsibility. <br /></span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span>
</span></span><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span><span style="color: black;"><span>Journalism
seems to have become a closed world of mutual back-scratchers, fundamentally
irresponsible, as careful of its 'rights' as any factory shop steward but also
incapable of understanding how its publicity can trigger dangerous extreme
actions in the political process, encourage extreme illegalities and disruption
and yet fail to support serious exposures of wrong-doing in the political and
social structures into which it is embedded and on which it is as dependent as
on a Class A drug. Contemporary journalism has long been part of the problem rather than part of the solution. Something must be done ... </span></span></span></span></p>Tim Pendryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03079486837930544558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-72932514640610937.post-52218059970542377502023-04-22T16:52:00.001+01:002023-04-22T16:53:31.137+01:00The Allies Get Played - The 'Genius' of American Strategy<div style="color: #14171a; margin: 0in; text-align: left;"><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span>Centred on a highly spurious and somewhat paranoid concern with
security, Washington is 'playing' its allies. Whether European or East Asian, they are now being drawn into co-dependence on Washington within an increasingly closed bloc instead of being free as independent nations to compete and trade as part of a one world system. That might be fine if each of these nations had a proportionate 'vote' in their own destiny within this bloc but they do not. American nuclear and economic superiority creates an intrinsic subordination to its strategy. As the US prepares to plunder the Ukraine through 'investment' in recompense for the expenditures on its regime, it arranges with local elites that allied populations be terrified with fears of a Russian bear which cannot do much more than hold the territory it has gained to date and the admittedly more formidable Chinese dragon. The eagle can sit back comfortably and watch the profits roll in from the coming age of increased and unnecessary arms sales and demand for its surplus LNG. No wonder the American financial markets are shrugging off inflation and interest rates. <br /></span></span></p></div><div style="text-align: left;"><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span>
</span></span></p></div><div style="margin: 0in; text-align: left;"><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span>A form of shock treatment (not the invasion but the sanctions) has detached Europe from its cheap and
reliable
supply of energy and commodities as well as access to a near if not
particularly important export market and has made it dependent on more
expensive US 'spot' energy. The next stage is to
weaken
European ability to export to China and Chinese ability to invest in
Europe, impoverishing the latter more than the former. Russophobia must now be replaced with Sinophobia. In
East Asia, where some concern about China is reasonable but still over-excitable, a slower moving cold war approach is designed to detach these
vibrant economies from what will be the largest and nearest consumer and industrial market,
certainly at its high tech end. Instead they are to bind their industries into an American-centred industrial
strategy and weaken their access to cheap and probably reliable
energy and commodities from the Russian Far East.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span>The con trick is working. Based on narratives of fear and loathing, both wings of the so-called West are now seeing their economies battered by inflation and high interest rates - most notably the basket case that is now the United Kingdom after the depradations of the Member for Kiev Central and the idiot economics of his successor. The prospect of fiscal destabilisation and deindustrialisation now emerges for some key countries as vast sums have to go on more expensive energy and food supplies and on military expenditures at the expense of social cohesion. <br /></span></span></p></div><div style="text-align: left;"><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span>
</span></span></p></div><div style="margin: 0in; text-align: left;"><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span>This new
division of the world into blocs does not do China or Russia too
much harm in practice. Both lose some market access only to create new synergies with each other. Both are now circumventing the West to go straight to the emerging world for influence, deals and natural resources. Russia
merely pivots East to China as the latter's junior economic partner - a commodity
supplier
playing a role similar to Australia and Canada within the Western system. Indeed, we now hear that any Chinese restrictions on taking Russian crude oil died in February in frustration at the confrontational approach of Washington. Germany, on the other hand, is threatened with deindustrialisation under its inept left-liberal coalition yet Chinese industry gets cheaper inputs for its industry in a reversal of the traditional cost of energy relationship between it and Europe. Those caught up in 'Western' (aka Washington's) strategy are seeing declining (Russia) and rising (China) nuclear superpowers brought into closer alignment, able to
dominate the land mass of Eurasia, This new and strenghened Eurasian bloc can also co-operate in
developing a shared approach to the emerging world, notably in the
Middle East and Africa, as the 'West'
retreats behind its cultural 'limes'. Europe and 'Western' East Asia are now just continental North America's 'front lines' rather than nodal points in a flourishing global economy. The developed world has circled its waggons and abandoned the emerging world to its rivals. <br /></span></span></p></div><div style="text-align: left;"><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span>
</span></span></p></div><div style="margin: 0in; text-align: left;"><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span>This<span> new Cold War</span>
2.0 does not do the US much harm at all - only its allies. The US may be a political basket case with gun violence and dreadful mortality figures amongst its young males but it is still
the most significant economic and military power on the globe. Its
constitutional arrangements ensure that systemic internal chaos has no
real effect on its structures of military and economic power. We are
looking at Rome revisited. The US will probably stay quasi-hegemonic
for some time to come because it is largely self-sufficient in a crisis
(as is the
Sino-Russian bloc). It may be challenging its rivals on at least equal terms but at greater cost
to its allies, as it drives those allies to blow huge sums of cash on feeding the maw of
its arms
sector because of exaggerated security threats. Those allies (notably those in Europe) are losing the chance to become an independent global player to match at least China and India - and it is quite probable that Washington likes things that way. The US has all the comforts of the old Cold War in the new one. It and the SCO carve up the world between them just like the good old days with the old Soviet bloc. Of course, the first Cold War resulted in the collapse of one side from internal strains - the second one may see a similar outcome in another seventy years. It may not be the Eurasian bloc that crumbles this time. It may be the European Union and UK that need liberating when it happens.<br /></span></span></p></div><div style="text-align: left;"><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span>
</span></span></p></div><div style="margin: 0in; text-align: left;"><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span>The
cover for all this imperial posturing is, of course, a rather spurious 'defence of democracy' argument. Yet, to be
frank, democracy has never been at threat within the West from any of
its
authoritarian rivals. It is threatened from within by the manipulative and authoritarian instincts of its own elites and the countervailing forces of an angry populism. If there is a threat to democracy it almost
certainly comes from the greed, lack of strategic thinking and
ineptitude of the political classes <u>within</u> the West. Ukraine and Taiwan
are merely 'imperial border' issues which have no necessary implications for the security
of
either NATO or Japan or South Korea any more than Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan proved to have for the West. However, American strategy does
have the unfortunate possible consequence of creating the conditions for security threats that did not exist before. Washington
might eventually say 'I told you so' to its allies but only because it
had prodded its rivals into action. It is now more likely than it was in February 2022 that China will assert its claimed sovereignty over Taiwan. It is more likely than it was in April 2022 that Russia will switch off the gas for Europe and plant tactical nuclear weaponry on the borders of an EU that remains fragmented and weak. <br /></span></span></p></div><div style="color: #14171a; margin: 0in; text-align: left;"><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span>The major threat to Japan and South Korea has actually been North Korea. The new Cold War
mentality has increased that threat because Beijing and Moscow have no
incentive to coll<span style="color: black;">aborate
with Washington on containing the country. The North Koreans have proportionately raised the local stakes in the last year. The Russian Pacific Fleet has lodged itself alongside the Kuriles while China mounts ever more provocative exercises around Taiwan. In other words, the break-down in relations between the West and the SCO has created the SCO as <i>general</i> threat out of a very particular and containable situation in Ukraine. Similarly,
not only has Russia not had any material interest (quite the contrary)
in
challenging NATO until now (after all, the flow of energy to the EU and East-West trade argued to the contrary) but everyone's real interest should have been in the
de-nuclearisation of Europe. This is what Russia always wanted. The skill for Europe would have been to ensure that price for denuclearisation West
of the Urals would actually mean demilitarisation but the military-industrial complexes of the West and Mr. Stoltenberg cannot have that, can they?</span></span></span></p></div><div style="color: #14171a; margin: 0in; text-align: left;"><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span>It
gets worse by the month - two Baltic nations have now been bamboozled into joining
NATO quite unnecessarily (adding to their risks if there is a confrontation between blocs) while Europe in general is being bounced into
an economic confrontation with China when it has no essential
geo-political interest in getting involved in conflict with a superpower on the
other side of the world just to buttress the defensive concerns of
Washington. It all comes down to the fact that 'democratic' leaders in
Europe and East Asia are almost certainly not strategically very bright. They are trapped in ideological formulations derived from experiences
seventy years old (three decades in the case of Eastern Europe). They
have been 'spun' into policies that work directly against their first
duty which is to the lives and livelihoods of their own peoples. Europe and Pacific Rim East Asia have been played by Washington. Their peoples have been played by their elites.<br /></span></span></p></div><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p>Tim Pendryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03079486837930544558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-72932514640610937.post-47333103763307044862023-04-15T13:52:00.003+01:002023-04-15T14:08:36.968+01:00Evading the Causes of the Current Cost of Living Crisis<p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">We
need a more open debate about the causes of the current cost of
living crisis. The elites would like us to blame a pathogen and an alleged autocrat but this is far too simple. It is certainly not caused solely by Vladimir Putin’s alleged weaponisation of
Russia’s immense gas
supplies. In fact, despite the furore over the Nordstream explosions and the closure of the Baltic pipelines, Europe continues to be supplied with gas at rates not dissimilar to those that applied before the war. Supply chain issues related to COVID recovery and many other fundamentals have certainly contributed to price rises not forgetting the pressure on commodity prices from the disruptions involved in the Green Agenda and problems with food supply accentuated by climate issues. But the disruption to trade caused both by the economic sanctions on Russia and threats of sanctions on China are a significant contributing factor and these policies are those of our leaders.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">The invasion itself need never have been much of a factor in itself - it is just that Western leaders (without much consultation with their own peoples) decided that the costs of economic warfare against Russia were a 'price worth paying' and then got suprised by just how open-ended that price would turn out to be. It is not only the effects on trade and inflation but also the ridiculously high commitments of capital being made to prosecute an unwinnable war (shades here of Afghanistan) and eventually to the reconstruction of a nation that has been encouraged to fight that unwinnable war. The Ukraine War had emerged from a
failure of diplomatic dialogue between the West
and Russia over the previous two decades and the fault for that lies as much in London and Washington as in Moscow. The UK
must
take part (though certainly not all) of the blame for that and so for the immensely damaging rise in the British cost of living which is to a considerable extent attributable to the disruption caused by its foreign policy priorities and its extremely poor understanding of the consequences of its actions. </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Over a year on from the invasion, we have to draw some distinction between the energy component of inflation and 'core' inflation - the underlying inflation in food and services that has triggered high interest rates. Energy inflation if it does not go on for too long is something one works through. European governments could deal with it by adding to their fiscal burden with what amounted to massive dole outs - another price that might not be worth paying as national debt levels, already burdened by COVID social cohesion doles and green agenda doles (soon to be added to with increases in defence budget expectations) reach levels that require austerity and high taxes under conditions of low growth, that is, if the Western system is not to crumble under the weight of its own debt mountain. But energy inflation has triggered core inflation so that as energy prices fall, the lag in wage and commodity inflation continues to drive prices and forces up interest rates. <br /></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Nevertheless, funds to deal with energy inflation could be regarded (like the Green Agenda), at least in part, as a debatably necessary adjustment and an 'investment' in future energy security. After another year of recessionary misery (or soft landing from an optimistic point ov view) everything will be fine and recovery from 2024 and after will allow the debts to be paid off and prosperity to return. Except that the game is not over. The Europeans (which includes us) have just shifted their energy dependence from being one on Moscow to one based on the US and Gulf dominated spot markets. Renewables are not managing to fill the gap left by the decline in hudro and nuclear energy. Europe is still vulnerable not only to increases in the spot price of LNG and OPEC+s determination to maintain fairly high oil prices in at least the $80-$90 band (Brent Crude) but to the Russians deciding to turn off the spigot for gas or oil directed at Europe because they have (eventually) an adequate market in East Asia and have just had enough of European insults and support for Ukraine. The Chinese are busy committing to long term Gulf contractual terms while dilatory Europeans sit and hope for pries to come down regardless. <br /></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">In other words, the 'headline' inflation problem has not gone away - it has just been pushed forward to next winter if the Europeans in particular do not manage to sign their own long term contracts for energy, Chinese recovery sucks in energy from elsewhere, there is a cold winter, the spot markets rise and the alternative energy structures that are supposed to displace Eurasian energy are not in place. If conditions deteriorate between Russia and the West to the extent that Eurasian gas is no longer available in Europe at all and the grey market in Russian crude going to refined products that serve Europe dies off in favour of East Asian needs, then European governments may face a fiscally destructive demand for yet more social cohesion payments to protect the most vulnerable households and businesses and this will be ... inflationary. </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">So, we are in a position where markets are convinced that recessionary tendencies must mean that interest rates have peaked and are buoyant but a) the continuing rise in 'core' inflation means that, even if interest rates peak, central banks may be obliged to hold them at near peak levels for a considerable period of time while the mounting costs of all this to governments, households and businesses starts to unwind the viability of at least some of all three in a slow-burning creative destruction that weakens confidence and contains multiple political risks while b) the current relatively beneficial state of the energy market could simply be the eye of the hurricane, vulnerable at any time to a whole number of political grey swans and risking, if things go down hill, significant fiscal interventions for which there may no longer be united national political consent (or the cash) as the costs mount.<br /></span></p><div style="font-family: "var(--font-family-primary)"; margin: 0in; text-align: left;"><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Looking at the world before February 2002 and after that date, we can see only one major trigger for a polycrisis that was probably waiting to happen on many other fundamentals - an ill-thought-out
sanctions
approach that was supposed to bring Russia 'to its senses' or even
trigger
regime change and Russia's economic collapse. It has clearly not done so
nor is Russia isolated. At best, sanctions may achieve their ends only at
immense cost to the poor and vulnerable at home and overseas, to
working households and to those small businesses who may not survive
beyond the doles they have been given to survive the next
round of energy price hikes. A lot of the damage caused by COVID and sanctions is silent. About a year into COVID, I produced a list of local Kent and Sussex small breweries and put it to one side. This week I went back to it to see what had happened to them. Roughly a quarter seem to have crashed and burned as independent businesses. Walking around our mid-sized Kentish town, we see the gaps where shops used to be. <br /></span></p></div><div style="font-family: "var(--font-family-primary)"; margin: 0in; text-align: left;"><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Inflation
driven by huge fiscal inputs to deal with both crises and ideological convictions (such as Net Zero and the insanity of increased weapons expenditure) and by incompetently drawn up economic warfare policies, added to COVID-related supply chain problems, have meant interest rate rises. Short term subsidies to the population have meant high
borrowings. High borrowing has meant weakened currencies against the dollar. Weakened currencies mean imported inflation which means yet more
interest rate rises. Interest rate rises eventually mean recession. Recession means job losses and business failures. High borrowing
eventually means high taxation yet recession means lower tax take. Increased taxation to deal with this and high interest rates
mean a drag on growth. And so it goes ... a spiral of failure. All this is, at root, not down to Putin but
to our collective paranoid and hysterical reaction to Putin led by a bunch of loopy ideological Tories and their fellow travellers in the Labour Party. <br /></span></p></div><div style="font-family: "var(--font-family-primary)"; margin: 0in; text-align: left;"><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">These
have been many serious failures of policy derived from poor analysis and
intelligence. We know this now whereas a year ago we only surmised that this might be so. Exactly how bad Western analytical intelligence has been perhaps only became clear with the release of the latest batch of Pentagon Papers. It is said that the professional foreign policy and intelligence community in Washington are distraught at the poor quality of their own political masters who are driven by simplistic ideological seat of the pants policy-making. Western democracies are, in any case, no longer fitted for the sort of long-range planning that seems to be the norm in Moscow and Beijing. A 'price worth paying', seen originally perhaps in terms of eighteenth
century type war
subsidies (wasteful but not critical to our own economy), has been transformed into a
massive price for war and the reconstructive integration </span><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">into the European and Western system </span><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">of a basket case of a state riddled with corruption . </span></p></div><div style="font-family: "var(--font-family-primary)"; margin: 0in; text-align: left;"><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">This is a price certainly not worth paying, incurred at the expense of national
populations, long
term economic prospects and future generations yet a reversal of policy is no longer acceptable to elites not for simple ostensible moral reasons but because back-tracking will shatter confidence in them. Like Macbeth, they are so steeped in metaphorical blood they may as well go forward as back but their doubling down constantly increases the risks that a serious situation could become a critical one. The financial technocrats remain extremely worried about more bank failures and so should we be, The system is under enormous strain and yet there is no way forward for Western leaders to do anything more than carry on being as stupid as they were in the far less critical situations of Iraq and Afghanistan. As in those two cases, the end game is now predictable - defeat or a victory earned at such cost as to be Pyrrhic. <br /></span></p></div><div style="text-align: left;"><p></p></div><div style="text-align: left;"><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">
</span></p></div><div style="font-family: "var(--font-family-primary)"; margin: 0in; text-align: left;"><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Here, in the UK, the
Government, the media and the political class are all in denial about
these
truths because are fully complicit in February's blunders and the even
worse blunder of not using British influence to encourage peace talks
back in April. We all know Boris was a chancer but his gambling sucked
in everyone around him. Now our political addicts think that just one
more throw of the dice (presumably this time it is the touted Ukrainian counter-offensive) will win back the shirt they are losing off their back. They
now have no way out
of the hole they have dug except to dig ever deeper and then cross their fingers, hoping that if they
do so vigorously
enough they will come out in Australia and all will be well. It is now no longer theoretically possible that Russia, clearly backed by a China throughly alienated by the incompetents in the State Department and in Brussels and Berlin, will collapse, be forced
to
withdraw from Ukraine or the Putin regime be replaced. Even if these events happened, none of them are
likely to take place within the time frame required to avert serious damage to the Anglo-European
economy and social cohesion. The cheap and hitherto reliable Eurasian
energy resources in question are Russian and not ours so we cannot seize them any more than we can seize its massive mineral resources (much of it vital for Western industrial development) and grain output. They, not us, decide what is to be done with these assets of global importance. </span></p></div><div style="font-family: "var(--font-family-primary)"; margin: 0in; text-align: left;"><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">It
will take years for Europe to
put in the infrastructure necessary to restore permanently lowered energy and commodity price structures
in a global
context. Europe will be competing with Asia for both sets of input and its
competitive advantage in having cheap Eurasian energy to hand is now
lost, almost certainly forever. Germany, apart clearly from the unstable coalition that rules it, has begun to fear de-industrialisation and has just, with immense stupidity, managed to undo all Macron's good work in China ten days or so ago. The German Foreign Minister alienated China under the massive illusion that its opinion on the Ukraine matter actually matters to Beijing. Macron to a great extent and Orban to a complete extent 'get' what is at stake for Europe and 'get' that it (and we in Britain) have been played by Washington. The embarrassment of watching Sunak kow-tow like all his predecessors to a President who touts a united Ireland tells us all we need to know about national decline. A nation has liberated itself from Brussels only to be a vassal to Washington.<br /></span></p></div><div style="text-align: left;"><p></p></div><div style="text-align: left;"><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">
</span></p></div><div style="font-family: "var(--font-family-primary)"; margin: 0in; text-align: left;"><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">The
confrontation between Putin and Western liberal elites is likely to last
years as Russia pivots to Asia while a Trump victory and growing European resentments
and fragmentation could leave us Britons high and dry in any case. We could take the economic hit now only to see the
rug pulled out from under us later. Whatever
short term wheezes are being promoted by this Government to take the
heat off
itself and secure its position for an election, the huge damage to our economy
of yet further tranches of borrowing (following the COVID experience)
and to
social cohesion from the inevitable austerity and increased taxation in
the long
term are certainly not 'prices worth paying' for the bulk of the
population. It is as if (surely not) Government continues to undertake every wheeze to protect the asset rich middle classes in the rather stupid belief that they are the majority of voters and the rest of the electorate has no choice other than to vote for a variant of the liberal establishment that protects that class. This is true in a world made up of Red, Green, Orange and Blue 'Tories' but all four are skating on thin ice. That world may collapse under sufficient economic pressure.<br /></span></p></div><div style="text-align: left;"><p></p></div><div style="text-align: left;"><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">
</span></p></div><div style="font-family: "var(--font-family-primary)"; margin: 0in; text-align: left;"><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">These
are all self-inflicted wounds on the British nation not so much by the Government
alone but by an entire
political class that continues its arrogant neglect of its own
population in
order to meet the needs of moral philosophy (as interpreted by Oxbridge, the media and the liberal intellectual class)
and
its own self-serving class interests. The media is wholly complicit. The
butterfly minds of the elite have left an apparently powerless population to do what
it can to get by - the Government has simply
stopped inflation becoming intolerable for the middling sort but pushed
those costs forward in time. Huge numbers of the Crown's loyal subjects
will face a serious loss of living standards regardless. Perhaps the assumption of the liberal establishment that they are too stupid to see this and who is responsible will be its eventual downfall.<br /></span></p></div><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">For
a brief moment (maybe this coronation) we will now get to see what
our nation can be at its most romantic but we note that the strong national engagement in respect for the late Queen Elizabeth has already diminished for her successor in opinion polls. We are seeing how national decision-makers are divorced from the condition of the people as
much now as in the age of Victoria. The open debate we need may never happen - evasion of the conditions under which power is
exercised may be what holds this nation together as it sinks slowly but
steadily into penury. But never mind ... perhaps the upper middle classes think they can
survive and since this is their Kingdom more than ours, then we must
judge that all is good in the world. Why question such good order, they
may ask. Why not, we should reply. </span></p>Tim Pendryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03079486837930544558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-72932514640610937.post-73632225466745406312023-04-08T17:42:00.005+01:002023-04-15T14:02:39.626+01:00America - Learning Nothing and Forgetting Nothing<p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">What is that cliche about the Bourbon restoration - learned nothing
and forgotten nothing? This certainly applies to American policy wonks
who were trying to work out what was to be done after the Afghan fiasco. The result would appear to have been another fiasco in the making over in the Eastern bloodlands of Europe. The
insistent political ambition of the American elite to engage in ideological intervention
overseas at the expense of their own taxpayers remains dominant regardless of past errors (an ideological mind-set shared by many in our own British political elite and now infecting Europe at its highest levels). And yet dreadful
domestic problems continue to rot the US just as the social democratic consensus in Europe collapses under the pressure of liberal economics. Poverty, lack of healthcare, poor
education and collapsing infrastructure, guns out of control (which makes the FT's insistence that Russia is lawless look stupid to say the least). American foreign policy
incompetence adds to domestic disenchantment and foreign doubt. It feeds
populism by the back door. <br /></span></p><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Exactly what is
America's game here? The cynical view is that its upper middle class
political leaderships have abandoned their own
people because growing empires require constant
expansion and increasing asset values for its upper middle class clientele is all that matters in American politics. The fraying theory, of course, remains that the rich 'trickle down' wealth to the poor. The
'trickle down' of the alleged benefits at home was supposed to be
sufficient to retain power in democracies fixed by party machines and
big money. This, of course, looks a highly problematic strategy at the moment. Russia, far from isolated, has turned to a receptive China that has a ready ear for its own anti-imperialist narrative across Africa and Latin America. Multipolarity is becoming a fact this year rather than just the propaganda fantasy of the Kremlin. Constant market and asset expansion was to be enabled by building up equally neglectful
and narcissistic upper middle class elites elsewhere in the world yet these elites have developed the same resistance to being patronised by the West as the working classes within the West. Markets are shrinking and not expanding. Perhaps those 'fixes' can continue for quite some time - but what happens when the money runs out? </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">With recession on the way we can already see a class war looming where the asset holders will want the system they think they own to ease up on interest rates and allow more inflation. Yet the intelligent part of the elite understands that their rule may collapse on sustained high inflation because it hurts the asset-poor (the majority of voters) far more than high interest rates hurt the asset-rich. The asset rich are relying on the asset poor to remain 'stupid' and disorganised which is why they so deeply resent the arrival of politicians like Trump who organise far from stupid people using only apparently stupid political tropes. A less economically cynical view, however, is that middle class politicians in the West simply have
nothing to say to their own masses any more. Their culture is simply different. They only want to talk to
people like them who they can nurture in foreign climes ... they had hoped that a
nice liberal middle class would emerge in Moscow, Beijing, Tehran and
Kabul, one that would construct the institutional forms that would require no
concern for the 'damned of the earth' except as beneficiaries of aid, 'trickle down' and
'culture' from on high while the ownership of the assets around them remained theirs. When a Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (now removed) can effectively abandon his own constituency and become de facto Member for Kiev Central in Parliament, then you know this propensity for class internationalism has reached its most decadent phase. <br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">As to the
official American strategy in relation to Ukraine, it is simply a sign of weakness ...
pouring funds into the Ukrainian money pit, evading the use of hard
power, promoting an economic war that is undermining the West itself and
dying to the last Ukrainian with weaponry whose use only enriches the
major arms manufacturers. Apparently there are 40,000 committed Ukrainians in eight brigades (or whatever) armed to the teeth by the West just waiting to enter the meat grinder without perhaps realising that any victory will be Pyrrhic - their land and assets are already assigned to Western private capital as the only means of getting the finance for reconstruction. Blood and soil is not going to mean much when the blood of the most fit leaches out onto the soil and that soil belongs to some corporation listed on the NYSE or operating from a headquarters in Berlin or Tokyo. <br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">But do Japan and
South Korea (or Taipei) really believe that the US will do anything much
more than they have done for Ukraine (prolong a devastating war at the expense of a people and a land) if China moves against Taiwan? I doubt it - it will be moral
posturing once again, psy-ops directed at the homeland suckers and rhetorical
gestures. Even the moralising American middle class know that they will
be the
losers if a strategy that largely hurts the poor, the young and the
developing world ever became a real war. Those assets will eventually become cinders. Fortunately, the Chinese almost certainly have no intention of going into Taiwan with military force in the short to medium term - they are hoping the opposition Kuomintang will do that job for them. We should perhaps hope that they are right.<br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">As
for legislatures of 'hawks' getting involved in international relations, little
makes me more scared - whether Congress, the Duma (which has to be
restrained by the Kremlin as much as used), the UK Parliament or the
greatest ineffectual moral posturing organisation in the world, the European
Parliament. Congress is scariest of them all
because Congress is at the heart of the most terrifying war machine the
planet has ever seen and the most excitably irrational. The Taiwanese situation had been significantly
worsened by
Pelosi's blundering into it. Just as bad, here in the UK, Parliamentary hawks in
the Tory
Party, copied slavishly by one of the intellectually weakest Labour leaders in its history, have set the agenda for the nation. Their policies have resulted
in
10% plus inflation, actual shortages and rising interest rates. It is not much better in
Russia where nationalist expectations almost certainly limit the ability
of the Kremlin to cut any reasonable deal with the comedian who runs
Ukraine. Zelensky, in turn, is trapped by the nationalists on his own side and his need to keep on trucking to ensure he gets what he really needs - huge tranches of post-war reconstruction aid and support to rebuild his military as cat's paw for NATO in the East. Really, we 'ordinary folk' in all countries need to start
standing up to the political class before they destroy us all. We need
alternatives and we need them fast. </span><br /></div>Tim Pendryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03079486837930544558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-72932514640610937.post-89312340219096768042023-03-31T19:12:00.002+01:002023-04-15T14:01:43.147+01:00Position Reserved Explained<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">The subject matter of <i>Position Reserved</i> has always been various -
philosophical, political, libertarian on occasions, commentaries on
magickal thinking (by no means censorious) and sexuality. The political
has ranged from international relations through British politics
(including Brexit) to the politics of the Middle East, the Trump era in
the US and beyond. I took a particular interest in such outre subjects
as the ideology of the Far Right and national populism, sexual freedom
and polyamory and the psychotherapeutic role of paganism and the occult. </span></div><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">I tracked the COVID outbreak for some time as I tracked, with others,
the idiocies surrounding the Russo-Western conflict as it developed up until <i>Position Reserved</i> suspended itself in 2018. I doubt if there will be much immediate comment from now on on world or national affairs because these are adequately covered by me on Twitter. Facebook and LinkedIn (see below). The general
theme was a personal alienation from our species<i> en masse</i>,
apparently a true ship of fools. This is my quasi-autistic side of which I have become increasingly proud. Like Cassandra, I had the unfortunate
ability to see the darkness coming (it may already have come without us noticing because we shut the curtains early) yet be unable to persuade anyone else of its imminence. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">The paradox struck me that while our
species appeared to be a ship of fools, most of my fellow ship mates
were in fact intelligent, thoughtful, humane, often quite simply kind,
and as puzzled as I was by the way we were hurtling like the unfairly proverbialised lemmings
towards any cliff present. The bulk of ordinary humanity seemed to have their heads screwed on properly - the idiots were the ones in power. With emotional insecurities blown into waves
of hysteria by the media for which I have developed the deepest distaste
(they are the dangerous winds blowing our ship of course), it appeared
that we passengers on our many ships were at the mercy of demented captains, officers who
obeyed every whim of the madmen and crews who had no choice lest they
be keel-hauled for their temerity in suggesting that, perhaps, we might
all be better off if we headed for port or at least took a route that
did not have us riding those waves on to the rocks. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Similes take
us only so far. The correct and reasoned analysis is that liberal
democracy is a fraud and has been for some time. Nobody dare say this any more than anyone could say that there was no God in 1660. Yes, we can elect our
exploiters and the fools and, yes, we have the rule of law (often made
by those same exploiters and fools) but we are, in truth, impotent,
screaming into the wind. Our noise only adds to the storm. Of course,
we have been persuaded that our world represents a less dangerous fraud
than some more severe ideological frauds (which we insistently
misrepresent as we go into denial about our own failures) but we should
wonder whether that is good enough. It would be nice to think that a bit
of activism might change all this fraudulent nonsense but, sadly,
replacing one set of fools with another is only a fake progress. Facing our own impotence in the face of the
uncaring universe and of the mis-organisation of our species into
'society' is probably the only way of maintaining one's own integrity
even if it risks one's sanity.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">But that does not mean one cannot
have an opinion, only that one's opinion is likely to be futile if one
is outside the tiny group of people who hold power in society - as much
today as amongst the serfs of the Middle Ages or the industrial workers
of Engels' Manchester. Would Spartacus have been anything more than
another Emperor if his revolt had succeeded? Our opinions remain valid
nevertheless as acts of tiny defiance - chances, during our small
insignificant (to Power) lives, to show that, at least intellectually,
it really is better to die on your feet than live on your corporate,
media-influenced and socialised knees.And, sometimes, in history, the
taste of revolt, though doomed to change little of substance in the
relations between men and masters, can be delicious. For brief moments,
Milton's Satan becomes Lucifer the Light-Bringer and overturns the
prevailing order simply because he can. And, then, dear reader,
momentarily, we come to life after years in the dust and ashes of order,
conformity and obeisance.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">And so this Blog will have rare (when I
can shake off my indolence) bursts of 'opinion' - analyses of
our species, of the darkness and the light, proposals perhaps of the
Swiftian kind and simple observations on how life might be lived better
under the cosh of late liberal capitalism, only the latest of many
interations of human ineptitude in organising itself for its own
survival and happiness, a system of desperate scrabblings by desperate
people that cannot house its young, trains rather than educates,
provides health by box-ticking, cannot control its security apparats or
its borders, leaves swathes of humanity in desperate loneliness and
poverty and thinks posturing rhetoric is a replacement for decisive
action. D__n them, I say, d__n the incompetent masters who rule by lies,
manipulation and secrecy. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">There are also likely
to be significant gaps between postings yet some may appear very soon after
each other. The randomness is appropriate for someone who, quite
honestly, writes only for himself, for a small circle of friends and
that extremely rare person who might just 'get' what I am saying out
there in the desert we call culture. And I may also write about
strange and personal things ... dogs, how to live longer, life in a
provincial backwater, whatever! Intelligent comments are certainly welcome.
Silence is assumed to be the default position of most readers. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><i>For updated old book reviews and rare podcast reviews, see <a href="https://timpendryfictionreviews.blogspot.com">https://timpendryfictionreviews.blogspot.com</a> and <a href="https://timpendrybookreviews.blogspot.com">https://timpendrybookreviews.blogspot.com</a> For all book reviews (still being added to), see <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/1016626">https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/1016626</a>
- there are some 1,000+ at the time of writing with only revisions and
more effective reorganisation of early ones appearing in the two new
blogs. </i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><i>Film reviews were only of the best films seen in
recent years and appeared on my Facebook Profile alongside
quite rare Exhibition and Podcast Reviews. Cinema is, in fact, my first love but I
only have time to write on books. I have Tarantino's attitude to the Art ... it is an Art and not Reality. No more reviews will appear from now on because I have decided that the mad sacrality of cinema requires silence and films will now only be discussed in person.<br /></i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><i>For examples of me wading into the seas of public trivia like a twenty-first century Flying Dutchman, see <a href="https://twitter.com/TimPendry">h</a><a href="ttps://twitter.com/TimPendry">ttps://twitter.com/TimPendry</a> I tend to block people who stick silly little flags on their Profiles.</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><i>The Facebook Profile is at <a href="https://www.facebook.com/tim.pendry">https://www.facebook.com/tim.pendry</a>
but I make it quite hard for people to get through and become one of
the Elect. There is, however, plenty of material that is public domain. The huge number of Groups I used to run have now dwindled but
I am happy to direct people to the remaining lively ones. <br /></i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><i>The LinkedIn Profile is at <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/timpendry">https://www.linkedin.com/in/timpendry</a>
but this will only be interesting to anyone who wants very short
near-daily updates on the global economic and political situation.
LinkedIn is otherwise an intellectual desert filled with desperate
corporate platitudes. </i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><br />Tim Pendryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03079486837930544558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-72932514640610937.post-66032806357078148632023-03-26T12:54:00.006+01:002023-04-15T14:05:04.659+01:00Sexual Politics<p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">What are <span data-offset-key="cmis6-0-0"><span data-text="true">the power relations at work in the building of a late liberal capitalism dependent on a) getting women into the labour force as quickly as possible and b) ensuring that they became the centre of an economy of consumption and then of sentiment? What </span></span><span data-offset-key="683ng-0-0"><span data-text="true">has happened in the last half century has generally been good for both men and women - increased prosperity, increased respect for half the population's aspirations and the benefits of a 'diverse' female perspective on society and culture. But </span></span><span data-offset-key="f2m8u-0-0"><span data-text="true">the simplistic socio-cultural model of feminism with its mythic history of patriarchy is not in accord with the reality of the industrial society that has now been replaced. Matters are much more complex than that.</span></span></span></p>
<div data-block="true" data-editor="327rt" data-offset-key="3lbbk-0-0" style="text-align: left;"><p>
</p><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="3lbbk-0-0"><p>
<span data-offset-key="3lbbk-0-0" style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span data-text="true">The society which preceded us was built not only on the standard models of exploitation (ours still is) but on a set of power relations in which men were manipulated into states that were not happy or satisfactory to themselves in order to create a society that, in many ways, was much more comfortable for a certain type of woman who has lost something in the process of change. The c</span></span><span data-offset-key="95a8s-0-0" style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span data-text="true">onstraints
on society identified a century before by Nietzsche which had arisen from
Judaeo-Christianity resulted in a society of <i>mutual</i> repression in which resource-scarcity repressed
both male and female desire and engineered males into compliance with
social norms that gave inordinate power to women in the household and in
terms of sexuality and child care even if women had no such
power in the work-place. <br /></span></span></p></div><p><span data-offset-key="ddo1c-0-0" style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span data-text="true">The revolution that has given women increased power in society via their ability to access the work place may have dragged a lot of men into an improved state of being themselves (there is no doubt that improved social conditions are liberatory for both genders) but women have often been able to retain those bits of industrial and even Iron Age thinking that suit their purpose. For some women, this liberation has been half-hearted with some way to go yet in dealing with male power relations in the elite (the 'Harvey Weinstein problem') but most women are still using conservative social forms to demand male compliance in relation to households, child rearing, sexual relations and linguistic and cultural freedom.<br /></span></span></p></div><div data-block="true" data-editor="327rt" data-offset-key="ddo1c-0-0" style="text-align: left;"><p>
</p></div>
<div data-block="true" data-editor="327rt" data-offset-key="au1mh-0-0" style="text-align: left;"><p>
</p><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="au1mh-0-0"><p>
<span data-offset-key="au1mh-0-0" style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span data-text="true">Peterson and the Dark Web of intellectuals are probably right to draw attention to some fundamental male-female differences (without any need to allow this to have any implications for quality of opportunity or intrinsic human value) but they seem to have a problem understanding the power dynamics of gender relations. A balanced but oppressive system was replaced by an imbalanced less oppressive one where the victim status of women (part of the myth required for political campaigning under late capitalism) is enhanced without any recognition of the historic victim status of men in relation to resource-scarcity and 'social obligation'. Peterson and others want to go backwards, current liberals want to edge forward into solidifying what has been won. No one is thinking about going further forwards still towards a new progressive model that over-reaches current conditions for a more full liberation of all 'humans' equally. <br /></span></span></p></div><p>
</p></div>
<div data-block="true" data-editor="327rt" data-offset-key="1vsht-0-0" style="text-align: left;"><p>
</p><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="1vsht-0-0"><p>
<span data-offset-key="1vsht-0-0" style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span data-text="true">Peterson and the Dark Web community are concentrating on psychology and ideas when the real issues are to be found in history and social and economic relations. Liberal elites like a debate about psychology and ideas because they certainly do not want a debate about social and economic relations. Culture wars are very convenient for the middle classes - a useful distraction. </span></span><span data-offset-key="efbi4-0-0" style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span data-text="true">Our
current problem is thus that we have an imbalanced cultural model
driven by consumer capitalism, one that appears to despise the male and
mythologise the female, being faced off by a reactionary attempt to
return to an oppressive balance, albeit moderated somewhat.</span></span><span data-offset-key="ci6m2-0-0" style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span data-text="true"> There
appears to be no approach which takes account of
history, resource-scarcity and the realities of gender difference to
create a more progressive model in which balance and compromise are
permitted between free men and women (albeit mindful of the psychological security and welfare of children) who can make their own choices without
either material oppression or cultural manipulation.</span></span></p></div><p>
</p></div>
<div data-block="true" data-editor="327rt" data-offset-key="77lg4-0-0" style="text-align: left;">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="77lg4-0-0"><p>
<span data-offset-key="77lg4-0-0" style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span data-text="true">Since the liberal capitalist model is based entirely on a top-down manipulative struggle for resources and status (a situation which is unavoidable to some extent) then it becomes inevitable that the embedded aspects of often unconscious female gender manipulation in our culture are not recognised and dealt with. If they were, then a recognition of the sheer scale of more general manipulation of populations and of power relations affecting class more generally would begin to undercut almost every element of middle class 'liberal' domination of the mass of the population - its politics, marketing, human resources, educational systems, media narratives, state psychological operations and even psychotherapies. And we can't have that, can we? <br /></span></span></p></div>
</div>
Tim Pendryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03079486837930544558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-72932514640610937.post-71292008524109616342023-03-25T18:19:00.005+00:002023-04-15T14:06:38.026+01:00Position Reserved Restored<div style="text-align: left;"><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">After around five years of neglect and suspension, <b>Position Reserved</b> is coming back online with a little more focus. </span></p></div><div style="text-align: left;"><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Book reviews will continue to be published elsewhere, either book-by-book on <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/1016626-tim-pendry" target="_blank">GoodReads</a> or on one of two book review blogs covering <a href="https://timpendryfictionreviews.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">fiction</a> and <a href="https://timpendrybookreviews.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">non fiction</a>. These latter generally take old reviews from some years back, collate them under subject matter and re-edit the original reviews to create a more considered overview. </span></p></div><div style="text-align: left;"><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">You can catch up on immediate reaction to world events as the mood takes me at <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/timpendry/" target="_blank">LinkedIn</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/TimPendry" target="_blank">Twitter</a>. You can also see public domain material (including reviews of exhibitions, events and podcasts) on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/tim.pendry" target="_blank">Facebook</a>. Facebook also gives access to a range of specialised groups which I administer but only to people I know and who clearly have an interest in that specialised area. I have a presence on <a href="https://independent.academia.edu/TimPendry">Academia.edu</a></span></p></div><div style="text-align: left;"><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Commercial and international affairs commentary will be centred on LinkedIn. Position Reserved will be reserved for general political commentary, philosophy, culture and occult and fortean matters. Film reviews used to be occasional on Facebook but I stopped these to protest unwarranted Facebook censorship. They may start to appear here instead. I spend a lot of time on cinematic matters but very little of this will emerge as text here or elsewhere.</span></p></div><div style="text-align: left;"><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Over the next few weeks I will be concentrating on transferring a few redrafted opinion pieces that were placed on an experimental blog that now looks surplus to requirements and on providing an overview of a research project undertaken on Facebook that looked at alternatives to the Tweedledum-Tweedledee choices we are given at British General Elections. Once those commitments have been made, I will post when and as I feel like it.</span></p></div><div style="text-align: left;"><p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Comments are welcome but you might do better to connect on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and GoodReads if you want to connect more directly.</span></p></div>Tim Pendryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03079486837930544558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-72932514640610937.post-71924251654188343462018-03-20T23:58:00.002+00:002018-03-21T09:10:19.995+00:00Intellectual Integrity and Dealing with Russia<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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</xml><![endif]-->The hysteria surrounding events in Salisbury - the attempted murder of two Russians and the collateral near manslaughter of a policeman, using a deadly nerve agent - reached epidemic proportions last weekend. What we knew for certain was that three people were close to death at one time (two still critical at the time of writing), that one of them was connected to the murky world of post-Cold War intelligence and that a tool not available to the ordinary murderer - not the mere deadly cyanide of an Agatha Christie novel - had been used. <br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
There is no reason to cast aspersions on character of the main victim. As we will see, we simply do not know very much at all. In fact, as of today, he is not dead (and we hope he recovers) but critically ill alongside his daughter and this alone makes the Prime Minister's immediate shooting from the hip to point the finger at the Kremlin a little odd. Critically ill not only does not mean dead but it means the <u>possibility</u> of sufficient recovery to be able to give evidence against perpetrators - so why not wait a little longer? <br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"></span></span></span>It was, of course, reasonable to believe that it was highly likely (though not certain) that Russians were involved as perpetrators as much as victims but it was perhaps an enormous step too far to say with such certainty - as the Prime Minister and her Government did - that it was 'highly likely' that the Russian Government, the Kremlin no less, ordered the 'hit'. It was even more challenging for our Foreign Secretary to claim that President Putin was 'overwhelmingly likely' to have done so personally. What was the evidence for this? In the end, the Government was asking us to trust it and that too is very challenging as Jeremy Corbyn implied.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g">Early
polling followed the usual trajectory in these cases (much like Iraq).
Things started with a surge of support for the Government on limited
information and instinctive trust for authority. Then the doubts started
to set in. Lack of data raised awareness
of the implications, the partisan agenda and the lack of a solid intellectual basis for the
extravagance of the claims. People started to remember other cases where
they were led down the garden path. This questioning started at the
margins and then developed quickly amongst the more intelligent members of the
establishment, those who place intellectual integrity ahead of tribal
solidarity and who care about the evidential basis for allegations. </span></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g">The circle of questioning may expand but the mass tends to
accept authority until it becomes clear that a policy is
costly, ill-thought out and counter-productive. Eventually people in general may lose
interest but the circle of criticism expands until some f**k-up or new
data flips the population over to the other side of the game. Why go through this cycle of belief and distrust when a little delay might bring more certainty. This is what I am interested in here.</span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g">In this
case, around a third of the population soon became thoroughly cynical about the Government's claims or were prepared to back
Corbyn and his doubts - or simply had sufficient knowledge or intellectual
integrity to ask their own questions. All that is sufficient to block any
seriously radical act being contemplated by the Government - which helps
to explain the rather weak response to such a 'highly likely' event: a few diplomats get thrown out which is matched by an exact number of ours thrown out by the Russians ... and then nothing! Perhaps as the evidence comes in we will see more considered actions but the whole thing looks like a hissy-fit instead of mature policy-making.</span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><br /></span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><i>Does 'Highly Likely' Really Mean "We Don't Know?"</i></span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g">The 'highly
likely' claim of Prime Minister seems to have been based on little more than that the nerve agent allegedly originated in
Russia and not yet on direct evidence that the Russian Government was behind the crime. Again, why not wait a little for the recovery of the victims. The assumption is that a) the nerve agent could not be reproduced elsewhere and b) that the Russian Government is in total control of any stockpile. Sloppy thinking here. It was, of course, reported reasonably enough that <i>"<a href="https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-russia/may-says-highly-likely-russia-behind-nerve-attack-on-spy-idUKKCN1GO0M3" target="_blank">British officials
ha</a></i><i><a href="https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-russia/may-says-highly-likely-russia-behind-nerve-attack-on-spy-idUKKCN1GO0M3" target="_blank">d identified the substance as being part of the Novichok group of nerve agents which were developed by the Soviet military during the 1970s and 1980s</a>" </i></span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g">But think about this
for a moment. This is very old stockpile and 'part of'' suggests 'reproducibility' rather than a decisive identification with one single known agent that can be traced to a single known source. The criminals (for that is what they are, whether State-directed or not) have not used state of the art material. The assassination was clearly incompetent and not entirely professional. There are other agents for assassination tools to hand than left-over Soviet era nerve agent. </span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g">If it is old Soviet stock pile, we know that a lot of such material fell into some dubious hands in the early 1990s before
some rough sort of order was restored, that stock piles might have been in territory now inhabited by other States and that the early 1990s saw a Russia where everything had a price and where such material might be regarded as somebody's pension. Russian sources themselves say reasonably enough that if they want to kill someone, they have means more effective than this. Not a nice thought but plausible enough.</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g">May would have done much better to say to the
Russians that the evidence <u>suggests</u> that the Russian Government needs to
explain how an old stockpiled Soviet nerve agent has been let loose on
the world and then request British police access to Russian resources to
uncover and bring to justice the perpetrators. As we say, it might have done better as well to give some time for the two main victims to recover or have a full murder investigation on their hands. But, no, it had to be
confrontational and unsubtle in a relationship with a sensitive nuclear power where a final quarrel might result in the immolation of millions on both sides. .</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It is certainly <u>possible</u> that a villainous Putin knew of and countenanced such an act even though it looks distinctly amateurish in conception. Yet this investigation had scarcely got under way before the accusations were made. Although the evidence was not available to make any claim stick in public (except on the basis of 'trust me'), by asserting Russian complicity with ultimatums and finger-pointing all possible attempts at dialogue to hear what the Russians had to say and gather further evidence was lost. Surely a more mature approach would have been to request Russian co-operation in the investigation and make your accusations when all avenues had been exhausted.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g">Needless
to say, <i>"Russia’s foreign ministry hit
back immediately, saying May’s comments were a“circus show” and part of a
political information campaign against Russia."</i> Well, they were, regrettably probably right. The US had to posture
in turn so that we then had three sets of
idiots posturing at the expense of global peace. NATO had to jump in, of
course, in any case nobody noticed it. The Europeans reluctantly complied with the demands of Western solidarity in a rather good statement that ambiguously took 'extremely seriously' the UK Government's intelligence assessment. I think we take it 'extremely seriously' too. </span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g">Perhaps we are truly ruled by cynics, as
are the Americans, Europeans and Russians. The Russians could just as easily have said that they were horrified by the incident, were disturbed at the presence of the nerve agent and would offer joint facilities to
establish who was responsible and bring them to justice. They are no more to be trusted than the West but this does not mean they are guilty - yet!</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><i>What Is Going On? </i></span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g">This is really
about nation states saying to their own peoples - 'trust me, I am
your ruler" - and, of course, in all these countries there will be people, naive people, who take things on trust and assertion just as there will be conspiracy loons who decide that it was all down to the Jews. </span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g">On Monday, May said
the <u>latest</u> poisoning [actually the poisoning of Litvinenko is not proven as a state-sanctioned act either although the Russian Government appears to have done little to permit proper investigation and is also somewhere on the 'possible through highly likely' continuum] took place<i>“against a backdrop of a
well-established pattern of Russian state aggression”</i>. <i><br /></i></span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g">The attempted murder of a rogue agent in an English country town is suddenly to be linked not even to some mindless bit of institutional revenge against a man of limited or no importance but to some grand strategy of Russian expansion (never mind that it is NATO and the EU that have expanded continuously against the Russia since the fall of the Soviet Empire). </span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g">These nasty little attempted murders by persons unknown soon became expanded into a grand narrative involving Syria and chemical weapons, Crimea and alleged human rights violations in Russia itself and very quickly too! This seemed to be about strengthening NATO and screwing over the idea
of a European Army as much as it was about saving the good burghers of
Salisbury from mass death by poisoning.</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g">What was worth listening to carefully was the carefully constructed
narrative of the expert being wheeled on to the BBC who has a
double-barrelled name and a military style in leisure wear. It was flawed
intellectually from beginning to end, based on not asking
questions but telling a story and it ended with ... chemical weapons in
Syria and Russia as a potential existential threat. </span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<i>Chemical Weapons</i><br />
<br />
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g">The fair point of the Government was that this was the first use of a nerve agent on the soil of Western democracy since the 1970s and that in itself is deadly serious, especially in the context of the threat of terrorism and the probable return of Islamist warriors from a country, Syria, where chemical weapons are part of the stockpiles of many villains. </span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g">Yet this was not stated so clearly at first - all eyes were directed at Russia which is actually aiding the anti-Islamist forces and one cannot but believe that the storm was as much directed at warning the Russian-backed Syrian Government not to use all possible means to end its vicious civil war as it was to draw attention to the weaponry itself. </span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g">Perhaps Russia is being warned that a terrorist act using chemical weapons in the UK will somehow be linked with them in the public mind so they had better police things at their end - who knows what goes on in the mind of Government strategists? </span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g">Perhaps this is reasonable but, if so, it would tell us something about just how out-of-control our Government may be in handling the dire consequences of its own dabblings in the region under Prime Minister Blair. A debate on this would not be welcome. </span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><br /></span></span></span></span></span></span>
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g">Perhaps horror at chemical weapons use becomes the 'casus belli' for getting Parliamentary approval for deeper British operations in Syria to please President Trump's Pentagon where enough Blairites are likely to back the Government against thinking High Tories to deliver yet another damnable intervention that leads nowhere but back to our small towns and cities.</span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><br /></span></span></span></span></span></span>
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g">But let us not go down the rabbit hole of political conspiracy theory ... </span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><i>Behind The Grand Narrative</i></span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><i> </i> </span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"></span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g">Behind any 'grand narrative', more short term prosaic concerns can be discerned. The amount of political and police resource thrown at the 'solving' of these attempted murders looked ridiculous when compared to the inaction of media, political class and police in dealing with the equally and most possibly more heinous crimes of Asian grooming gangs in towns like Telford. </span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g">Yes, this needed to be investigated and with full resources because of the chemical weapons aspect but troops on the streets and irate speeches by leading politicians were not to be found in the case of the Asian grooming gangs and urban organised crime which are probably far more of a threat to most ordinary Britons even than 'terrorism'. But it is terrorist acts that result in the fall of Governments, not the sustained rape of vulnerable young women.</span></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g">This was the attempted murder of one of their own under state protection - although this level of concern clearly did not apply to the poor girls allegedly under state protection in the care homes of the North! The State chooses what to care about and its priorities remains the same as it did in the days of Edward III - the expansion of the Realm and the retention of power rather than the people within that Realm and their day-to-day welfare. It was why we chose to invest in nuclear weapons rather than national resilience in the 1950s and nothing has changed.</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g">Regardless
of 'who actually did it' (I say again that it remains <u>possible</u> that this was an act ordered by the Kremlin so don't accuse me of not recognising that <u>possibility</u>) , the exploitation of the incident to build a cohesive
NATO narrative, among a population quietly questioning why we bother with such things as Trident in an age of austerity, is the
most striking aspect of this 'spin'. </span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g">This was a play, We were
the audience, The actors were in place. </span></span></span></span></span></span><span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g">All that was needed was the willing suspension of disbelief. </span></span></span></span></span></span>But something was very
wrong with this story. As someone in the 'narrative game' I could see the
joins and the leaps and tropes because that is my trade even if most people could not. The sheer
desperation of it all suggested a very frightened and insecure elite - frightened of things other than a nerve agent in Salisbury. </span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Of course, we all knew what was going on - it was political. It was a chance for the Prime Minister to play a card, well used as a technique since the Zinoviev Letter, to bind her own Party together against common enemies, distract the population from a Brexit which was reaching its rather embarrassing point of final sell-out negotiations and dish the Leader of the Opposition by associating him with a dimly recalled 'Red Menace' simply because he asked some pertinent questions about the basis for the Prime Minister's claims. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>The Deeper Level </i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Yet, at a deeper level, another agenda was in play. There is a brutal struggle going on for control of the security of Europe - that is, which system will stand against invaders from the East or the South? Will it be the Anglo-Saxon broad-based NATO or a Franco-German European Army that might threaten the UK one day more than it may threaten Moscow? Security is the Prime Minister's personal obsession. Defence of the Realm is certainly far more important than the Welfare of the People to a Tory tied to the interest of the Crown.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The targeting of Russia as villain was a golden opportunity to bind the tabloids and Parliament, which both purport to represent the people, around a forward defence of NATO's existential justification for itself - the demonic Russian East.<br />
<br />
So, what we had here was a whole concatenation of interests and fears - the Russian bear, loss of power, terrorism in a Syrian context, the US alliance, Brexit and so much more - creating a general need to let rip and fix all attention on this one event in one place at one time and direct attention away from the Government and (bluntly) its lack of intelligence on the threat and towards an enemy and a threat, Russia, that could be easily understood by the editors and country Tories.<br />
<br />
But what was the truth of the matter? What is actually likely, as opposed to what is politically convenient to be regarded as 'highly likely' regardless of the evidence actually presented to the people, was not under discussion. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
For, be in no doubt, this was a crime on British soil and a crime, moreover, that appears to have offered some threat to other ordinary citizens and which seems more than coincidental with a number of other killings of prominent Russians whose connections were somewhat rum to say the least (or at least compared to the average British subject to the Crown). The matter certainly deserved serious investigation <u>alongside</u> such crimes as those in Telford and Rotherham regardless even of the nerve agent aspects of the case. The police seem to be making little progress in cases to date and need a breakthrough.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But an analysis that pointed to the chaotic state of post-Soviet Russian politics was far less convenient than one that directed the public to the contribution of the West to that chaotic state or which might point to other actors than the Kremlin itself being responsible for crimes because of that state of chaos. A simple story was required. May referred dismissively to Russia being a mafia state rather than as a state in formation out of anarchic conditions created by the West with some deliberation a quarter of a century ago (I was there and I saw it).</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>The Chaotics of Russia</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The bottom line here is that, while jumping to conclusions derived from ignorance, most of the media simply do not understand the chaotics of
Russian governance. There is a history to this and journalists are not good at history. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
History is a serious problem for journalists. It requires them to drop simple narratives (their beloved half-truths they call 'stories') and deal with the real world of complex relationships between real facts while analysing the gaps in the record from experience. Journalism is not truth, it is literature. The news is written by people who have never done a deal, run a campaign or made a difficult executive decision. The political class' skill lies in manipulating data to provide the narratives (or 'stories) to these inexperienced people that can serve their purposes.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Yes, it is <u>possible</u> that Putin personally ordered an assassination but very unlikely. The fate of a minor traitor really is not
top of mind for him in the middle of an election campaign. running a country of vast extent with a population nearly three times that of the UK which is still coping with the economic fall-out of the collapse of its empire and dealing with far more important issues such as the dispute with Ukraine, the war in Syria, Islamic terrorism, relations with President Trump, national defence and an economy which is far from out of the query basket. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Our friend Valery Morozov was almost certainly correct on
Channel 4 News (and this was accepted by the spokesperson for the chemical weapons establishment in that same segment) that Putin really has no interest in a minor intelligence figure
from the past.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Yes, it is certainly <u>possible</u> that an arm of the Russian security
apparat is engaged in a political war of its own involving violence. In such a case Putin can be
blamed for not being in control of his own system and May may be right to condemn this - when she knows that this is so and on those terms rather than Boris' assertion of personal culpability.<br />
<br />
This is more likely and would be justifiable
cause for complaint but then the complaint should be cast in just those terms. We should be able to show Russian state complicity and Kremlin failure to control its own security operations and demand with evidence that Putin explain himself (although, I suppose, we might have to explain extraordinary rendition and drone murders on our side but let that pass). This might be more effective in embarrassing Russia's Great Leader than blind assertions for the camera. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>What Is More Likely? </i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But it is still more likely that this is a factional struggle
between oligarchical elements linked to the security apparat historically and
over which the Government has no formal control in which our main victim got caught up. If so, we should perhaps be
co-operating with the higher levels of the Russian State to bring these elements to book and end their links and access to the security state
instead of throwing out accusations and trying to destabilise the country by
backing people like Navalny. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As Putin himself drew attention, in the cut sections of a recent NBC American TV interview (the fact of the cuts is more interesting here than what Putin said because he has said this before), while the West whines about alleged Russian villainy in trying to manipulate public opinion this was a game long ago started in the West - against not only in Russia but against half the world. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
To have intellectual integrity in making claims against someone, one should not be engaged in the similar acts oneself. There is no evidence, of course, that the West is bumping off people in Russia but it had been kidnapping or bumping off people it disapproves of elsewhere without due process for quite some time. It is in alliance with countries that have a very weak sense of due process and which execute people for dissident thoughts so that export order books may be filled.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Her Majesty's Government has not yet provided the smoking gun that shows the Russian Government to have been guilty of these murders directly or through negligence. It is acquiring 'opinions' from allies. For that reason, we should remain cautious until that evidence is produced and is more than, say, the surmise of a Coroners' Court based on evidence provided by state-directed intelligence agencies behind closed doors or an analysis of intelligence agents who may know the square root of f**k-all about the actual workings of the higher levels of the Russian state security system. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>The Childishness of the Response</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Forget Iraq, think back to the complete ignorance of Soviet reality right up to the Fall of the Soviet Union now evidenced by post-Soviet academic researchers and the startling ignorance of Arab Islamism and its funding that caused so much embarrassment to American intelligence agencies in the wake of 9/11. There is no reason to think that anything has really changed since then. In general, we know very little about the minds of our enemies.'Highly likely' really should have been downgraded to 'possible' and taken seriously as 'possible'.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We are, in the UK, behaving a little like Austria-Hungary
in July 1914 treating Russia like Serbia - making ultimatums that no sovereign Government can reasonably accept (though this may not be so clear to a Government that finds it so ridiculously difficult to recovery its own sovereignty from its nearer Empire, the European Union). </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Despite the tabloids, the Tories won't be able to carry the whole country with
it for long if the squabble ever turned into something more than a tit-for-tat diplomat expulsion. War is not on the agenda if economic sanctions are relatively trivial. A surge of support for Prime Minister has already begun to drift away as people start to question the basis for the claims and share qualms about throwing around mud on a surmise. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The Russian State are frankly thumbing their noses at the UK with good reason. They are a
proud sovereign people faced with no more than allegations and political warfare, not with investigative querying and requests for collaboration to
find out the truth. Prime Minister May has shot herself in the foot for mere short term propaganda advantage.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Childishly, the Russian Foreign Minister has now been banned
from the UK - as if he f**king cared. And that is an insult without anything
more than a 'highly likely' behind it. The UK refuses to pass over the evidence
for study against international treaty. Why? What is it afraid of? Should it not have asked the Russian Foreign Minister to come to London to discuss and resolve the situation. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>Other Possibilities</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This all
looks like dodgy politics rather than a sincere investigation. The British police, left to their own devices, are generally rather good at this sort of thing (Telford, Hillsborough and Orgreave notwithstanding ... oops, have I sown a doubt? I apologise). But let us move on from the Russian Government and look at other possibilities without descending into conspiracy theory. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It is <u>possible</u> that the Russian security apparat's
only role is that a rogue element has sold a nerve agent under the counter to
organised crime or to oligarchs (some of whom are often no better than organised crime evenwhen they are favoured sons of Western security) in
which case, again, we should be co-operating with Russia to find the villains and not
cutting off investigatory collaboration. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It is, of course, <u>possible</u> that the nerve agent
has been constructed in a Western or ex-Soviet Republican lab and then used for
black ops purposes for whatever motive but possibly one related to destroying any
possible Anglo-Russian or US-Russian rapprochement. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This cannot just be ruled out of court as conspiracy theory, given the sociopathic nature of the darker side of the security company - after all, security operations attract types like Angleton and Beria as jam attracts wasps. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This dark side agenda would fit with other
narratives related to Syria and Iraq. We have discussed this already, Chemical weapons in Syria somewhat unaccountably popped up early in public intelligence briefings that appeared on camera within hours of the incident. It is always instructive to note carefully what is said in the first 24 hours by 'justification agents' in any political warfare operation because this is the raw preferred narrative before the political experts get to adjust the message away from the intelligence bods. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>The Least Likely Possibilities</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It
is certainly unlikely but the rogue element could come from our own security apparat or,
more precisely, that we have a rogue ideologue or criminal coming
out of Porton Down which just happens to be around the corner from Salisbury. Elements in our own security
apparat have shown rogue status in the past but let's give them the benefit of the doubt.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Rogue agents on
any side with dark revenge, personal or ideological or political motivations
are another possibility. This should be considered by any policeman worth his salt but how
inconvenient might this be if proved to be true and how likely might it be that
it would be covered up? I leave you to your own level of trust of our politicians, our own security apparat and our own police forces. The track record is not great.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As we go through the likelihoods, we can say with reasonable confidence that it is highly unlikely that the British Government did this
itself (even our most sociopathic politicians are not quite that stupid and
would not get it past their own civil service). </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The least likely is suicide, of
course. But the point here is that one should not jump to conclusions and that include <u>either</u> that Putin personally ordered the acts <u>or</u> that a rogue Western cell decided to trigger anti-Russian sentiment out of frustration at any one of a number of policies - Ukraine, Syria, defence spending, threats to NATO, risks to Trident . </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Unfortunately the
'evidence' has now become so politicised that nothing can be trusted any more than it
could be in the Syrian or Iraqi chemical weapons cases. The Prime Minister's rapid highly politicised jump to judgement has ensured that!</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i> Criticising 'Highly Likely'</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The truth is that <u>all</u>
security services are mostly making it up as they go along on weak intelligence. Did
any of you actually read that embarrassingly trite and poorly evidenced Trump dossier which was so embarrassing and yet came
from someone who had been be a leading past MI6 analyst!? Mentioning Iraqi WMD at this point would simply be a low blow so I won't. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
'Highly likely' is
just not good enough when there are so many alternative analytical
possibilities and before the investigation has got very far at all. Add to this the
convenience for the battered Government in frightening the population into
traditional Tory patriotism and distracting it from Brexit and you see a
process riddled with its own lack of intellectual integrity.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The Government is taking an
uneducated population for a ride and adopting the easy way out rather than a
measured and sensible review of the evidence and investigation before coming to
a conclusion.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The worst of it is that, thanks to the political play by a
cynical Government, if Putin is guilty and it appears to be proven, one third
of the population will be minded not to believe it on the precedent of the
Iraqi WMD and the untrustworthiness of our own side. The country will then be more
divided than ever and the relationship between a left-wing Labour Government
and the security services will be one of de facto political warfare - a very
dangerous situation since no one can win that struggle. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And if evidence emerges
(and some interesting evidence is emerging) that things may be a little more
complicated than we are led to believe, a third of the country will stick with
their ignorant cod Cold War attitudes regardless while the bulk of the population
will be confirmed in their distrust of their rulers when what we badly need is
a restoration of that trust. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>So Cui Bono? </i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Never has trust in Government been more needed and yet this weak administration once again risks throwing what trust exists away for short term advantage. The fish rots from his head and that is now what
is happening to the West. But let us close by summarising, in no particular order, the 'cui bono' candidates (since it is hard to see what Putin himself gains from such an act):-</div>
<br />
<ol>
<li>Operations involved in organised crime where revenge or dark dealings
around massive funds at stake in oligarchal political warfare drive actions; </li>
<li>Rogue
members of the Russian security apparat seeking revenge without concern or understanding for
Russia's higher level national interest;</li>
<li>Cold War Western security apparat
operatives in the US and Europe seeking to damage Western-Russian relations
(Ukraine is a sub-set of this category but another sub-set would be Western
strategists seeking to bind Europe into NATO rather than the European Army or
seek rapprochement with Russia and a further sub-set is those political warfare
operatives seeking to undermine Trump's general move towards rapprochement); </li>
<li>The Conservative government (or more accurately the Conservative-led security
state) seeking to mobilise public opinion in a 'patriotic' stance against the
Left and to distract attention from Brexit (as well as ensure control over
NATO-led European strategic direction); and</li>
<li>Private revenge or insanity
(whether from a rogue security operative from any apparat or within the Russian
community in London).</li>
</ol>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
In other words, if 'cui bono' <u>alone</u> is taken into account
and assuming (except for e)) rational actors, there are at least four sets of
actor who can reasonably be considered as more likely to be culpable than the
Kremlin itself represented personally by Putin and Lavrov. And this applies equally to
the murder of Litvinenko insofar as a) b) and c) and not d) and only at a
stretch e) might also apply in that case and in the Berezhovsky cases. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
For balance, I would add that if it is true that the Russian security apparat is itself fully criminalised and intent on revenge or implicated in organised crime (and this has some plausibility) then, while it is less plausible perhaps that Putin was directly and personally involved in the crime, then he is responsible simply as Head of State and the wheel turns back somewhat in the direction of Prime Minister May's assessment. We simply need more evidence rather than prejudiced surmise.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The
truth is <u>we do not know</u> and <u>we should admit we do not know</u>, instead of throwing
around accusations and relying on prejudice and rumour, at least until the investigation
has ended. The British security apparat is itself not to be wholly trusted any more
than the Russian and we should never forget that. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>Last Thoughts </i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
To be clear, just because it is 'ours'
does not mean that our government's intelligence and analyses are sound or that it is not
driven by ideology or not manipulable by political considerations. If there is
one thing that we have learned in recent history, it is the truth of that
assessment. Anything else would mean little more than a tribal belief that Arsenal must always be in the right in any penalty against Spurs. Anything else would be naive.
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It is hard to see how or why such an obscure event as the murder of a treacherous agent might be
more useful than some dramatic act in Syria or Ukraine if it was needed to get
Putin through the last few days before the vote. Perhaps Boris has the smoking gun - in which case, we must accept it if it is the
gun and it is smoking but accusations should have come <u>after the smoking gun
had appeared and not before</u>. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Although the 'mass' appears at first sight to have
accepted this nonsense at face value, you can tell that doubts are creeping in
already. The Twitter feeds were far more doubtful than the tabloids and that
doubt began to grow after a surge of early Cold War tweets that all looked
suspiciously as if they were cued to persuade us. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Both the Spectator and Peter Hitchens then showed
that a substantial 'High Tory' element thought Jeremy Corbyn got it right in asking
some awkward questions - it takes a lot for Tories to do that. He was right. That does not mean he is right on other things. But he was right to ask those questions. He was not saying and we are not saying that Putin is innocent but only that assertions are not proof. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g">
The real reasons for the killing are probably obscure oligarchal
struggles or revenge for past slights which may lead back to the Russian security apparat. However, the reason for its exploitation
is largely about party political advantage in the UK and an attempt to
dish the advocates of the European Army in favour of NATO. All this is set in an ideologically-driven High Tory and State neurosis about Russia that seems to go back to the days of Lord Palmerston.</span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g">It is all
rather ridiculous - if only because it shows how defensive and anxious a
weak British Government has become. So, let us now maintain an open mind, trust no one and wait on such facts as can be presented that are more than intelligence analysts' surmise and the arrival of something in our country from a stockpile over thirty years old. </span></span></span><br />
<br />
<b><span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g">In the meantime, let us wish a swift recovery to all three victims of this heinous political act and be prepared for the <u>possibility</u> that it is <u>proven</u> or evidenced as highly likely, instead of asserted as highly likely, that the Kremlin ordered a crime on British soil and that this should result therefore in more serious sanctions than actually offered by the Prime Minister, regardless of the interests of big business and the City of London.</span></span></span></b></div>
Tim Pendryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03079486837930544558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-72932514640610937.post-83000739255766387782018-03-18T14:57:00.000+00:002018-03-18T14:57:09.516+00:00A Sense of Proportion - Nuclear War and Feeling Secure<div data-contents="true">
<span data-offset-key="82vjv-0-0"><span data-text="true">As we struggle to find the money for the National Health Service and we squabble over what should or not be paid out to Brussels (nothing in my view), there is another world of money out there that has nothing to do with Wall Street or the City of London. To get a feel for this economy, we must switch to the United States for a while. </span></span><br />
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="e2r8o" data-offset-key="852q2-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="852q2-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="852q2-0-0"><br data-text="true" /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="e2r8o" data-offset-key="1mrcg-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="1mrcg-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="1mrcg-0-0"><span data-text="true">On 23 February 2008, a US B-2 bomber crashed on the runway shortly after take-off from Andersen Air Force Base in Guam. The findings of the investigation stated that the B-2 crashed after "heavy, lashing rains" caused moisture to enter skin-flush air-data sensors. There were no munitions on board. With an estimated loss of US$1.4 billion, it was the most expensive crash in USAF history.</span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="e2r8o" data-offset-key="fh536-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="fh536-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="fh536-0-0"><br data-text="true" /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="e2r8o" data-offset-key="f0kvn-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="f0kvn-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="f0kvn-0-0"><span data-text="true">Yes, that's right - US$1.4bn sunk into one aircraft whose only function was to drop megatonnage on someone other than us. There are 20 B-2s in service with the United States Air Force (excluding the one written off) which plans to operate the aircraft until 2058, Each can deploy sixteen 2,400 lb (1,100 kg) B83 nuclear bombs.You can add up the sums deployed in any way you like but that is a lot of money, a lot of national infrastructure and a lot of healthcare and education costs. </span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="e2r8o" data-offset-key="8p4f5-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="8p4f5-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="8p4f5-0-0"><br data-text="true" /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="e2r8o" data-offset-key="2v8ks-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="2v8ks-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="2v8ks-0-0"><span data-text="true">With a maximum yield of 1.2 megatonnes of TNT (75 times the 16 kt yield of the atomic bomb "Little Boy" dropped on Hiroshima on 6 August 1945), the B83 is the most powerful nuclear free-fall weapon in the United States arsenal. About 650 B83s were built, and the weapon remains in service as part of the United States "Enduring Stockpile". </span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="e2r8o" data-offset-key="9v33q-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="9v33q-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="9v33q-0-0"><br data-text="true" /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="e2r8o" data-offset-key="do1m4-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="do1m4-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="2gv0f-0-0"><span data-text="true">The cost of each B83 bomb is hard to calculate because one would have to take into account research and development, a cost which is spread amongst several items of mass destruction. According to the [US] Union of Concerned Scientists (note we are only talking about the B83 delivery system (the B-2's B83's could be replaced with yet another bomb, the B1): "It cost some $80 billion to develop and build 21 of these planes, or $4 billion per B-2 bomber, and the current life extension program will cost $10 billion. Each can carry up to 16 bombs, so the total cost of each deployed bomb would be roughly $270 million, taking into account its share of the bomber."</span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="e2r8o" data-offset-key="adn6m-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="adn6m-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="adn6m-0-0"><br data-text="true" /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="e2r8o" data-offset-key="bvr7b-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="bvr7b-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="bvr7b-0-0"><span data-text="true">Whether these calculations are accurate or not, 21 B-2s each with 16 B83s (that is 336 B83s) are all utterly useless except to devastate another part of humanity or to maintain a 'theory' of deterrence that may or may not have worked for the last seventy years. Of course, other potentially opposing nations have a similar capacity though nothing near as big but still the total sum is formidable, far more massive in the US than elsewhere in the world.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span data-offset-key="do1m4-0-0"><span data-text="true">The
US hasn't actually built a new bomb since 1992 (as of 2013) and is
spending money only on refurbishments of weaponry so perhaps the
investment has been made and we should accept the bad investments as
something that comes from another age. But now the ramping up of
anti-Chinese and anti-Russian feeling by opposing camps in the US and of
the latter in the UK raises once again serious questions about what we
spend our money and why. </span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="e2r8o" data-offset-key="eff6l-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="eff6l-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="eff6l-0-0"><br data-text="true" /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="e2r8o" data-offset-key="9uvhm-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="9uvhm-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="9uvhm-0-0"><span data-text="true">I am not even going to try and estimate total costs when the B2 and the B83 are only a part of the whole and just one unloaded bomber can wipe out $1.4bn of national wealth because of a few faulty sensors. But, before British readers get too smug at this colossal waste while America's built infrastructure crumbles and its inner cities remain sink-pits and it cannot provide even a basic free national health service (let alone the free education that we British have now lost thanks to that vile abortion of claimed Leftism New Labour), the UCS noted in 2013 that "the DOD also is modifying Trident submarine-based missiles—which initially cost about $100 million each—to extend their lifetimes at a cost of about $140 million apiece."</span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="e2r8o" data-offset-key="1477h-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="1477h-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="1477h-0-0"><br data-text="true" /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="e2r8o" data-offset-key="3thn-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="3thn-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="3thn-0-0"><span data-text="true">Now, this is my point. Every one of these expenditures was undertaken because elected representatives approved them, often in a bipartisan way and with minimal opposition. There have, of course, been concerns about cost and not only amongst elected representatives. Intelligent military men have themselves often wondered whether this has been the best use of resources, </span></span><br />
<br />
<span data-offset-key="3thn-0-0"><span data-text="true">And yet, in every case, these measures passed without serious opposition as to principle through Congress (or Parliament) whether the majority were liberal or conservative (or Labour or Tory). The arguments for national resilience and peace are thrust aside in favour of what amounts to a massive gamble on not having to become genocidal maniacs in what would be as likely as not to be a futile revenge attack at best and a war crime beyond the achievement of Adolf Hitler himself at worst.</span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="e2r8o" data-offset-key="ef19c-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="ef19c-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="ef19c-0-0"><br data-text="true" /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="e2r8o" data-offset-key="5pptn-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="5pptn-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="5pptn-0-0"><span data-text="true">Ultimately, this is not some sinister plot by a cabal of miltaristic illuminati but is a democratic decision that results directly from your and my vote. When we vote in our standard party preference, we vote in people who will sign on the nod, or with minimal questioning as to purpose, vast sums of money that cannot be spent on economic infrastructures or on social issues or just be given back to the people. We ensure that we are complicit in the use of this weaponry since deterrence only works if there is general agreement that we can use this stuff. We really cannot blame the so-called elite - collectively we the people maintain this system. It would not exist if we did not approve it by our personal votes.</span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="e2r8o" data-offset-key="3r2dl-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="3r2dl-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="3r2dl-0-0"><br data-text="true" /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="e2r8o" data-offset-key="ag1ht-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="ag1ht-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="ag1ht-0-0"><span data-text="true">Try looking up what one single B83 bomb could do to a city of civilian men, women and children and be saddened at the implications of that complicity (we do not consider, of course, the Russians or Chinese to be any less complicit except that the Chinese people do not get to vote in the people who would do this although they probably would if they could). We have a global system here but all countries claim a mandate from their people, directly through a vote or indirectly through a Party mechanism.</span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="e2r8o" data-offset-key="6eo29-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="6eo29-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="6eo29-0-0"><br data-text="true" /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="e2r8o" data-offset-key="brvaf-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="brvaf-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="brvaf-0-0"><span data-text="true">So, every voter (where there is a vote) must genuinely believe in their heart of hearts that their country is at threat to a sufficient degree that vast sums must be diverted from socio-economic development and/or private resources and that it is reasonable for that threat to be dealt with by being prepared to immolate tens of millions of other human beings in a forlorn gamble that the machinery of death will never be needed.</span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="e2r8o" data-offset-key="bu4bq-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="bu4bq-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="bu4bq-0-0"><br data-text="true" /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="e2r8o" data-offset-key="2jqci-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="2jqci-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="2jqci-0-0"><span data-text="true">I am not sure if this is right or wrong. I only know that it is ridiculous. Perhaps it is true that, without WMD, America and Britain would be like Carthage before Rome. Perhaps, on that basis, the massive and otherwise wasteful expenditure is worth while as is the gamble that it will never be deployed - that being wasteful is part of the game since its use lies in its not being used like some weird metaphysical game fit for continental philosophers.</span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="e2r8o" data-offset-key="5c3tb-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="5c3tb-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="5c3tb-0-0"><br data-text="true" /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="e2r8o" data-offset-key="eh98q-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="eh98q-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="eh98q-0-0"><span data-text="true">I don't care. What I am interested in is the institutionalisation of paranoia, the preparedness to spend such vast sums on extreme possible events (like the vast sums spent on anti-terrorism activity that still can't stop a nutter shooting up a school), the unthinking acceptance of this state of affairs by the entire political class and the apparent inability of the voting population to see the levels of cost and, yes, again, the paranoia (which can be manufactured if necessary as we are seeing in London as I write) involved in giving up many social benefits, economic advantages and even personal wealth for what amounts to the mass embracing of a psychological neurosis - existential anxiety about the 'other' - without ever bothering to get to know or understand or compromise with that 'other' in an alternative strategy of 'peaceful co-existence'.</span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="e2r8o" data-offset-key="e0kh7-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="e0kh7-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="e0kh7-0-0"><br data-text="true" /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="e2r8o" data-offset-key="d8at3-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="d8at3-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="d8at3-0-0"><span data-text="true">Imagine a world where those sums had made America and the UK wealthier and more socially secure and both had retained only enough firepower to cause sufficient harm while offering us resilient countries that would fight in the streets for their liberty if necessary. Macmillan in 1957 made a decision for budgetary reasons to drop a strategy of resilience for deterrence and he was not malign or even stupid in doing so. It had its logic but it was the logic of Aquinas - the building of an entirely logical system on a few basic false assumptions shared by everyone without further thought. Reagan too made strategic deterrence a platform and it helped to get him elected - his voters liked this system and simply wanted more protection through the futile 'Star Wars' programme.</span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="e2r8o" data-offset-key="e7i0-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="e7i0-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="e7i0-0-0"><br data-text="true" /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="e2r8o" data-offset-key="835pa-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="835pa-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="835pa-0-0"><span data-text="true">Perhaps this is what it is all about. As with air power more generally ensuring that there are no body bags amongst the aggressors but only vaporised remains of civilians below, so these expenditures are really protection money paid by 'our' civilians. The people pay over to the 'racketeers' (the Crown or the Federal Government) the funds and, in return, the racketeers 'protect' them, not so much from the enemy but from the costs and risks of having to face the enemy themselves or becoming resilient in adversity.</span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="e2r8o" data-offset-key="gvt1-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="gvt1-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="gvt1-0-0"><br data-text="true" /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="e2r8o" data-offset-key="75cqm-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="75cqm-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="75cqm-0-0"><span data-text="true">Maybe that is the secret. Maybe WMD expenditures are much more 'snowflake' than we thought they were. Maybe they exist so that voters can pass over the difficult business of defending something worth defending because they have a stake in it but where they might risk personal hardship, death or injury (in taking that particular gamble over the response to the intentions and strength of an enemy) and thereby they give responsibility for the throw of that dice to an elite that then develops a bit of an economic interest in keeping the system going. </span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="e2r8o" data-offset-key="79iho-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="79iho-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="79iho-0-0"><br data-text="true" /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="e2r8o" data-offset-key="avakb-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="avakb-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="avakb-0-0"><span data-text="true">If I am right, then perhaps the people are using democracy just to offset responsibility and thought. In the wisdom of crowds, they are getting what they want. But what do they want? Maybe they simply do not want to think about these things. Maybe they want to hire people to do their thinking for them and to take on responsibility for the acts that might be necessary to survive. They prefer those acts to be separate from themselves under conditions where they do not have to make any choices rather than make choices that are existential. Democratic humanity, under this thesis, is existentially cowardly but not irrational. </span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="e2r8o" data-offset-key="bi366-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="bi366-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="bi366-0-0"><br data-text="true" /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="e2r8o" data-offset-key="7cv7o-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="7cv7o-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="7cv7o-0-0"><span data-text="true">The gamble on letting this protection money (aka wasted money) be spent on a system detached from their daily lives and responsibilities might be likened to the money they spend on entertainment - a distraction, an avoidance, an evasion. From this perspective, the gamble on the economy slowly dying in the future and social care and security collapsing or being inadequate in old age is set against the gamble not of the Russians declaring war but on what might happen to themselves if they declare war. But why would they prefer mass immolation? Do they think the 'other' would immolate them 'just for fun'? Has Hitlerism created an idea of the other's intent to general extermination as if we were Carthage-in-the-making?</span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="e2r8o" data-offset-key="2d5fp-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="2d5fp-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="2d5fp-0-0"><br data-text="true" /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="e2r8o" data-offset-key="b87dk-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="b87dk-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="b87dk-0-0"><span data-text="true">The mutual immolation somehow looks less dangerous to voters (because it is chosen internally to be unimaginable as much as there is trust in deterrence as game theory) than a resilience strategy when voter resilience is already being tested to the limit precisely by that lack of economic resource and social security in everyday life that might (if they but thought about it) be resolved with massive savings on WMD delivery systems. But something else may be going on here.</span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="e2r8o" data-offset-key="49ctk-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="49ctk-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="49ctk-0-0"><br data-text="true" /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="e2r8o" data-offset-key="8fme8-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="8fme8-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="8fme8-0-0"><span data-text="true">For democratic humanity, a simple immolation of the civilian men, women and children of the other side is infinitely preferable to facing them directly in battle. Perhaps they know that they are now flaccid and weak. Perhaps middle class Americans know that the Viet Cong drubbed them because the Viet Cong were not flaccid and weak. Air power then proved fruitless and probably will again. Sometimes I think the admiration for Israel is such a projection - by supporting a people that is resilient and not flaccid and weak, its supporters perhaps think that this makes them strong. Of course, it does not. This is the mentality of nations used to watching screens and not doing things. </span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="e2r8o" data-offset-key="94ipu-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="94ipu-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="94ipu-0-0"><br data-text="true" /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="e2r8o" data-offset-key="2820p-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="2820p-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="2820p-0-0"><span data-text="true">The existence of air power allows the democratic human to feel as if he was in control, as if he could win at no cost to himself ... and it is that feeling of control and misplaced hope that has one central purpose - the alleviation of anxiety. In the end, these vast expenditures are, perhaps, a pharmaceutical, an anxiety-relieving drug, more than they are even a protection racket. People simply do not want to have to think about these things because these things make them anxious. A big abstract anxiety (global immolation) is much easier to cope with than the anxiety of taking responsibility in a resilience-driven society.</span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="e2r8o" data-offset-key="3dgn4-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="3dgn4-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="3dgn4-0-0"><br data-text="true" /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="e2r8o" data-offset-key="9bvbr-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="9bvbr-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="9bvbr-0-0"><span data-text="true">Still <i>you</i> vote these people in every time, you cowards. Thank you for that. I feel so much more secure now ... </span></span><br />
</div>
</div>
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Tim Pendryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03079486837930544558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-72932514640610937.post-3317944724426670242018-02-25T19:48:00.000+00:002018-02-25T19:48:08.345+00:00Should I Apologise For This Posting? Sex & Power in the Modern WorldOne of the weirder aspects of our current culture is the ritual abasement of alleged wrong-doers, usually in the form of a forced apology on the advice of 'PR consultants'. My interest relates to something <a href="https://youtu.be/zQCTeGKHsVc" target="_blank">Jordan Peterson has raised</a>. I am not an enormous fan of his total vision which is, in my opinion, flawed in several respects - the stoicism, the concentration on judaeo-christian values, Jungian archetypes and an over-deterministic biologism create the very model of an ideology, a trait that he claims to abhor in others. Or am I unjust and that these traits are those of his followers who have managed to miss his point about ideology? Wherever his new-found popularity leads, he is a reasoned debater with a thoughtful stance on life and he
undoubtedly has insights on gender relations which are 'controversial' but none the less on the right side of the game.<br />
<br />
His thesis (which is
most observable at the point where a new cultural hegemony emerges and displaces another) is that
politics is an expression of personality traits. Because sexual
difference results in the emphasis of different personality traits (so much, so
scientific) in the genders, shifts in the power between genders mean that the personality traits associated with the rising gender began to be valued and then affect discourse and practice under the new order and at the expense of the falling gender.<br />
<br />
The narrative of psychopathy (where psychopathy is culturally widened to include a lot of normal male behaviour that does no harm) being 'bad' and empathy (even where an excess of empathy can be as harmful as full-on sociopathy in terms of adequate social functioning) is just one signifier of a cultural change that can be traced to a recent shift of values from the falling masculine to the rising feminine. This has been happening with gathering pace over the last three decades or so, reaching its crescendo in aggressive reaction of now-hegemonic liberals to the insurgency of democratic populism.<br />
<br />
All talk of Jungian archetypes here is so much displacement although it is a useful poetic tool for describing what is happening. For actual causes, we have to turn back to a brute materialism. The bottom line lies not only in that women are now voters conscious of being voters as women (though this is exaggerated in its effects) but in the far more important fact that most purchasing decisions for most consumer goods, especially repeat purchases, under late liberal capitalism, are made by women, Women also take an important role in many male purchasing decisions. Male-dominated corporations have recognised this. They have realised that the huge increase in educated women allows them to tap into this economy more effectively and that single women are also very likely to throw their energies into their work as expression of meaning far more than most men for whom the work is likely to be 'just a job'.<br />
<br />
New centres of power have emerged in the corporate sector for women - notably human resources and marketing - just at that point when a particular form of education has introduced an ideology of empowerment for women (feminism). Peterson himself points out in addition that men have withdrawn from the universities and media relative to women so that we can see how the high ground of culture, combined with the entry of women into politics, has created a new female cultural domination where the next stage is a demand for 'gender equality' - which really means a demand that educated middle class women dominate the institutions that hire them in such numbers.<br />
<br />
These are just facts on the ground. Economic change has not only shifted political power increasingly towards
women (even if this is not yet fully equalised) but it has shifted
cultural power in such a way this cultural change is working at a faster pace
than the political change that will follow. In general men are giving
up on politics but also on culture, the universities and the media where culture is manufactured. The fact of democracy is
their last bastion against the possibility of total manipulation by a new administrative elite made up of educated women and the male elements in the 'capitalist' and 'managerial' classes who understand the profit in this revolution or who simply go with the flow of history. The dislike of democracy
in liberal circles lately is perhaps a recognition of democracy's 'last fortress
status' against ideology.<br />
<br />
It is as a result of all this that the personality traits
associated with women are becoming culturally dominant. Peterson's
concerns are not that these personality traits are not good (rather
they are just facts on the ground that come with any increase in power
for women) but that we are replacing one imbalanced cultural arrangement
with another (male personality trait dominance with female personality
trait dominance), that this is creating the potential for the same
sort of violent tensions that the first imbalance did - and that this has triggered a populist revolt which also happens to appeal to many
'conservative' women.<br />
<br />
For this is an important point, the educated middle class feminism of the new world is deeply presumptuous in its claim to represent <u>all</u> women much as many men are linked by interest and sentiment to the new world of empowered middle class women. This is not a line that separates one gender from another in reality but one that separates two types of personality trait with different expressions in men and women (and which inter-mix with many other traits and histories which ultimately result in all individuals being unique even if they insist on then recombining into tribes and ideologies).<br />
<br />
These thoughts were initially triggered by an article in the most recent British Psychological Society's Digest, <a href="https://digest.bps.org.uk/2018/02/14/mens-and-womens-views-on-the-most-effective-relationship-repair-strategies/" target="_blank">"Flowers, Apologies, Food or Sex? Men's and Women's Views on The Most Effective Ways To Make Up"</a>. This article has one line that tells us
that there may be a connection between general female personality traits (though we must make the central point here that these are general traits that differ considerably between women and may be part of the personality type of many men as well) and the
emergence of female cultural power in the West - <i>"... women thought
their partner apologising or crying would be more a more effective way
for their partner to make up than did the men."</i><br />
<br />
Now, observe what
happens in a scandal today and then compare it with 50 years - the insistence on apologies and the showing of remorse. The male
instinct is that when something is done that is wrong, then apologies
and emotion are relatively irrelevant - what is necessary is change in
actual behaviour and restitution or recompense with what the wronged
person wants (usually sexual relations in the case of men apparently, and there is
nothing wrong with that if it is just a desire and there is no question of anything other than consent).<br />
<br />
The female instinct is to ignore all that and
demand an emotional submission and a change in language (which is
symbolic for an expected if unverifiable change in thought). Showing emotion while using submissive language is a near-guarantor that the change of heart is 'sincere'. What the man thinks is important to most women whereas what the woman thinks is less important than what she does to most men. One trait finds security in knowing other minds (which can tend to household totalitarianism) whereas the other trait finds security in 'obedience' and 'compliance'. Again, this is not necessarily reflective what women and men actually do or think but is only what 'gender norms' imply as personality traits become dominant or submissive in society.<br />
<br />
If some women might find a sexual act to be a demeaning as a means of recompense, bluntly many men consider a forced apology to be equally demeaning. In both cases, if freely given out of love and respect, there is no issue but if forced out of an imbalance of power or some form of household act of terror (such as 'not speaking'), then there is broadly an equivalence of distaste for what is being forced on the 'loser'. Sexual coercion for women and psychological coercion for men are pretty equivalent in terms of their damage to personal autonomy. The wife-beater and the persistent nag are actually perfectly equivalent when one takes into account of the nature of the victim of the act. Our society tends to recognise the first as problematic (which it is) yet willfully ignore the second as equally problematic. <br />
<br />
The female instinct
is encapsulated in the Catholic confessional where absolution comes from
a verbal formula and then a 'change of heart' yet public policy at the
same period of male 'dominance' through the institution of clerical power in society was rarely interested in such things. The
paradox of priestly male dominance is that this interlocutor with God
is, in effect, a eunuch - cruelly one might say, like many urban liberal
middle class males. 'Patriarchal culture' co-existed with 'matriarchal
culture' (a fact conveniently forgotten by feminists) but was not
formally ideological or totalitarian (although matriarchal culture could
be totalitarian within the household as patriarchal culture could be within the court). Male culture just wanted material compensation and simple submission to superior power by dint of language and acts without emotion. The formal act of obeisance is not an apology but something else.<br />
<br />
Male dominance strategy was more interested in brute power relations rather than (primarily) control of culture even if Power did control culture through the court.
Instead of a celebrity apologising for an abusive act in order to
placate female consumers of entertainment products and then be obliged to show
emotional regret in order to continue to be able to work, the traditional 'male' response would be to bring that person to
justice for a crime but ignore the act if it was not a crime. This latter stance is, of course, now unacceptable - a wrong act is now deemed wrong, whether a crime or not, in a return to a modern version of clerical moralism. Shame (and guilt) are policing methods that are embedded in the community because they have been imposed from outside by the agents of the dominant culture.<br />
<br />
The community itself rarely polices these issues today. It has become a matter of public discourse through newspapers, broadcasters and social media. Since the funeral of Princess Diana and Blair's calculated use of emotion to appeal to feminine and media sentiment, emotional responses to events have been manufactured from above as weapons or tools in cultural warfare by ideologically-motivated groups. The vigils surrounding the death of Jo Cox, MP were a perfect example of such manipulation, closer to Goebbels' distasteful (even to Hitler) manipulation of the killing of Horst Wessel than to any reasoned consideration of what to do about rare cases of lone fascist fanatics.<br />
<br />
Charlie Brooker's 'Black Mirror' series has several excellent satires on this culture of manipulation but he still looks at it from within his own class, blaming the lumpen mass for its reactions and weakness rather than investigating the ideological manipulation of emotion in a competition between factions within elite groups. All elite groups now engage in this use of emotion as communications tool or weapon and not just the cultural Left. The cultural Left is perhaps simply more adept at it because they have an ideological framework for it.<br />
<br />
Ignoring a wrong is, of course, unforgivable (perfectly reasonably) for women where the
structures of power have not created the means for 'bringing to
justice'. This may be the core of the problem here. After all, many
solutions to alleged female abuse would require a legal system that was
so intrusive on normal male behaviour (in order to catch truly errant
male conduct) that men would live under a regime similar to that of 'The
Handmaid's Tale' but under female domination. What is required is a balance of interest between the genders that lets individuals flourish as they are and has rules on lack of consent and bullying but creates a grey air of private life where individuals are allowed to congregate with those that are like them without wider community intrusion. The new warrior liberalism is like the old conservative authoritarianism in that it constantly expands its territory to fill a vacuum, like any empire. It is, in this respect, culturally oppressive even as it raises issues that must be raised - especially regarding the ignorant behaviour of some men to some women. <br />
<br />
Western society
resolved this in the past through somewhat hypocritical 'codes' outside
the law, using shame (or guilt) but these are no longer possible and in
any case were oppressive towards those women who were not 'inside the
code system' by choice or lack of resources. The Irish Catholic Church's
treatment of women 'outside the codes' is a lesson in pure evil. We
have not found the way forward yet but it probably lies in 'values
paganism' re-instituting 'codes' that permit autonomy and free speech, rewards those who show respect to others in the context of an ideology of self respect and punishes all forms of coercion
(ideally, including unlawful state coercion).<br />
<br />
We are moving here towards wanting a culture of 'good manners' for private life within a framework of law that punishes severely <u>evidenced</u> wrong-doing (essentially any form of unlawful coercion of the individual). Needless to say, this must include tools for the gathering of evidence and strong and impartial law enforcement. <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/01/24/900-prosecutions-collapse-year-failure-disclose-evidence/" target="_blank">The DPP's recent behaviour in relation to alleged male rape trials was a moral disgrace</a> but women are right to want a debate on the boundaries that dictate the correct behaviour between men and women - a debate which, if undertaken openly and reasonably, might come up with some uncomfortable conclusions for both genders as to their conduct 'in the field' and the necessity for creating social rather than legal solutions to the problem of consent. <br />
<br />
This strategic difference
between a society in which either male or female personality traits shift from
private life to public policy and dominate the whole is fascinating. The shift to female personality trait dominance explains our new cultural
elite's determined drive for apologies and that industry of PR people who
trot out the need to apologise (rather than make restitution and be
subject to material containment) in order to 'salvage' reputation. The
person who apologises then has to go into the wilderness and claw their
way back if they can (without any real attempt at justice), perhaps on
their knees in penance for crimes that may or may not have been evidenced. The new argument that the 'victim' must be believed throws out of the window not only certain standards of jurisprudence but disallows both malice and false recollection in good faith. And yet we all know that, just as some claims are false, other claims are true and cannot be proven so that a moral injustice has been done when nothing can be done.<br />
<br />
Social change is thus not effected by a reasoned consideration of how to change laws and regulations to deal with moral injustice but by 'exemplars' - much as medieval Churchmen dealt in exemplars to guide their flock. Regulation and law try to follow, usually finding that things are a lot more complicated than the ideologists think. Alleged wrong-doers
are judged not by judges in accordance with the law but by a sort of
Salem-like community of social media and mainstream media witches who
are uninterested in investigation of the actual truth of claims or with context. This is dark stuff. <br />
<br />
'Justice' is offered as a form of communitarian assault on the errant
individual but it is increasingly based not on cool and fair assessment of the equality of the genders in their rights to self discovery and self creation but, in fact, on one simple truth - female voters
and consumers can dictate terms to the mostly male elites who run the
productive end of capitalism and who probably know their days are numbered.
However, let us be clear, when this goes wrong, this is not <u>all</u> women judging some men but <u>some</u> women, the
educated liberal middle class elite component of the gender, seeking out
some men and judging them as representative of all men. This is no
different from a minority of male priests seeking out and judging a few
women and making claims about the whole sex - which is what happened 500
years ago, more recently in backwaters like Ireland.<br />
<br />
Justice as the rational business of formal complaint
to enforcement authorities involving courage on the part of the
complainant and then the necessary procedures to judge truth or
falsehood on the evidence is abandoned as (in effect) 'patriarchal'.
The problem is that 'male' courage is socially created - courageous women obviously exist and most men are cowed by power but it has been historically far harder for women to adopt the risks of a courageous stance. Woman are thus often disadvantaged by the ideology of courage as are all vulnerable people in certain social conditions. Justice is not justice if it is not just and there are justifiable reasons for concern that our legal and regulatory systems lag our understanding of the primacy of networked human autonomy in a culture of equals rather than as a hierarchical structure of competing elites embedded in the past.<br />
<br />
Those who feel wronged are probably right that they have to fight to get noticed in a society that ignores them until they get noisy and emotional - child abuse victims are the obvious recent example - but they are playing a flawed game in a flawed system. The real requirement here is to unravel the hierarchical elite-based system and replace it with something that starts with a reasoned understanding of what we are really like and not what ideologists think we should be. <br />
<br />
There are reasonable arguments that 'justice' has not caught up with the
needs of women but it has also not caught up with the needs of fathers
or polyamorists so the problem is more widespread than feminist
theorists think - it is a problem of the inappropriate parts of Iron Age
ideology and industrial social structures being retained while the appropriate parts have been
jettisoned. It is a problem of society not being in tune with the
actually existing human condition.<br />
<br />
This is a new world that is
coming and yet it has now spawned its own resistance because not all
women share a belief in the necessary extension of the traits attributed to them (such as the
apology and grovel being sufficient) into the public domain (while
wishing to retain them in the private domain). These 'conservative' women match in
numbers the 'liberal' men who have calculated on moral and pragmatic
grounds that 'equality' just means that the old order is dead and that
they have to find a place in the new order.<br />
<br />
We all chuckle when
some liberal metropolitan male supporting the new order gets caught out
as an 'abuser' (even if this means little more than some crass language
or a blundering touch) just as we have always chuckled when some
Southern Baptist Minister gets caught out in 'cheating' but both breeds
of men have allowed ideology to conquer the reality of their condition
which is as creatures of ideology. Both men are often subject to disproportionate witch hunts as exemplars of wrong-doing within their community. All men become 'rapists' to their
critics in one world and all churchmen are hypocrites to their critics
in the other world - both propositions are absurd. A better truth is
that neither sets of men have the courage to be who they are and yet show
the rest of the world respect. They have become stupid because they are cowards, unable to live their lives as the persons that they are because history and ideology have dictated personae that drown their true selves. The same has applied to women stuck in households and then humiliated when they escape release in a love affair. <br />
<br />
The
point is that the human condition (and
society is just the public expression of the human condition) requires
respect for all human traits, for difference and for variability (which is incidentally another sound point made by Peterson) This
includes many other traits, whether libertarianism or authoritarianism or
empathetic or (non socially harmful) psychopathic traits, as much as
the traits that tend to show difference between men and women because of
their biochemistry and brain structures (a difference which science accepts as partially true
without drawing any valuation conclusions in relation to the principle of
equality).<br />
<br />
Our society is rapidly spinning into another round of
disaster to match that when male personality traits dominated over
female personality traits. You cannot exterminate the 'other'.
The key issue here is a fundamental respect for personal autonomy. Autonomy emerges out of each
individual's very particular model of perception, cognition and
biochemistry as well as history. The uniqueness of the individual is our
starting point. From there, comes respect for others and (which is
where brute males fall down but also authoritarian female household
matriarchs) consent. Indeed if two people want to do anything, no matter
how distasteful to others, in private, or to speak of it (since free
speech and struggle between persons through robust persuasion are
central to the good society) then it is no one's business but their own.<br />
<br />
So back to the apology. There is nothing wrong with the apology as
either sincere expression of regret or perhaps as tactical tool to end a
fruitless squabble while considering one's position (yet is it ever
really healthy to apologise for something that you feel you have no need
to apologise for?!). But there is a lot wrong with the public
institutionalisation of the apology to meet communitarian needs that
have nothing to do with the job in hand and force people into modes of
submission which actually change nothing, Indeed, the public apology is often
little more than cover for a decision not to resign and not to make
recompense. It is not embedded within a culture of honour as in Japan where both apology and resignation are carefully encoded within a shame culture with a long history.<br />
<br />
An apology in Western culture is simply a response to an assault, an act of obeisance on feminine lines. All an apology of this sort may do in our culture is to trigger the imposition of
yet more oppressive rules and regulations that may benefit a certain type of
woman in a certain situation but which may limit the lives and opportunities
of other women and degrade relations between the sexes. There is no thinking-through of the problem that was demonstrated by the act that required the apology.<br />
<br />
We should
have more considered explanations to hand, more justice (evidence-based dealing
with claims), more resignations, better laws and better law enforcement
and fewer apologies and far fewer restrictions on free speech and
normal human interaction. We should have more honour and good manners. We should pre-empt the bitter onslaught of an
insane social media-driven witch hunt with better education on consent
and respect. Our entire culture is in danger of becoming supine before
just one personality trait and just one ideology (feminism) just as, in
the 1930s, it became supine before another personality trait and another
ideology (fascism).<br />
Tim Pendryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03079486837930544558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-72932514640610937.post-57476169868122810132018-01-06T20:56:00.000+00:002018-01-06T20:56:11.080+00:00Philosophy & Magical Thinking<div class="_5pbx userContent _22jv _3576" data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" id="js_8">
The philosopher R. G Collingwood took magic seriously as something that
was inappropriately judged in scientific terms. It was best judged
alongside art as a craft with ends in view that involved the arousing of
emotion. He was deriving his notion of magic from the anthropology of
his day but what he was trying to say in the round was that magical
thinking and practice were not 'primitive'. It was just another way of
seeing the world and engaging with it that was perfectly functional
within its own cultural frame of reference. It is on emotion that he is most interesting: <br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
" ... although magic arouses emotion, it does this in quite another way
than amusement [which Collingwood associates with Art]. Emotions
aroused by magical acts are not discharged by those acts. It is
important for the practical life of the people concerned that this
should not happen; and magical practices are magical precisely because
they have been so designed that it shall not happen. The contrary is
what happens: these emotions are focused and crystallized, consolidated
into effective agents in practical life. The process is the exact
opposite of a catharsis. There the emotion is discharged so that it
shall not interfere with practical life; here it is canalized and
directed upon practical life." [R.G. Collingwood, The Principles of Art, Oxford, 1938, p.67]</blockquote>
This is interesting because we see this contrast all the time in
observing people in their relations with significant others. We also
note what happens when emotion is stunted and people are trapped in
an addiction to emotional states (the weekly marital argument, the
addiction to the state of love, anger at the same thing every time
without moving forward).<br />
<br />
High emotions seem best directed as
either catharsis (an explosion that rewires the brain or moves a person
on from one state to another) or channeled, within a context often
ritualised in all but obvious name, in order to let the emotion change
the world in which the person lives by permitting the conditions for
action or change. <br />
<br />
One model changes the person (or forces
behavioural change on the target of the emotion which may, of course, be
mere bullying) and the other transforms the social and cultural,
possibly material (but the jury is out on that one) world in which the
person has to survive. Both are evolutionarily honed on organism
survival. The explosion of emotion forces change in the world in others
or in oneself while the sublimation or channeling of emotions
manipulates others or one's sub-conscious into desired outcomes.<br />
<br />
From this perspective, magic (the channeling process) is as efficacious
in its way as doing art, experiencing art or undertaking psychotherapy
or religious practice and more effective than science in some contexts
(changing the social and cultural conditions we live in) while less
effective than science in others (changing the material conditions in
which we live).<br />
<br />
Science-based politics always fails because
magic-based politics will always beat it in an open struggle for hearts
and minds as much as magic-based construction will see buildings fall
and planes drop out of the sky. Magic will certainly not allow a
man to fly despite the claims of yogis and certainly not with the
efficiency of modern technologists but it will allow him to cope with,
manage or exploit the social and cultural changes created by a world in
which people can fly by other means.<br />
<br />
Collingwood is not advocating that
magic is real insofar as some claim that it can change material reality -
there is still no evidence for this and unlikely to be any evidence at any time
soon. Magic is only real insofar as it affects psychological reality
which is, in fact, the reality that most accords with the really lived
lives of most people in the world. Most people use technology and take
it for granted but few understand it. It may as well be magical for all
the actual comprehension of the science behind it.<br />
<br />
At the outer
reaches of physics and cosmology, science goes so far beyond perceived
reality that its reality looks a lot more magical (although ultimately based on
logic, mathematics and observational experiments) than magic does to the
mind who has not simply decided to 'believe' in science (a most
reasonable belief but still, for most people, a matter of faith rather
than knowledge).<br />
<br />
Magical thinking is anti-thinking from the
inside outwards, constructing reality from the self, the consciousness
that is embedded in material reality and is capable of flying
shaman-like at any time it wishes. This is opposed to scientific
thinking which is reasoning of the outwards world undertaken inwardly.<br />
<br />
Eventually scientific thinking ends up following its own logic into
mysteries that bend reality and magical thinking ends up following its
own logic into realities that bend if not materiality, then society and
its workings on materiality.<br />
<br />
Science gives us the tools but magic
enables us to use the tools by triggering our emotional commitment to a
purpose for which the tools have a use. The magical process is an
operation on 'morale' - one's own and that of others as manipulation. It
is why propaganda, PR and the totalitarian cultural forms of late
capitalism are 'magical'.<br />
<br />
It is also why magical operations can
construct true selves (despite the post-modern nonsense that there are
no selves because rational thinking says there are no selves) that
flourish regardless of social norms, far more effectively that
psychotherapy's attempt to adapt the individual to society and creating a
working norm that is healthy within that framework.<br />
<br />
The shaman
is often indistinguishable from the modern psychopath but his context
makes him different. Our 'normal' magical rituals often have a social
context that removes their efficacy because the total system disrespects
the mobilising power of emotion except as manipulation from above (which
has incidentally 'conceptualised' and commercialised art, its sibling,
out of existence).<br />
<br />
When the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia can buy
Da Vinci's 'Salvator Mundi' for $450m simply to establish his
modernising credentials and shock his culture into compliance with a new
ideology, then art is effectively dead and magical thinking rules.<br />
<br />
Magical operations are all around us, operating every day in our lives.
The late Marxist attempt to theorise rationally about these operations
in nonsense terms such as 'objectification' and 'commodification'
utterly misses the point that rational, political manipulation of
emotional content must always result in a logical dark magic to maintain
emotional balance. Populism's rise was inherent in the manipulations of
late liberal capitalism and predictable.<br />
<br />
Earlier Marxists would not have
used this language but they would have understood the point better ... the
decadence of Marxism as it got captured by the middle classes is one of
the tragedies of our time. Early Marxists would have seen each magical operation in society as a thesis calling forth by its very nature its own antithesis. Successful magical operations incorporate their own antithesis into their workings to that synthesis is part of what the operation is intended to effect. <br />
<br />
A true magician would have understood
Newton's "For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction" to
be as applicable to his world as that of the physicist - a lesson not understood by
the dark master magician Adolf Hitler and certainly not understood by
contemporary pseudo-scientific materialists who take no account of a
huge swathe of matter that is ignored because it cannot yet be weighed -
the magical minds of men and women.<br />
<br />
The human mind is essentially magical. Rationalist
liberals hate this and want our minds to be scientific but, if they
were, we would not then be human. Just as the fact of a rough 15% of the
population (like me) being completely irreligious does not remove the
fact of the species being, on balance, religious in its spiritual or
communitarian senses (horrified as I am by what this means) so only a
minority of humans are purely rational actors and there is no earthly
reason why they should expect to rule over others who think in different
and equally efficacious ways.<br />
<br />
Indeed, just as the fanatically
religious and the atheist, the asexual and the polyamorous, have more
adjustment problems with social reality than the general majority of
humanity, so the radical rationalism of futurist technologists and the
lifestyle magicians are faced with the same near-outsider status.
Fortunately, most people are sufficiently rational to have faith in
science and sufficiently magical to run their own lives effectively in
the world the scientists have made.<br />
<br />
Anyone who wants to
understand themselves and the world and to know how to manipulate the
reality created by the rationalists has to learn to become a magician.
This does not mean dressing up in a dark cloak and leaping naked on the
Seal of Solomon shouting the names of 10,000 demons. That's just fun but
probably a bit of a waste of time magically speaking.<br />
<br />
It simply
means isolating the will from the world and applying it to what you want
rather than what other people have told you that you must want and then
finding the techniques that tap into the enabling (usually emotional)
sub-conscious, stripping away layers of social patterning in order to
find out what is under there, how it can relate most effectively to
'reality' and then bending self and reality through will to create a new
functional reality within oneself or as a re-patterning one's
relationship with others.<br />
<br />
The supernatural does not need to
exist to make magic work but its pretend existence itself can become a
tool or weapon in the process of self and social construction. But bear
in mind that you are always up against 6 billion or so other natural magicians, all
creating their own reality out of the material to hand. Some of those
will be your enemy (snowflakes, religious fundamentalists and radical
feminists are mine) because their reality must place constraints on
yours.<br />
<br />
In practice, all magical thinking is struggle for social and
personal survival in which the dangers are obvious - you lose or, worse,
you win, and don't stop there but try to go beyond survival to
domination. And that is where every action having its own
reaction comes in. The Wiccans have it right with 'Do What Thou Wilt an
Harm No One' since 'bad magic' (as one A. Hitler found it) will come
back to bite you because of the eventual opposition it creates. To live
long and prosper, there is only ever 'white magic' ...</div>
Tim Pendryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03079486837930544558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-72932514640610937.post-22784223131267208752017-12-24T19:11:00.001+00:002017-12-24T19:11:14.122+00:00On Religion At Yule-Tide <span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span><span> <span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><span><span>Some social scientific estimates suggest that up to 84% of the world’s
population are members of religious groups or claim that religion is
important in their lives (two very different things). We can draw
three general conclusions from this: </span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<ul>
<li><span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span><span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><span><span>A very large n</span></span><span><span><span>umber
of people are 'stuck' in religion because of inherited
religious structures even when religion is not actually important in
their lives. Some might actively do with some support in
becoming liberated from the communitarian power of religion and it is ironic that right-wing Christians often want to 'liberate' Muslims without seeing the mote in their Southern Baptist eye.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span><span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><span><span><span>A very large number of people have unstable 'selves' (we explain this further below)
or are hard wired into a faith-based view of the world: the rest
of us are going to have to contain (preferably) or accommodate such people from a position of relative cultural weakness. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span><span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><span><span><span>Those who are both
free of religion and free from religion are a minority about the size of
(say) other 'historically deviant' minorities such as the gay
community, once violently oppressed (we think of Giordano Bruno), then pushed to the margins and then having to put up with the dead weight of a past dominated by the narratives of their former persecutors. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></li>
</ul>
<br />
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span><span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><span><span><span>The logic of all this is that those who are free in both
senses (free of religion and free from religion) might need not to be so soft in accommodating an unstable, hard-wired bunch of true believers. The latter hold the high ground here, despite over three centuries of steady scientific and political progress, and are quite
capable of misusing their position given half a chance.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span><span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><span><span>Accommodation
really ought to be replaced with containment. Those of our 'brothers and
sisters' who are not hard-wired to faith and don't think religion is important
may need to be actively liberated through propaganda and perhaps political
action given the dominance o</span></span><span><span><span>f the
hard-wired believer and the religious conformist. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span><span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><span><span><span>A tougher stand on accommodation does not mean the counter-oppression of soft or different minds, just a re-balancing of culture so that people can <i>choose</i> what
they need for their own psychic security completely free from enforced and historic social and cultural pressures or the need for order as some theocratic-backed ruling caste defines matters. Another corollary of a tougher stand is support for the idea that education should be about encouraging internally
resourced psychic security and so have this taken out of the hands of
those offering only external psychic security and, so, psychic dependency. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span><span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><span><span><span>And here we have a secularist action
plan of sorts - a dismantling of communitarian religio-cultural structures,
containment of spiritual and ideological types (both those advocating
our beholdness to the external and those advocating the non-existence of
the personality or self) and a shift of education back to the centre ground between faith-based and non-faith-based personalities
... so that young people (as well as those engaged in life-long learning) are enabled to
make private choices about their own best bet psychic survival mechanisms. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span><span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><span><span><span>Such mechanisms may
reasonably include belief (assuming a state of freedom to choose beliefs consciously or sub-consciously) in any sort of
nonsense that serves a personality's purpose. The strong-minded, those grounded in material reality, have perhaps become too soft in their instinctive tolerance.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span><span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><span><span><span><i>Obedience & Marginality </i></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span><span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><span><span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span><span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><span><span>This matters because psychological research shows that if you remind someone (most people)
of 'God' then that person tends to become more socially obedient. It
is pointed out <i>in favour of </i>religion that this orientation towards
obedience is so great that, </span></span><span><span><span>when
religion is disposed of, it is simply replaced by cults of the State and
the Leader (conformitarian constitutionalism as in the US and EU, fascism and Stalinism). </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span><span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><span><span><span>There is some truth in this but
only because religion is removed <u>suddenly</u> without the prior work
required to undermine the culture of obedience through practice,
persuasion, example and education. It is, therefore and against the prevailing narrative of liberal intellectuals, not an argument for religion
but an argument <i>against </i>religion for having permitted the culture of
obedience to embed itself in the social in the first place -
understandable perhaps in managing resource-poor societies but scarcely
justifiable today.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span><span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><span><span><span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span><span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><span><span>The
fact that social and economic instability inclines people much more towards
faith-based analyses tells us that religion is very much associated with social
and economic anxiety. The best way ((in theory) to eliminate faith's hold on
people is not only to educate but t</span></span><span><span><span>o
educate within a context of order and economic prosperity. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span><span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><span><span><span>Secularists'
primary concern should be to resist the religious moral praise for poverty and
community and drive society forwards towards maximum satisfaction of needs and (within reason) wants whether in capitalist or socialist
terms (the method is irrelevant so long as total prosperity is enhanced and order maintained). Low growth 'green' politics is, for
example, a natural vector for the introduction of faith-based solutions
to problems and is deeply conservative.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span><span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><span><span><span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span><span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><span><span>The
same applies to 'marginality'. Religion has always provided security to marginal
communities and it gets reintroduced in more fundamentalist and despairing ways (as in the Ghost Dance phenomenon
amongst the defeated Sioux) under extreme stress. It could be argued that radical Islamism arises out of marginalisation, defeat and relative poverty as much as ideology, an ideology actually not really any more irrational in itself than evangelical Christianity and Eretz Israel. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span><span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><span><span>If we want to weaken
religion's hold on free people, we have to deal with th</span></span><span><span><span>ese
marginal cases which have a dangerous tendency to embed their survival
models in later and more prosperous generations, albeit in an attenuated form. There are people still 'religiously' and without serious internalised faith going to mass on Sundays because Irish famine refugees in their family pasts brought a strengthened peasant Catholicism into host countries that allows even today Cardinals to claim informal powers over education and social mores. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span><span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><span><span><span>Any strategy of reason
is going to have to deal with marginality as soon as it appears -
either by keeping marginality out of the main community in the first
place (so as not to have Islamist and Pentecostalist problems in the
future) or requiring conformity with host values as a condition for inclusion (I can hear the rage of post-modern liberals mounting at that suggestion). We must ensure that such
people (especially the young) do not remain marginal for long and can escape from their communities of that is what they want.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span><span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><span><span><span><i>The Psychology of God-Things & Wobbly Minds</i></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span><span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><span><span><span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span><span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><span><span>But
it is the <u>psychology</u> of the God-thing (and the God-thing is, of course not the only manifestation of religion) that is most interesting because
even if we had absolute prosperity and no marginality, religion would always reappear because of something we can do nothing about -
which is the fragility of some people's</span></span><span><span><span>
relationship to other minds and their wobbly inability to see a clear
distinction between their own subjectivity and that of others and then
that of all others to all other others. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span><span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><span><span><span>This wobbliness results in the
imputation of mind to things (in fact, for all the protestations to the contrary, other humans become just other
things and, if so, so why should not non-human things have minds). This can then proceed to an
unwarranted imputation of mind to all-things taken as a whole (that is, universally). </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span><span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><span><span><span>The religious person is not interested in general in the alternative subjectivity of the other. They ask no questions of the other except within a framework of conformity to pre-set narratives and codes. The other becomes a person only insofar as they are defined as a person (in a way that invents an equality of all non-subjectivities) within a particular pre-set narrative. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span><span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><span><span><span>This mind-set has transferred itself to contemporary non-religious ideology and created revealing paradoxes so that, for example, the feminist who targets fellow human beings as objectified and objectifiers has actually objectified both herself or himself instead of allowing both the dignity of speaking for themselves and being permitted free choices. Religion is derivative of the psychological problem rather than cause of it. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span><span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><span><span><span>There is little
that can be done about this because having wobbly minds is embedded in
all humanity. There are, of course, degrees of wobbliness and none of us is free of it. It was inherent in the evolutionary process
itself. Anyone who would seek to make the human mind universally
un-wobbly is really asking for us to cease to be human which is neither
necessary nor helpful. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span><span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><span><span><span>Indeed, radical negativity towards the wobbliness
of human minds is always a form of radical wobbliness in its own right -
an inability to accept human reality, a drift towards an abstract
universalism as absurd as the God-thing. It is yet another form of
mental instability arising out of personalities disconnected from observable material reality (worse, when, from purely intellectual speculation, such mental instability denies
the very existence of personality).</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span><span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><span><span><span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span><span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><span><span>The
projection of mind onto a social world of resource scarcity
is the source code of religion. Removing resource scarcity and the culture
of obedience that derives from it can only culturally re-balance
humanity towards liberation from the i</span></span><span><span><span>rrational
as part of our social and material condition but the projection of mind onto materiality itself is not a solvable issue. It is not even necessarily desirable (for the bulk of humanity) since t<i>he projection is an intrinsic
part of many people's ability to survive in the world.</i></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span><span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><span><span><span><i>Brain and Religion </i></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span><span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><span><span><span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span><span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><span><span>Increasingly
neuroscientists are accepting that this projection function is
hard-wired into the brain, whether genetically predetermined or emergent
from social interaction with others predisposed to belief. The genetic
component is anecdotally confirm</span></span><span><span><span>ed by
the many testimonies of totally atheist persons whose atheism was
recognised as an absolute personal fact on the ground (a disposition) early in life despite highly religious family environments - the reverse is likely to
be the case with 'spiritual' types emerging regardless of rationalist
and pragmatic parents. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span><span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><span><span><span>It is just as grim for deeply religious parents to have an atheist child as it is for atheists to find that their son or daughter believes in the Second Coming. The trauma can be greater than for parents who find their child is gay or transgender because a sexual disposition is less threatening to their own identity.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span><span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><span><span><span>The genetic component may make
having rational or faith-based children a bit of a lottery with a
consequent tendency to try to force such children into communitarian modes of being
that are grossly unfair and limiting (on both sides). The point here is
not whether there is a God or not but how a belief in God (or not)
represents the true inner nature of a person as a function of their brain
structures. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span><span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><span><span><span>Few modern religious people would make the claim today that they can
prove the existence of God on material evidence. Even reliance on revealed texts is fairly lightly held among the majority. Yet that does not stop belief despite believers often being highly educated, intelligent and functionally effective in every other way ... so long as they are
allowed their belief. People will die for their beliefs because the belief is who they are. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span><span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><span><span><span>The negative detached view of this as a 'mere' psychic survival
mechanism (to the extent that bodily survival may be abandoned if the psyche is threatened) is irrelevant and circular. If believing a non-provable
proposition ensures psychic survival and affirms identity, then it is functionally useful.
End of argument.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span><span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><span><span><span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span><span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody"><span>However,
it is important to understand that there is no actual God-spot in the brain
... this capacity for belief or faith arises out of <i>a general perception of reality</i>,
of the relationship between mind and matter. Let us take brain aspects
of the case ...</span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<ul>
<li><span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span><span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><span><span>The
medial prefrontal cortex-together with the temporopolar region,
temporoparietal junction and precuneus are strongly associated with our
ability and tendency to figure out other people’s thoughts and feelings. These regions of the brain are parti</span></span><span><span><span>cularly
active among religious believers, especially when they are praying. This suggests that religious activities involve processes related to the
'flow' of managing the difficulty of dealing with other minds. It is as
if other minds cannot be seen as separated but must be integrated into
the observing mind in some way. This would accord with the religious
person's tendency to be more communitarian in general. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span><span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><span><span><span>T</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span><span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><span><span>here
seems to be some connection between temporal lobe epilepsy and
religious experiences. A few controversial attempts have been made to
stimulate this part of the brain to generate religious experiences
artificially but they have been inconclusive. </span></span><span><span><span>Ecstatic religious experience (which is different from the
communitarian normality involved in social religion) would seem to have
its origins in the brains of some people. Non-believers in general
find this (unless induced by drugs) either incomprehensible or find it
rationally contained within artistic, creative or emotional experiences
that are not presumed to have a meaning beyond the expression of the
Self in the world.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span><span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"></span></span></span></span><span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span><span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><span><span>And
an odd one - neuro-imaging studies and studies with brain damaged
patients indicate that decreased activation of the parietal cortex –
particularly the right side – may be involved in religious experiences.
These seem to be linked to the dissolutio</span></span><span><span><span>n
of the self which, of course, is also a consequence of some drug experiences
and it may be at the basis of the experienced rather than rational
interest in dissolution of the self in post-Wittgensteinian and
post-modern philosophy. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></li>
</ul>
<br />
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span><span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><span><span><span>This last is of great cultural importance because as
formal religion declines and religious ecstatic experience is marginalised, the
discourse of dissolution of the self has become more salient - to the
point where it is having the precisely opposite social effect to that of
communitarian 'pre-frontal cortex' shared experience. The dissolution
model, rationalised for this type much as Scholastics rationalised the
first type, has fragmented the social and not in ways appreciated by the rational or Enlightenment atheist.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span><span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><span><span><span><i>Ritual and Anxiety</i></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span><span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><span><span><span> </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span><span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><span><span> </span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span><span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><span><span>This
brings us on to ritual where there are highly variable
approaches to its importance and necessity. Some individuals have
private habits (which may have ritualistic aspects, even to the point of
being clinical as in OCD cases) but no int</span></span><span><span><span>erest
in social rituals - they may not even see the point of Christmas or
only see its point in restricted family contexts. Others crave mass
social rituals, ranging from the comfort of Mass on Sundays to
engagement with national funerals and royal weddings. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span><span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><span><span><span>This is just how
it is but the need for private and social rituals has become embedded,
perhaps appropriated by religious structures. It is these rituals
that ensure that religion remains extremely 'sticky' in terms of its
social survival. Ritual, also often embedded in brain structures,
whether a genetic propensity or environmentally determined, also arises
from deep within our evolutionary heritage. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span><span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><span><span><span>Ritual ensures that religion can
never die but can only be contained. Once the Mexican revolutionaries and Soviets departed, the rituals, far from forgotten, returned. Any aspiration to do otherwise than contain religion is
doomed to failure. Ritual is the primary mechanism for many human beings
(possibly, if we include private ritual, all human beings) in dealing with a
fundamental human issue - anxiety.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span><span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><span><span><span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span><span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><span><span>Anxiety
is central to being human for evolutionary reasons. Again, this is
totally regardless of truth propositions about religion. Psychologically, religion deals
primarily with anxiety (rather than, say, depression). This deals with the 'straw god' point</span></span><span><span><span> (that many religions have no God-thing) because
this anxiety-relieving function has no requirement for the God-thing in
itself. The ideology and ritual are sufficient. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span><span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><span><span><span>We can simply replace the God-Thing with a
Universal whether Tao or Buddha-hood, and the same mechanism starts to emerge. It would emerge with a
theoretical form of organised Atheism or Existentialism. The Satanists
consciously invented a Satan in order to have ritual although this is
probably more for fun and self-expression than in order to relieve any direct anxiety. If anything the Satanists are 'detourning' religion by denying completely the motivational force for anxiety.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span><span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><span><span><span>Since human
anxiety cannot ever be truly extirpated by even the most enlightened
form of social action and only with great difficulty by individual
action (since not everyone has a desire to buy tranquillity at the cost of serving an imagined Satan), religion provides a relatively cheap and effective form of
mass psychotherapy for minds otherwise unable to cope with circumstances or even
reality itself, even if it exacts its high price in conformity and even oppression in other areas such as sexuality. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span><span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><span><span><span>It is all a
trade-off but the restrictions placed on an anxious person by religion
sometimes ensures that the anxiety can only be contained by containing the
person. From this perspective, extirpating religion could represent a
profound social bad. Religion may need to be contained but its
psychotherapeutic function, for lack of anything better for a large portion of a distressed humanity is
beneficial and vastly more cost-effective than trying to divert limited
resources to some sort of state mental health operation. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span><span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><span><span><span>Indeed, it might be regarded as a cruelty if atheists with access to sufficient power removed this salve from such people. One thing we should not abide is ignorant cruelty to other human beings by fanatics of any type. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span><span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><span><span><span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span><span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><span><span>In
addition to its anxiety-relieving function (which is simply a matter of
ensuring that the world has sufficient meaning to give an individual sufficient security for the future aka 'hope'), the wider 'meaning function' of religion
is what gives it its cultural power and strength. Again, the
non-religious are going to find it thoroug</span></span><span><span><span>hly
futile exercise (as the Soviet experiment demonstrated) to invest vast
resources in providing a structure of alternative total meaning. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span><span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><span><span><span>This merely becomes, to all intents and purposes, a religion in all but the
supernatural aspects. It requires brutal means to effect the transition and nothing is gained for anyone, especially as core surviving believers tend to have their beliefs strengthened rather weakened in the long run by outright repression. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span><span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><span><span><span><i>Strategies of Tolerant Containment </i></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span><span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><span><span><span>We are back to a strategy of containment and
(qualified) respect, appropriating religious items (such as a baroque
painting, Mozart mass or derelict monastery) as non-religious heritage
items, in effect as part of a meaning structure that is cultural rather than religious. Of course, this
could get us into a political discussion about who dictates cultural
meaning and about multiculturalism and the collapse and fragmentation of
national cultures under the combined effects of neo-liberalism,
post-modern philosophy and so forth - but that is for another time.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span><span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><span><span><span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span><span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><span><span>Religion
has thus emerged not only because of the manipulative operations of
specialised classes or the needs of Power (though there is this element
to the story that needs its own analysis) but because it has provided quite simple totalitarian means of
dealing with psycho-biological realit</span></span><span><span><span>ies
for many people (albeit at the expense of a lot of other people). In
short, religion is a manifestation of inter-personal and social power
relations iltimately derived from biology, being useful and insidious at the same time. It can be false and
yet still expressive of real human needs (though only of the needs of the weaker
in terms of mental state). </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span><span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><span><span><span>The problem of religion is, in effect, the
problem of human weakness as vulnerable creatures surrounded by
material uncertainty in permanent potential conflict with other persons (anxiety) and
seeking to give order its world ('give it meaning') in order to limit personal vulnerability through the compromises of social cohesion and through shared ritual. Religion has its passive
total withdrawal aspects or those associated with aggressive and violent proselytising but the core of religion is that it is a tool in the hands of a tool-using animal and a tool where those using it have been incorporated
into the tool like the Borg.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span><span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><span><span><span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span><span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><span><span>Because the
nature of such a tool is that it cannot be used except cynically
(psychopathically) or by incorporation of the Self into it, then, as it
develops, religion becomes a lived totality if not in terms always of
actual belief, at least in terms of communitar</span></span><span><span><span>ian
power relations. For the non-religious position, this is what makes it
insidious because these communitarian power relations extend themselves
beyond actual believers to demand conformity from non-believers. The
attempted Borg-like incorporation of non-believers is either a matter of
Power exercised in a struggle for control and resources (as in the Constantinian Settlement) or it is a case of believers actually
being blind to the equal status and reality of non-belief. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span><span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><span><span><span>Non-belief
represents a serious challenge to the anxiety-reducing belief system of the
believer to the degree to which religion buttresses identity and community. Non-belief creates anxiety <i>simply by existing.</i> The non-believer is
not, on the other hand, made at all anxious by belief. Unaware that his
indifference creates such anxiety in the believer, his own lack of anxiety makes
him complacent about the threat to his own integrity from what amounts
to an 'enemy' (at the level of the fundamentalist or politically active religious interest). </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span><span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><span><span><span>This is the central nature of our problem as people who have a balanced view of the separation of our own minds from other minds, of the equality of value of other minds (except when our own survival is at stake) and who cannot impute minds like ours to animals or any minds at all to vegetables and minerals. We are dealing, on the other side, with wobbly minds unable to understand the actual relationship of
our minds to other minds and non-minds and there is no educational way of changing that perception in those hard-wired to believe. In the end, containment becomes the only option if the wholly rational person is himself or herself to be wholly secure.. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span><span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><span><span><span><br /></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span>
<br />
<span class="_36rj"></span>Tim Pendryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03079486837930544558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-72932514640610937.post-55456806216862648642017-12-08T23:53:00.000+00:002017-12-08T23:53:01.485+00:00The Polyamorous State - A Final Analysis <i>This is almost certainly the last time that I will write on monogamy and polyamory and associated sexual matters. The subject has fascinated partly for personal reasons but equally because it is central to how we view future social development in the liberal West as it comes under pressure from external communitarian pressures such as the emergence of Islam and a growing internal authoritarianism.</i><br />
<br />
<i>This internalised authoritarianism is chipping away at the margins of difference and freedom in order to create a new 'normality' that its proponents think might restore the order on which States and institutions thrive. But this is not a political paper. I am not interested here in that chipping away of freedom by a weakened authority or the challenge of organised political communitarianism. </i><br />
<br />
<i>I am interested here in the liberation of that limited proportion of humanity capable of the emotional intelligence required to live beyond restrictive historical community constraints on sexual and emotional expression and how they can be protected from both the community-State and from a culture of anxiety where freedom's greatest enemy comes not from the Right but from the enemy within - the frightened neo-authoritarianism of the liberal left, the snowflakes intent on turning us into ice. </i><br />
<br />
<i>Basically, how can these people be protected from the majority. There is no answer to that here, just a statement of that which must be protected. Having resolved and understood one aspect of freedom, I propose to move on over time to explore the broader framework necessary to preserve liberty.</i><br />
<br />
A polyamorous orientation is just a state of being for an individual. Polyamory is the living out of that state of being in society. Contemporary Western society is definitely not accepting of polyamory. The polyamorous individual is forced into secrecy and stigma with his or her opportunities for self expression severely limited by the refusal of others to recognise that polyamory is a free and non-harmful individual choice which they have no right to condemn if it is between consenting adults (though they also certainly have the right not to accommodate automatically the polyamorous person within their own relationship situation). <br />
<br />
The internet has had the dramatic effect of 'sub-normalising' (that is, creating a different normality that works for a sub-set of those otherwise regarded as normal) minority sexualities of all types, bringing people with those orientations together and enabling discussion that reassures and encourages people who are questioning their own 'normality'. It is one of the reasons why the internet is so loathed by authoritarian personality types of both Left and Right. The new media landscape has enabled people starting out on their own journeys of self development to consider forms of behaviour and organisation that suit their true natures rather than simply accept pre-packaged models delivered by the past and by the community.<br />
<br />
The current state of polyamory is defined by the social assumption that just one partner be recognised in law and social situations. This inhibits a secondary (or tertiary) partner so this has to change at some stage. Similarly, variation in polyamory needs to be more widely recognised - it is not a case of simple replacing a couple with a 'thruple', thereby merely expanding conventional forms. It is really about finding consensual arrangements that suit individuals, with very different psychologies, in their dealings with emotional need, sexual desire, economic relations and property holding and responsibility for child rearing and other dependents.<br />
<br />
Far more common than the thruple is the 'vee', one person with a relationship to two people who are not involved with each other. And the 'vee' may have the two others become or be sustainable friends without any emotional or sexual content. Economic and social realities will tend to make one partner 'primary' in terms of household and property but this does not mean an incompatibility with equality in sexual or emotional terms or with equality in terms of intent to equality all things being equal, especially if the alleged 'secondary' actually has their own effective household or property arrangements with their 'primary' who may have nothing to do with anyone in the first 'vee' ... or may have everything to do with them - in theory, a chain of 'vees' could theoretically extend forever. Yes, it can be complicated.<br />
<br />
The polyamorous personality may be fully (say) heterosexual but they strongly tend to tolerance of queerness and fluidity. They may participate in alternative sexualities at different times of their lives. The central aspect of polyamory here is its resistance to definition and to fixed identity, working against the prevailing identity politics of our time, a reason why it is clearly resented by the authoritarian Left. One reason that there is only a minimal polyamorous identity group presence is because polyamorists generally (except as psychological support) see little point in defining themselves as other sexual identity groups have done, precisely because it works against the instinct for fluidity and adaptability.<br />
<br />
Polyamorous people tend to adopt the same fluidity towards friendship (avoiding closed groups and cults), business (avoiding corporate restrictions), politics (being wary of authoritarianism of both the Left and the Right and tending to left and right-libertarianism), culture (being open-minded, following a more tolerant, appropriative, hybridising and hedonist approach to art and popular culture) and religion (being either more atheist than average or, at least, more vaguely 'spiritual' without seeking fixed <i>external </i>moral frameworks). There will, of course, be exceptions to all these claims because difference and fluidity means being different from even the norm of the non-normal.<br />
<br />
It is certainly no accident that the leading edges of polyamory were non-heterosexual and often pagan in orientation because 'normality' binds the heterosexual and the communitarian first before it binds anyone else. We are in a free society nominally and, in a free society, regulation does not bind our emotions and the vast majority of our sexual desires. What binds us are our own fears and circumstances. Our society is expressly designed to be constructed around a core of monogamy between heterosexuals sanctified if not always in a religious ceremony then by the State. The polyamorist is rarely a revolutionary as such but Church and State are not generally his friends. <br />
<br />
Once the barrier to personal acceptance of polyamory is broken down, the tendency within the polyamorous personality is to see a breaking down of many other barriers and the creation of new boundaries that are personally-directed and not socially-directed. People are seen as relating to each other as complex and different so that it is recognised that it is rare and probably undesirable that one person should aim to meet all the needs of another person or that exclusivity necessarily be reciprocated.<br />
<br />
Instead, the polyamorous personality sees the central aspects of his or her life as all potentially separate but equal, interdependent but each unique to its own needs. Economic security, cultural or sporting interests, intimacy, sexual expression and so forth are all separable and potentially identifiable with different people. 'Normality' recognises this to some degree with the bifurcation into life partners and friends but then limits friends considerably to friends of the same gender (for example) or limits the nature of the friendship if members of the opposite gender (in heterosexual relationships) enter into the 'household' or community circle.<br />
<br />
'Polyamory' changes these boundaries so that perhaps fewer but deeper relationships are designated by the needs of the polyamorous person, under conditions where more than one person might even serve the same need - so one might see shared households (economic), group engagement in culture or interests (friendships), shared child-rearing or shared intimate and sexual bonding with more than one person consensually and transparently.<br />
<br />
It is central at all times to polyamory that the participants who actually participate are aware of the relationships that exist even if (perhaps) one participant might have a partner in turn 'who does not want to know' but has released the person to be free to do what they want or need or the participant has claimed that right in general regardless of their own #primary' and stated their nature yet the partner on that side does not want to participate or engage. The model presupposes the freedom of the individual so long as they are prepared to be honest about their true nature.<br />
<br />
Polyamorous people tend to have quite strong moral codes about transparency but also to vest the 'right of resistance' in the individual not to be bound by the codes of 'normals'. This can require immense courage on the part of the polyamorous person as well as some potential for misery. One partner may, for example, insist that they themselves cannot lie and that their partner cannot lie to others although, once the right to polyamory is asserted, there is no obligation to 'tell'. Truth-telling becomes bound into the group of those who tell the truth to each other and who tell no lies to others (but need not go around telling the truth to others outside their circle).<br />
<br />
Above all, polyamorous relationships are coded to be unique. There is no standard format. 'Normality' can often result in compromises that mean the standardisation of social relationships into the necessary 'norms'. Some monogamies can be indistinguishable from other monogamies as all aspects of the individual's personality are shoe-horned into a pre-existing framework in order to meet essentially communitarian ends dictated by history, family and social convention. The polyamorist can have relations that are primarily directed at one aspect of themselves with one person and another aspect with another. Part of the early stress and pleasure of a polyamorous relationship is creating these private boundaries - emotional, sexual and practical.<br />
<br />
One of the counter-intuitive (to 'normals') results of all this (as far as mature and experienced polyamorous set-ups are concerned) is that the addition of persons actually tends to relieve psychological pressure on the primaries (and there is generally a starting primary) because they are also no longer trapped in the need to be all things to one person and see their own personality limited and distorted.<br />
<br />
Many polyamorous people coming to this late in life are faced with the potential for massive disruption if their primary has no understanding or liking for the change. This deters some who live, in effect, in private misery, unable to move forward, not only because they cannot afford at many levels to alienate a primary who 'holds all the cards' but also because a sexual and emotional life outside monogamy under conditions of secrecy is not tolerable to such people. They are not swingers and do not seek the frisson of illicit affairs. Indeed, the stress of illicit affairs is so great and sex without emotional commitment so miserable that polyamorists tend to prefer the private misery of the closed relationship. But eventually such people either snap and divorce at great cost or simply decline into a deathly acceptance of their fate.<br />
<br />
However, for those primaries who are not themselves polyamorous but are open-minded and comprehend the truth-telling and trust aspects of the case - and make the effort to understand the situation - then the evidence indicates significant benefits after a period of adjustment and disruption. Certainly, the polyamorous person's commitment to a primary is usually strengthened and not weakened by the emergence of a secondary, possibly because he or she can concentrate on those aspects of the relationship that work instead of trying to make the aspects that do not work fit into some socially pre-set model.<br />
<br />
It turns out that the pre-set model can often not work in terms of exclusivity because of circumstances or personality differences. Secondary relationships can strengthen 'marriages' or at least whatever primary structure existed at the beginning of the process of creating a polyamorous situation or even household. Polyamorists, if they have a fault, tend to a certain neediness that places pressure on single partners so that relieving that pressure by 'spreading the love' enables a more direct dialogue on what really matters between the two primaries.<br />
<br />
Under 5% of Americans are consciously polyamorous and seeking that lifestyle. The numbers are likely to be less, for cultural reasons, across the rest of the West. This far-flung community is not likely ever to overwhelm the wider instinct and cultural prejudice for monogamy if only because polyamory is stressful even if that stress might be regarded as 'good stress', creative and life-affirming. It is open-ended and fluid with no sense of absolute certainty for the future and so it appeals only to a certain personality type and this type is not going to be a majority in any society. Apart from anything else, most polyamorists are inveterate communicators and many people prefer silence in relationships. <br />
<br />
What polyamorists want is just 'permission' from society to develop alternative lifestyles that offer no threat to 'normality'. Above all, the polyamorous person probably needs not to be locked in too early in life to a socially determined structure that will be next to impossible to climb out of without massive pain and disruption not only to himself or herself but others.<br />
<br />
He or she just wants to associate with others like himself or herself and go with the flow of being as it changes with the coming and going of children, the acquisition and loss of property and the different needs of a personality at different life stages. At its best, it is a programme of self development and life management where command and control is in the hands of an individual negotiating directly with other individuals. It is fundamentally libertarian, unsuited to the authoritarian personality and probably with identity politics.<br />
<br />
Research also shows that polyamorists tend to be far better educated than the general population. This may simply mean that education enables a person to engage in critical thinking about normality and abstracts them from communitarian contexts. Education may also be correlated with emotional intelligence which is definitely required to maintain a successful polyamorous relationship - without EQ things generally fall apart. Communitarian models are probably better for many people simply because people without adequate EQ may need external frameworks to ensure some degree of stability and decency in their lives. This need for adequate EQ alone probably dictates that, given the nature of our species, fully-functioning polyamory will never be the norm for more than 15% of the population at any given time.<br />
<br />
This EQ aspect can be tiresome - polyamorists have a tendency to over-communicate and some even to over-think and privilege every passing feeling and anxiety although things eventually settle down. Psychologists who have studied polyamorous behaviour have, however, suggested that normally monogamous people might learn a great deal from this capacity to communicate and question given boundaries. The instinct of the polyamorous person, when faced by a troublesome emotion like jealousy or anger, is to go inward and question why they may be feeling that emotion before discussing it with a partner. Once having carefully considered the roots of the emotion, they then feel free to explore what was going on and come to a resolution through dialogue. <br />
<br />
As for jealousy, it might not be the love or sex act that causes jealousy but something deeper, like a perceived 'being taken for granted' or failure to respect the aggrieved person. A few easy to manage and sensitive behavioural changes, usually with some sincere reassurance, can resolve the issue and adjust boundaries.<br />
<br />
Commonly, many marriages that are monogamous are enhanced if one partner
takes risks and expresses frustrations and feelings for resolution.
Some marriages of course cannot be resolved and decline into negativity. A monogamous relationship often bottles up feeling in a model of mutual possession that ends up exploding in anger and recrimination, quarrels and eventually, after much misery, divorce.<br />
<br />
The entire framework of honesty, transparency and respect is also more likely to encourage safe sex, according to University of Michigan research (2012). This is possibly because sexual activity is less likely to involve spur of the moment drink or drug-fuelled activity. It is 'timed' according to 'rules' which may be a bit of a passion killer for the impulsive but can work well for people who are not.<br />
<br />
Polyamorists are not generally wealthier than average which is equally interesting because polyamory does incur expense in time as well as funds. Time is often essential to 'wealth creation'. Polyamorists tend to have priorities other than financial ones, yet need sufficient resources to be able to maintain their lifestyle. It could be argued that some of the time and financial costs arise out of the secrecy required by the dominant communitarian culture.<br />
<br />
If there was sufficient cultural change to make polyamory more acceptable this problem might disappear as it has disappeared for the gay community. Polyamorists tend, however, to have an experiential rather than an acquisitive or materialist orientation - they may not necessarily be 'spiritual' but they do have a greater orientation towards the mind than the body in general or at least towards a balancing of emotion with reason. <br />
<br />
There is also a misunderstanding about 'permission' because permission is not a matter of asking Mummy or Daddy if the polyamorist can go out to play but a more generalised 'permission' that really means just acceptance of the working out of difference within a framework of rules. Again, there is the potential for misunderstanding about rules - some relationships seem to require detailed rules because that is who the personalities are but others simply require an understanding of what could 'hurt' one of the parties through another being crass or negligent or lacking in basic respect for the individuality of another.<br />
<br />
This latter form of rule-making is the more intelligent version (we can liken it to the preference for principles-based regulation in British culture over rules-based regulation in other cultures) because it abandons any attempt to command and control someone else instead of oneself. Self control is central to responsible polyamory as is adjustment to changed conditions and knowing precisely when someone is 'taking the mickey' or pushing a boundary too far. Such informal framework acceptance also permits improved communication, including communication about jealousy which may not at all be sexual or even emotional but simply of too much time spent in one place rather than another.<br />
<br />
In other words, polyamory is the art of calibrating the needs, desires and circumstances of three or more individuals and their dependents so that all achieve the maximum reasonable state of happiness and self development that is possible under the available material conditions. In this form, polyamory is here to stay for a significant minority of the population alongside standard monogamous options with people phasing in and out of each as circumstances change. This fluidity, if well handled by mature people in consensual contexts, can only be beneficial to those people capable of dealing with its inherent stresses and negotiations and so to society. <br />
<br />Tim Pendryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03079486837930544558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-72932514640610937.post-44113653261046302892017-12-03T13:35:00.002+00:002017-12-03T13:52:12.864+00:00Analysis - What Is Wrong with Prime Minister May?<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"> <span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g">I
suspect we all now understand that May is neither particularly a Remainer or a Brexiter. She is an administrator, one whose allegiance is to the State
machine and whose recent political training has entirely been within the formal
structures of the security apparat as Home Secretary. I write 'within' because it is an eternal truth of British politics that elected representatives are almost invariably captured by the State they are elected to oversee. Sometimes a politician can rise above the machinations of Sir Humphrey. Theresa May is not one of those politicians. </span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g">As a former Home Secretary and now Prime Minister, being 'captured by the security state' is where
she is most comfortable. This limited horizon is why she has handed over the economy to
a weak Chancellor who is beholden to the City. She cowers whenever Gove,
Davis and Johnson show some serious political spine (quite
rare but perhaps effective, at the least, in keeping the Brexit show on the road). Even as Tory Party Chair, her instinct was to centralise at the expense of constituencies. Centralising power in a command-and-control system is where her instinct lies and yet this is precisely the approach, suitable for the twentieth century militarised welfare-warfare state, that is no longer possible in the age of the internet. </span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g">She certainly lacks the common touch, presents herself as a decent and well-meaning school mistress (that is, indeed, an administrator) and now presides over a situation where an Opposition Party that clearly opposes the will of the majority of the English on Brexit and is led by a man who was a political pariah within the PLP until only a few years ago is riding high on 45% of the national vote while her Party languishes, seen as incompetent and confused.</span></span></span><br />
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><br /></span></span></span>
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g">The problem with administrators is that they lack imagination. It is good that administrators lack imagination. They are there to execute the orders of those who have an imagination. But politicians are generally not good at solving national crises without an imagination. An excess of imagination, of course, gives us loons and tyrants but a complete absence of imagination gives us ... our current Prime Minister. </span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g">And why is imagination so vital at this time in our history? Because the tectonic plates of international economic and political relations are shifting. She now represents an administrative class that has one of its feet so firmly stuck in the deep mud of the past that it cannot get close to planting the other on the dry land of the future. The problem arises because our security apparat, our state machine, is driven by four perceptual models that no longer entirely hold water: </span></span></span><br />
<br />
<ul>
<li><span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g">a primitive
geopolitical fear of Russia and a desire to contain Germany which has been
institutionalised from the Imperial era and the last century
respectively (the first is paranoid although the second
still relevant)</span></span></span></li>
<li><span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g">the realisation that it does not have the tools and
can never have the tools to do more than contain violent political
fanaticism yet must never admit this to the general public - basically, it is bluffing its way to offering us security as citizens; </span></span></span></li>
<li><span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g">the fear of
the crumbling of the Union, either by Celts pushing their luck
(as we see in the nonsense of a nation of just over 4m people trying to dictate terms to one fifteen times its size)) or the English wondering why they are spending so much of their hard-earned cash on
stopping the Celts pushing their luck (the English being, here, like sheep led to the budgetary slaughter); and </span></span></span></li>
<li><span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g">a cynical, manipulative view of
Washington where a lumbering giant is supposed to be lead by the nose into serving
British interests through a combination of charm and prostitution (i.e. the gleanings of our expensive and barely controllable intelligence apparat).</span></span></span><span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"> </span></span></span><span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"> </span></span></span></li>
</ul>
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g">These
perceptual models, embedded in the group think of our ruling caste, were neatly resolved by the European tyranny since that caste has never really cared about democracy at core (its rhetorical allegiance to the idea hides a deep fear of its reality). They care only about the Crown and preferment. The Crown is a
weird ideological concept that means not our Dynasty or Harry and Meghan but
the precise functioning of the State: the Crown is the fig-leaf that hides the workings of an unaccountable machine that purports to know what it is doing but clearly does not. The strategy of the Crown towards the European Project has seemed simple enough: </span></span></span><br />
<br />
<ul>
<li><span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g">the EU
was to be manipulated to contain Germany (yeah, right!) and to underpin the push-back of Russia;</span></span></span></li>
<li><span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g">intelligence co-operation and Euro-ideology were supposed to help
contain fanaticism even if Islamism
was not understood to be truly different from the native subversive threats of communism and fascism; </span></span></span></li>
<li><span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g">the
Celts were to be neatly contained within a Crown sphere of influence within
the EU (violence in Northern Ireland wags the tail of the British dog no less than memories of Vietnam wag the American foreign policy tail); </span></span></span></li>
<li><span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g">access to Europe would increase the Crown's muscle power in
Washington. </span></span></span></li>
</ul>
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g">Unfortunately, the viability of this total perceptual model has crumbled since the crash of 2008 with which our administrative State has still not come to terms. Its economic 'perceptual models' have also failed consistently to provide either recovery or fairness. This has
nothing to do with Brexit - indeed, Brexit is just a reflection of this
crumbling, a process that most
of the political and media class has still not understood. Most of us may now agree that the analysis provided daily by the second rate minds haunting the corridors of the BBC is laughable. Many of our most prominent commentators provide little more than prejudiced rants with no serious understanding of the political vulcanism of our times. Now, I listen to Spotify in preference to BBC News. </span></span></span><br />
<br />
Let us take the first issue - the geo-strategic politics of Europe. <span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g">Germany has been far from contained by the European Union as we saw in its treatment of Greece. British geld has simply strengthened an institution that is the tool of Berlin, backed by a France that has never ceased to loathe us, certainly since we sank its fleet and chased it out of Syria in the last major war. As for Russia, despite the sustained hysteria of the last Tory country gentlemen left in the FCO and the 'Service', it is not realistically a threat any more to anything West of the Pripyat Marshes. It is simply and defensively struggling to maintain its own ramshackle underpopulated empire, turning back a Western neo-Cold War operation that does not hide its ambition to get ultimately to the very gates of Moscow itself through subversion. </span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g">Someone needs to tell the Cold Warriors that India can now defend itself and British interests do not extend to being dragged into a global conflagration to defend countries on the other side of the Continent. If anything, Russia might now be seen as a point of containment
of a rising Franco-German European
Union, preferably in association with Washington. NATO (a genuinely defensive operation in its original intention but now the militarised wing of global liberalism) is now
threatened by the creation of a European Army in a culture that is not really very afraid of the tyranny of peacetime conscription. We, the people, are constantly being drawn into confrontation
with Russia by neo-Cold War 'hawks' at a time when the public wants Islamism, not
neo-nationalist post-communism, dealt with as the primary threat. </span></span></span><span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"> <span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"> </span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g">As to the second issue (violent extremism),
we do not have to belabour the point that its emergence derives from the sustained blundering of our political class over a century or so. We know that much just as we know that the 2008 Crash was the creation of economic blundering over a much shorter period. But that was then and this is now. The question is what to do about it? Is there the imagination to understand causes, remedies and consequences? </span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g">Open borders were at the very centre of the terror problem as far as
the public were concerned and there is a wisdom of crowds in this. Germany accentuated the
difficulties with a primitive liberal ideological response to what
was, in fact, always going to end up an exploitation of weakness
by organised crime. It is organised crime that has created the gaps in the system which allow the violent extremist a sea in which to swim. The British State, always under pressure from
unhelpful French models of preferring brutality towards dissent over engagement with dissenters, was split between those
who saw that borders were part of the process of dealing with the security problem (even if the borders had to be Libya and Turkey) and
those who thought security co-operation was more important than borders. </span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g">Perhaps our Prime Minister is instinctively in the latter camp. The balance certainly tipped towards security co-operation when Merkel sold the pass in an excess of ideological insanity to deal with a humanitarian crisis in precisely the wrong way. It would have been much better to have invested in working with Assad to bring a fair peace and in the camps themselves. Migrant pressure, helped by trafficking operations, spread outwards,
accentuating an already problematic 'schwerpunkt' in Calais. The
truth is illegals with cash have always found a way in, straining our urban infrastructures but knowing that eventually they would be in a state of de facto amnesty, creating a constituency for political opportunists in the urban centres. </span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g">The security apparat pretty well knows where the centres of potential
terrorism are in our cities as far as they come from our old imperial
connections - what they do not know necessarily is who these new people are. The problem may not be terrorism at all. Most of them
contain the seeds of criminal gangs of far more psychopathic brutality
than any we have seen to date, perhaps quite capable of undertaking 'terrorist acts'
to force a weak state on the defensive and cut a deal. The French terror cases and the history of Al-Qaeda have shown the overlap already between petty criminality and terror acts. </span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g">Ask any native of South East London about the war between the Albanian and Turkish gangs and how they 'came to a deal' and you get a picture of something going on that is clearly being defensively covered up by a mainstream media whose investigative skills now operate at the level of Mickey Mouse. Hours of coverage with the weaselly phrase 'despite Brexit' and virtually none about what is going on in the inner cities - Rotherham and Grenfell Tower are mere tips of icebergs of social dissolution. </span></span></span><br />
<br />
And, t<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g">hird,
we have the bubble of Celtic posturing. This has been burst (though you would not know it from the flaccidity and weakness of the Government towards the Celts) by a) the Scottish
Referendum, b) the rise of a new conservatism in Wales and c) the
evident hysteria coming out of an Ireland that has no serious leverage
on the UK other than vague threats of a revival
of terror when the conditions for terrorism no longer actually exist
(except as tactics by criminal gangs). </span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g">On the other hand (though its impetus is studiously held in contempt by our urban liberal administrators and the Opposition who depend on their votes) Brexit has shown the
reality of a simmering English country resentment about enforced cultural change and
the emergence of a growing new and allegedly 'fascist' threat from the indigenes
outside London. In fact, there are fascist elements but the 'threat' is populist and only to the dominant failed ideology. The EU has now become part of a more general cultural problem in which a
minority of Celts act with multicultural London, the public sector middle classes and the universities as
a standing insult to the aspirations of 'sheep' (classed as 'deplorables' to use the term of Hillary Clinton about the American working class) that are growing the
first signs of fangs.</span></span></span><br />
<br />
F<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g">ourth, there is our American ally which has been turned over (possibly temporarily) by a form
of maniacal populism that reflects the revolts amongst the English and many
regionalised (Catalonia/Lombardy) and post-communist European middling
States (Hungary/Poland/now Austria)
where the cultural threat from Islam and the failures of elite liberalism's cultural hegemony are seen as far more important than any
putative threat from the old dark native ideologies. Even in major states, populist
movements are only manouevred out of formal power by the liberal
establishment's control of the commanding heights of narrative and by political sleight of hand, placing a radical centrist cypher in charge of France while still trying to create a coalition of the Centre in Germany. </span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g">Populism may be denied the oxygen of publicity within the elite but it has not been defeated. Populists are, in fact, proving surprisingly resilient against huge cultural onslaughts
that seem to do no more than define camps rather than actually push back
the tide. Only in the UK has a conservative establishment partially absorbed
populism or at least appeared to do so until this week as the potential for a betrayal of Brexit begins to hit home amongst the English. It has only accommodated populism a) because it has had to absorb the
vote of 17.4m people, again mostly English, who decided they wanted Brexit and b) it faces a populist
socialist threat which does not exist anywhere else. So, Washington is
no longer bulwark of a shared liberal internationalist order but is a
tiger to be ridden alongside the domestic wolf of an increasingly bitter
and angry native populism. </span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g">May's Government is now sailing very close
to the wind in acceding to the rhetoric of its opposition while its
deeper substance remains committed to the new order. I am not a Tory but Tory activists are telling me that they are enraged by the way their Leader is conceding ground to the past and not taking the lead in developing a national strategy for the future. </span></span></span><br />
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"> </span></span></span><span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"> </span></span></span><br />
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g">The national problem is that we have a weak Government still over-influenced by a security
apparat with one foot in the past. This Government is trying to represent new forces but within a national narrative structure that is also embedded in the past
and where its defenders (the 'conservatives of the centre') are now getting vicious in defence of a
collapsing order. We have a Prime Minister who is part of that failed state apparat and is increasingly at sea and unpopular. The Opposition now scents blood in the water but it can't find a way to oust her under current
political conditions ... and so it is becoming increasingly shrill, threatening to
alienate the very new forces it needs to ride to power itself. </span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g">The best
solution would be a stronger 'new forces' Prime Minister from the Right to see us through the Brexit negotiations and a transformative and intellectually coherent Left to exploit the opportunities yet the dead weight of the old guard in both parties forestalls such outcomes. The country certainly can't cope
with much more instability and viciousness. </span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><b>So there we are - a second rate
Prime Minister trying to cope with new social forces, an opportunistic
and hysterical Opposition that does not know what it wants other than
power and a changed global condition in which the entity with which we
are contesting, the European Union, is beginning to fall apart at the seams for reasons that
actually have little to do with Brexit but which Brexit is hastening. She really has to go ... but only if the Tory Right can deliver someone with imagination to deliver national sovereignty, some serious economic growth and greater fairness. </b></span></span></span>Tim Pendryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03079486837930544558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-72932514640610937.post-73046528171286485112017-12-02T17:22:00.000+00:002017-12-02T18:01:55.487+00:00On Monogamy - Part 2<i>This is the second of two ruminations derived from a reading of a 2008
academic paper by Walter Scheidel of Stanford University, 'Monogamy and
Polygyny in Greece, Rome and World History' [Princeton Stanford Working
Papers in Classics, <a href="https://www.princeton.edu/~pswpc/pdfs/scheidel/060807.pdf" target="_blank">available online</a>]. The views and conclusions are mine and not his.</i><br />
<br />
In the first of this two-parter we questioned what was 'normal' about monogamy and drew what might be a political conclusion that its global dominance is associated with the cultural dominance of the West as a hybridisation of Roman property relations and Christian morality. This hybrid ideology gained its strength not from patriarchy but from a similar hybridisation of patriarchal and matriarchal value systems. The protection of women and slaves, otherwise unprotected within Roman social structures, resulted in a generalised model for sexual social organisation that owed something to biological pair-bonding (i.e. it was not wholly to be considered 'unnatural') but was originally and primarily a means of organising particular property relations and a particular social order under conditions of resource scarcity and so competition.<br />
<br />
The price for this 'normality' was three-fold: it repressed 'alpha' sexuality in general (both male and female); it has progressively stopped humans from negotiating alternative strategies as it extended its reach across Western society and then across the world; and it increasingly destabilised the socio-sexual structures of other cultures offering alternative models as Western technology brought with it Western ideology. Zones that have resisted the Western model - the radical Islamic model of polygamy or the Chinese model of consensual concubinage - are under pressure from the presumption that a rigid monogamy is the only form by which humans can be sexually organised, to the extent that serial sexual monogamy and hidden polygyny and polyandry ('cheating') are regarded as preferable to the institutionalisation of any possible consensual non-monogamy fitted to our times.<br />
<br />
A case study for this process lies in the early British conquest and control of India where the early (male) traders adapted readily to local sexual customs, sometimes operating a dual sexual system in two geographically distant locations. The discovery of a different sexual culture resulted in the transfer of 'tantric' ideas in a fairly impure form to the West where they were to play a slow-burning role in the eventual sexual liberation of Westerners but the socio-sexual model employed by the traders (deemed exploitative by modern theoreticians, although probably far more subtle in its dynamics when one considers the state of the English working class more generally) was to collapse as soon as women from the West arrived, as well as missionaries and state servants.<br />
<br />
The replacement of rule by traders under the East India Company with administrators imbued with Christian ethic under the Raj represented the replacement of free-booting libertarian entrepreneurial capitalism with authoritarian administrators, driving the system from exploitative growth through empire to sclerosis and then collapse. The liberation of India from colonial rule did not see a consequent socio-sexual liberation in reaction to the previous masters because the socio-sexual mores of the West were associated with modernisation. Modernisation was a core aim of the first generations of nationalist politicians regardless of Ghandhian sentimentality. Even the traditionalists had developed their traditionalism in a conservative reaction to the West that accepted more of its values than they realised. It is both paradoxical and logical that the 9/11 fanatics contained a high number of engineers and technical experts and no actual mullahs.<br />
<br />
Hindu nationalism has a rather 'Victorian' and puritanical view of sexuality (of which monogamy is a part) that is now part and parcel of the self image of nearly all the modernised rivals of the West. I would put a high bet on the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia having socio-sexual reform high on his own modernisation agenda within the Kingdom. The concubinage system exists outside the Communist mainland only amongst elite trader Chinese. Social order seems to require if not monogamy, then the tightening of whatever traditional rules there are to command and control sexual relations.<br />
<br />
Only in the West has the monogamous system begun to break down at the margins - but only at the margins - despite the widespread media coverage of polyamory. It is said, for example, that only 5% at most of Americans are consciously polyamorous. The question remains whether the monogamy of classical antiquity as interpreted by the heirs of Abraham is 'natural' or not, even though it is certainly now 'normal'. This brings us back to Scheidel's paper since he asks two questions - what is the reason for the variation in the incidence of polygamy and monogamy and what drove the social imposition of near-universal monogamy when individuals with a high level of resource and status might have chosen otherwise? I am less interested here in the academic debate about the answers to the questions than with expanding the academic debate into the 'real world' by asking on what basis do we privilege monogamy and whether monogamy is the absolute and only means of organising the post-modern world. <br />
<br />
Scheidel notes the argument that polygyny (polygyny is many women for one man as polyandry is many men for women whereas polygamy is the legitimation of the first) is actually (in economic terms) beneficial to women in very unequal societies (which most societies are). Sharing a wealthy husband or provider with other women may be economically far more beneficial than being 'stuck with' a single poor husband. Not only that - we add - but household duties and the demanding business surrounding child-rearing are shared, birthing is arguably safer and interpersonal tensions with the male conceivably lessened (though perhaps increased with other nearby women).<br />
<br />
By pulling women into the orbit of the wealthiest, the women who remained behind got to trade up to desirable males where monogamy was the only resource-realistic option, leaving the least desirable males unable to reproduce. It is thus 'beta' men who are harmed by polygyny according to this model and the more so as inequality increases. Scheidel concludes that polygyny 'tends to reinforce male inequality by matching reproductive inequality with resource inequality'. The question then becomes one of equality but only from a male perspective - and, as so often before the current age, the perspective of women is simply abandoned.<br />
<br />
In traditional societies, before the amelioration of the conditions of women and slaves with the adaptation to Roman pagan culture of Christianity, what has been read as exploitative of women turns out paradoxically to be advantageous to women but damaging to beta males (as opposed to alpha males). The issue here is mass male demand for equality rather than female exploitation (despite the propaganda of communitarians) since all women were exploited in traditional societies by modern standards (as were all men by the resource-rich alphas).<br />
<br />
The interest of alpha males and of both alpha and beta females is in polygyny but that of beta males is in monogamy under traditionalism. This is not only a matter of reproductive (genetics and survival) effectiveness but of economic production because the high resource household with many women is in itself more economically productive because of the concentration of female labour on certain pursuits (weaving or field labour, for example) which, though classed today as exploitative, also created a surplus that ensured that the women themselves were better clothed and fed with more potential for disposable income and luxuries.<br />
<br />
If the thesis is true, then we should expect monogamy to grow with male equality. If you like, socialism is monogamous so long as it is a male socialism. But socialism is not required. Recent research suggests that inequality and equality are to be equated with peace and war respectively rather than economic development per se. It is just that war creates rapid economic development. Economic development brings not so much equality but creates the ability for a household to survive securely without requiring the maximum input of women to create the conditions for their own security.<br />
<br />
At a certain level of development, regardless of inequality in general, sufficient people are so equally secure that a woman (of the middling sort and then within the employed working class) can feel secure to the degree that they can create a household in which they can have sufficient 'matriarchal' power under monogamous conditions. At this point it might be said that the balance of power relations changes again so that the middling sort of woman is advantaged at the expense of the alpha woman and the marginal woman (who may include a substantial number of persons) in a model designed to benefit the beta male. The rise of 'matriarchal' power within the household, however, then reduces the alleged patriarchal power within the household to create what may become either a partnership or a contest for power.<br />
<br />
The alpha system remains patriarchal but the benefits for alpha women have gone to be replaced by an exploitative and unregulated hidden polygyny of mistresses and sex workers who the matriarchal middling sort despise and exclude from power even further. Monogamy, initially designed for the mass of males, ends up a shared power, unsatisfactory to both in the long run, between beta males and middling females, alpha males stay alpha but switch for formal polygamy to informal polygyny or kow-tow to the new order and the polygynous actors amongst women switch from high status within polygamy to low status marginals.<br />
<br />
The balance has shifted - the potential for commanding the household of one male in a 'partnership' (or even female dominance in driving the male to work harder for her and her children's security) begins to compete with and exceed the attractions of competing with other females in a resource-rich household. If greater power can be had in a monogamous household, why share power in Hugh Hefner's mansion. The matriarchal household is the great unwritten story of both peasant and industrialised society albeit that, power being what it is, truly matriarchal households (unhappy or cowed men) compete as models with true partnerships ('happy households') and truly patriarchal households (unhappy or cowed women).<br />
<br />
This analysis is mine not Scheidel's but the issue of power is extensively explored by Scheidel because it seems that female power in traditional societies tended to be directed towards exploiting polygamy rather than seeking monogamy although what we mean by this power needs teasing out because the woman's kin structure is involved in the negotiation - power in traditional societies is often inherently collective. Otherwise, the high resource male has power and the low resource male does not which is really not so different from modern society.<br />
<br />
What has changed in recent decades has been the direct rather than indirect (socially contained) empowerment of women over time which is work in progress. It is arguable that changing economic conditions encourages women to choose polygamy at one level, then monogamy at the next and perhaps monogamy (as partnership or dominance) or polyamory (as partnership) at the level above that in terms of economic access to resources and self development. It is often the mass of non-alpha males who have difficulty with each stage - being largely left out in traditional societies, trapped within models subverted by Christianity from being to their initial benefit in modern societies and now insecure in post-modern societies where monogamy entraps the male more than the female where children are part of the issue. Scheidel appears to conclude that the very wealthy are not exhibiting polygyny to historic levels in modern societies and making this a reason to doubt some of the theorising. In fact a cursory reading of literature and observation tell us that there is still a correlation between having resources and being able to manage multiple relationships without household disruption - the French institution of the mistress is a case in point.<br />
<br />
Males may have been forced to operate in secret by the new Judaeo-Christian moral dispensation (we have seen previously how Judaic communitarianism adopted monogamous models under Christian influence) but the secrecy is now rather one of 'turning a blind eye' and 'don't ask, don't tell' adopted by modern women when faced with the probability that resource-rich males are managing a quasi-separate household or modern men find their economically dependent wives getting a lover to satisfy sexual or emotional needs.<br />
<br />
The picture is only muddied further by the resource issue - resources are now such and expectations of freedom are such that many people are having relationships they cannot technically afford and under conditions where the socially legitimising codes that permitted the rich to have such relationships have not filtered down into the beta level. This suggests that, when resources were scarce and freedoms were limited, male and female desire was thwarted amidst much human misery. Today, the desire may not be thwarted but the inherited Judaeo-Christian code of conduct means that households get over-extended and then can snap into divorce and, under conditions of serial monogamy, into an only slightly more acceptable successor monogamy where the cycle is just as likely to repeat itself again as not.<br />
<br />
Where resources are significant and freedom considerable, there is going to be a return to forms of informal polygamy of which polyamory is a developing element and, as conservative communitarians recognise with horror, social freedom and increasing prosperity are seeing precisely the increase in informal polygyny and polyandry (and homosexual variants) that they fear. The period between repressive modernity and full post-modernity (which is still a way off) has seen an era of increased resources but not enough for full freedom but within a very strict communitarian expectation that creates shame and perhaps guilt. The net result is a different type of misery expressed not as the deathly misery of entrapment within a household from which there is no escape but periodic crises as one partner or the other 'strays' or 'cheats' (note the Judaeo-Christian cultural origins of the terminology) and then is either forced into a crisis that may destroy the household or is brought to heel like a dog with the 'third party' simply jettisoned like Hagar at the demand of Sarah.<br />
<br />
Looked at in this way, we may be (in the very heart of the liberal West though things are not changing very far from that heart) at a point of transition as significant as that of the 1960s and 1970s when both increased resources and expectations of freedom created the dialectical tensions between monogamous traditionalism and 'true nature' (which is just the will to 'do what thou wilt'). Communitarian culture's instinctive prejudice must be against 'doing what thou wilt' because of its disruption of a framework of codes and regulations (like not eating pork) whose original purpose has long since been forgotten and now is simply sign and symbol of 'belonging' - a form of anxiety-relieving beholden-ness to the collectivity of others who are beholden to you.<br />
<br />
This transition, scarcely started, is perhaps towards a society where resources really are sufficient to enable increasing numbers to have the freedom (both as men and women) once enjoyed by alpha males and where those expectations of freedom are bound up with new forms that permit freedom within social stability. Our current instabilities have nothing to do with 'moral breakdown' and everything to do with elite incompetence. Ideologically, this means the slow collapse of both the Roman and the Judaeo-Christian assumptions that society must be structured along certain lines. Many, probably the majority, will continue to do so for at least the bulk of their lives for the foreseeable future <i>but there is now no necessity for everyone to do so</i>. <br />
<br />
Going back to Scheidel, the inequality/polygyny model (that monogamy increases with equality) might suggest that polygamy encourages social instability because male competition for resources is more intense precisely because it has a socio-sexual element, we note, for young males. Without an authoritarian order with brute force to sustain itself, perhaps younger males are going to be minded to overturn the existing order or to expand outwards to seize what they cannot get at home. The issue would be compounded as polygyny tends to drive attractive younger women to older men since older men are more likely to have more resources than younger men. Scheidel puts this in terms of the possibility of male bargaining with inherent power to equalise outcomes (where, one presumes, women are just chips in the game).<br />
<br />
Given the inherent greater power of the resource rich (the rich can reward their retainers with, amongst many other things, women acquired in battle), overturning polygamy can either be done by outfighting the polygamous authority and simply replacing one polygamy with another or <u>threatened</u> to be done so that the polygamous authority starts to change its behaviour to deal with the threat before it occurs. Perhaps monogamy emerges out of a process of bribery of retainers in which most men get just one woman until this becomes a matter of property relations to be formally legitimated. If such a property relation then becomes embedded in the world view of a more egalitarian republican or democratic model of society, then the legitimation gets 'detourned' against the elite at a certain point.<br />
<br />
It is the threat that overthrow might be done (so it may be theorised) that drives 'wise' polygamists to redistribute sexual resources whether the women like it or not. Building an army (part of state formation) might be seen as many things but one of them is promising not only land but sexual and work partners and there really are only so many desirable women to go around when the armies grow to sufficient size. All this sounds nice theoretically but the truth is that huge imperial pre-modern states retained their polygynous elite aspects so that does not seem to tie in entirely with the thesis. The story only works if the transfer of resources to beta males expected to die for their polygamous lord means that those grunts are eventually imbued with sufficient reserve collective power to dictate cultural terms to the lord - but this tended never to happen in practice unless you start thinking of smaller Western republican quasi-democratic states such as Athens and Rome (see below).<br />
<br />
Warfare for plunder and capture of women is also positively correlated with polygyny so those with power are not going out there to give one woman to one soldier but are rewarding by merit and the incentive to show status is to have many slaves. The stronger warrior is just going to emulate polygyny (we see this in Homer) whereas his grunt is going to be lucky to get a cast-off slave girl. A more sensible approach perhaps is to say (see the article) that both systems (monogamy and polygamy) compete over long periods of time and monogamy simply out-competes polygamy over time.<br />
<br />
This competition model does seem to be the only sensible way of explaining why no formally unified and large nation state (as opposed to pre-modern traditionalist empire) ever seems to retain polygamy. The final state of the nation is nearly always a socially imposed monogamy. One argument is that this out-competing model is also evidenced by the West out-competing global competitors and, of course, the latter's subsequent mimicking of Western modernisation. In a sample of 156 states, one researcher, Michael Price, has shown that monogamous states are more populous, less likely to use the death penalty, less authoritarian (politically), less corrupt and richer than polygynous ones. Bear in mind that we are speaking here of stratified polygamy and not consensual post-modern polyamory. Polyandry scarcely figures in the record at all. <br />
<br />
So is monogamy central to modernisation or is it accidental? There seem to be no clear answers to this from academics. Monogamy seems to happen as part of modernisation but it is hard to see how monogamy is <u>necessary</u> for modernisation. The best thesis is one that suggests that monogamy encourages male co-operation and reduces conflict (and is less unequal) but whether this is true or meaningful in terms of the actual dynamic of Western state formation and modernisation is debatable. It may be that monogamy was simply part of a package (within an ideology) where other aspects of the package were more important to the process and that the same package that accidentally had some sort of ideological commitment to an appropriate form of polygamy might have served equally well.<br />
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All that then may have happened was that the total ideology was successful so that the bits of it that were simply accidental (the junk DNA, if you like) got carried along with it. After all, monogamy was the dominant model from the Fall of Rome to the Reformation and we see no sign of modernisation during that period, a full millennium. And yet it is hard to see how any proto-democratic society could easily have coped with institutional polygyny where reproductive advantage was given so ostentatiously to the rich and powerful. Petty <i>ressentiment</i> from the beta masses alone would have wanted change.<br />
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One can imagine, if polygamy (as opposed to the institution of the King's Mistress) had persisted amongst the Bourbons to the level of the local aristocracy with 'droit de seigneur', that Jacobins would have included monogamy ('a woman for every household' instead of the later 'chicken in every pot') in their list of egalitarian and democratic demands. The point is that politics would always have been what the mass of men wanted in a revolutionary situation and not what equal and informed men and women with reasonable access to resources wanted. Feminists generally, ideologically, wanted a better monogamy (meaning more power for women) rather than more sexual freedom for women - with a few notable exceptions such as Kollontai. If you had argued the point about erotic capital then as now and suggested that women could be advantaged by playing their erotic advantages over men in order to acquire capital in a truly free society, the reaction then as now would be<i> 'quel horreur!</i>'<br />
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But from where did Western monogamy originate? Scheidel considers whether it is situated in in the rise of the Greek polis. We might think of relatively weak rulers (the tyrants were never oriental-style potentates with access to vast resources) and elites who depended incidentally on bands of warriors that were quite small and spent most of their time on the land. This link to early democracy matches my point above about what the Jacobins are likely to have done. But this thesis might be a false friend because legitimised authoritarian monogamy is still not general under the city-state system. Modern monogamy seems derived from ancient exemplars - notably Solon in Athens and Rome - which then got endorsed by the dominant ideology that slowly dictated every facet of life in the West to the point where we can scarcely sneeze without it being a Judaeo-Christian sneeze. We see monogamy not as an invention but as a process extending over 2,500 years and taking form slowly in its modern classic form only after many adaptations. <br />
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This model is now so associated with what it means to be Western today, that left-liberals are often deeply suspicious of anything that is not monogamous and will have a tendency to a moralism worthy of Origen on sexual matters once a household is created. They prefer serial monogamy (divorce and separation) to polyamory or multiple households, still are aghast at 'cheating' (which they associate with distrust of all elites as psychopaths and cheaters), don't like slightly off-centre sexual expression such as pornography or other forms of 'objectification', are less likely to be impressed by the claims of BDSM to be a reasonable private consensual choice, have preferred gays to want to choose civil partnership and then marriage rather than seek other radical models of property holding and child rearing and are highly critical of political figures like Berlusconi who exhibit polygynous characteristics.<br />
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They can also be very po-faced about sexuality in general, demanding careful definitions of orientation, lodging these orientations in identities and the language of rights and expecting a form of right behaviour, right words and right thought as the price of freedom. Non-religious political conservatives have a tendency now to remain in the world of informal polygynies, 'don't ask, don't tell' and 'turning a blind eye'. The current hysteria about a Tory Minister allegedly watching pornography ten years ago on an office computer has the liberal elite in full war cry on what should really be at best a private matter and, at worst, a minor infringement of office conduct undertaken well before any statute of limitation. What Damien Green did is really the business only of the pettifoggers of a human resources departments with no humanity or sense of time. That the Left hungry for power is in alliance with authoritarian police officers to bring him down tells you a great deal about the topsy-turvy world of the modern British Left.<br />
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The Solon reforms in Athens (a classic case of authoritarian provision of social order) in the early sixth century BC defined the monogamous conjugal family as 'the sole legitimate family form', barring male procreation outside marriage as illegitimate. What we have here, of course, is a link with property relations and the pre-emption of disputes inimical to order. It is order that matters here and not sexual conduct. It is certainly not a God-thing. One historian of the era looks at it from another perspective - removing bastards from legitimacy also reduced the scale of aristocratic pretension by reducing the numbers of aristocrats available to one household viz. the property relation is a reduction of the property claims of one class by reducing their household. However, it is also clear, as we noted above, that not all Hellenes subscribed to this 'wheeze'. The monogamous state par excellence - Rome - is the one we really have to contend with and it is Rome that eventually dictated terms on this matter to the West. Rome remains the dead weight on freedom whether it be as the grounding of the Church or as the grounding of the European Union.<br />
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Scheidel suggests that Rome might fit the model whereby monogamy mitigated sexual competition in a quasi-egalitarian context with elites needing to mobilise military participation. Possibly, but this is my suggestion, it was a matter of ensuring large numbers of males on smallholdings with a woman per household to maintain and organise the estate while the husband was at war but similar polities have also remained polygynous (although no State in antiquity ever matched Rome's ability to throw manpower into the maw of war). Rome was an acquisitive machine for mass murder that was to make a cult of death in the circuses worthy of the Aztecs. <br />
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Political participation in itself does not (at this early stage) predict monogamy. In fact, slavery masks polygyny because while the matron wife was free as partner in the household, it would be naive not to expect female slaves to have had the same sexual and household role as sister wives in formally polygamous households elsewhere. In other words, monogamy was a socio-political form but not necessarily a psycho-sexual one. The women in hidden Roman polygynous households were simply demoted (other than the wife as chief household administrator) and so were more oppressed and exploited than the women in outwardly polygamous households. Roman monogamy also introduced a serial aspect to the case - divorce was easy and so serial monogamy might be said to have mimicked polygyny simply by making it function more in time than in space. Modern divorce reproduces an aspect of this. <br />
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The overall message here is probably that monogamy was initially indeed just a wheeze to smooth the process of mobilising beta men into state service or providing some semblance of order by ensuring the form of equality without the substance - and how familiar is such a wheeze today! The wheeze, as so often, became an ideology - one that neatly covered the actual polygynous behaviour of the elite because it was presented as a moral ideal rather than a moral necessity and so worn lightly.<br />
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This ideology, based on an elite's formal representation in a context of state service and ambition (to cover for a gross process of 'global' acquisition) became hybridised with a somewhat sex-negative desert religion that had been Hellenised. The republican moral ideal became transmuted through a transfer of power into a religion purporting to protect women and slaves. From Augustus presenting a monogamous model and despite the polygynous and polyandrous (gay) proclivities of decadent Emperors, republican moral value merged with Judaeo-Christianity to create a moral necessity, a straight-jacket for elites and an endorsement of the necessary habits of the middling sort.<br />
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Every time a barbarian people came into contact with the hybridised ideology of the war machine, acceptance of that ideology became a condition for acceptance as tributary or (in the Middle Ages) acceptance as equal. Modernisation in the pre-modern era included total adoption of the ideology with both its sex-negativity and its formal monogamous structures combined and enforced on the middling sort and on elites alike. Informal polygyny, the more exploitative version compared with formal polygamy, was allowed for elites (for the masses until various 'reformations'), making use of variants of the 'blind eye', of which the French 'maitresse' and the 'courtesan' systems may be taken as the type.<br />
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Elites thus still got maximal nookie while the masses were increasingly denied even serial monogamy except on terms of guilt or shame and then only with women who were now outcasts rather than merely slaves or would be made outcasts if they 'transgressed'. It was not so much patriarchy that repressed women as the very religion that purported to defend them - or rather it picked and chose who it defended and it defended the women who were to make monogamy an effective tool for household but not political or social or economic power. The consequent socio-sexual ideology was thus not merely embedded in Western culture, it then intensified under successive reformations (from the Middle Ages onwards) and then became part of the self-image of the middling sort as they struggled to build prosperity in households under industrialisation.<br />
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Sexual repression and the hybrid patriarchal-matriarchal household reached its apogee in the twentieth century from which it then faced the threat of sexual liberation (which resulted in a surge of serial monogamy) and increased prosperity which, with contraception, liberated women from the obligations and many of the risks inherent in the model. Men had had the choice of compliance either through faith or in misery or as hidden polygyny and homosexuality through deviance and secrecy. Now they had the choice of transparency but while homosexuals were slowly liberated, many heterosexuals remained trapped in the ideology while others began to develop new ideas and forms of sexuality.<br />
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And that is where we are now - in a world where monogamy is the habitual norm and a much kinder place than it was fifty years ago and where formal polygamy is, in itself, out of time and place and no longer automatically the better bet for most women. However, social pressures for acceptance of monogamy in its legitimated form make dissent from within the institution a very dangerous matter indeed with highly emotional responses, bitterness, divorce and sometimes appalling effects on children because there is no ideological room for compromise. <br />
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What the better bet for men and women is today is not clear (especially as monogamy has become so much kinder) because increasingly the simple categories of men and women, married and unmarried, are collapsing into new categories based on personal psychologies so that a certain type of man and a certain type of woman have more in common with each other than either does with another type of man or woman. Today, increased resources for the middling sort and freedom from social action allows sentimental and emotional choices to drive new sexual relations and so social forms (albeit still restricted by legal habits derived from the old hybrid ideology).<br />
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Some can now choose monogamy deliberately and with full understanding of its purpose - long term bonding, child-rearing, property management. Others can choose to remain single or maintain a non-legitimised or partially legitimised (civil partnership) model. Still others can maintain the secret polygyny of mistresses and sex workers. And yet others are choosing the many variants of polyamory. In other words, sex is no longer a game with necessary winners or losers because of the structures in which choices are embedded. Things have become fluid.<br />
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There is no option,of course, to import slaves. No person in principle is obligated either to serve another sexually (though we continue to battle at the margins against sex slavery) or hang around with people they have come to loathe even 'for the sake of the children'. People are now generally unhappy for one of three reasons - they are just unhappy and no one will make them happy except themselves, they are still trapped in the hybrid Roman-Christian ideology and its derivatives or they simply do not have the resources to finance their choices. The last is the real problem for late liberal capitalism which offers rhetorical freedom (just as Rome offered rhetorical morality) but cannot will the means to live that freedom.<br />
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<i><b>In conclusion we can now answer our initial debating questions to some extent. We know how monogamy became privileged although we are still not sure why but we also know that it is not the only means by which human beings can run their affairs and that, while it has many advantages, those advantages are not invariably so for all people or for some people at all times. The question is now whether we can have a society that allows people to choose fairly and without harming others whatever social and sexual (and economic) relations can best serve themselves and protect children.</b></i>
<i><br /></i>Tim Pendryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03079486837930544558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-72932514640610937.post-78046918018100024042017-10-28T19:42:00.000+01:002017-12-02T08:10:10.002+00:00On Monogamy - Part I<i>This is the first of two ruminations derived from a reading of a 2008 academic paper by Walter Scheidel of Stanford University, 'Monogamy and Polygyny in Greece, Rome and World History' [Princeton Stanford Working Papers in Classics, <a href="https://www.princeton.edu/~pswpc/pdfs/scheidel/060807.pdf" target="_blank">available online</a>]. The views and conclusions are mine and not his.</i><br />
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Monogamy is 'normal', begging the question of what it is we mean by 'normal' - for us, for society, for a particular society and so forth. 'Normal' means fitting a 'norm', a standard which occasions no comment, that just is as it is. A norm contains no absolute moral worth in itself since slavery was once normal and female genital mutilation is normal today in some societies. The question underlying the question is how something becomes 'normal' in society and whether it accords with our own natures ... or what would be normal to us if we were in command of the social and the social was not in command of us.<br />
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Monogamy presents an interesting test case in deciding whether what is normal is imposed or natural. An academic paper by Walter Scheidel of Stanford University, published in June 2008, triggered thoughts since it opens with a question about the normality or peculiarity of Greco-Roman monogamy which, in turn, is interesting to me because it is Greco-Roman monogamy that has set the standard for the Christian world which, in turn, has created many of the unthinking norms of our own culture.<br />
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By monogamy here, we mean a social rule that permits only one wife (we have to assume here male dominance whose normality is another question for another time) with no cohabitation with concubines - in other words, the association of an exclusive sexual relationship <i>within a household</i>. It is perhaps not a problem of sexuality (since it does not preclude extra-marital sex outside the home) so much as a problem of property (who has access to it as sexual or just household management partner). The Greco-Roman approach to property provides us with another set of norms that have underpinned Western culture, including capitalism, ever since.<br />
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Scheidel notes that genetic monogamy (mutually exclusive mating between two partners) is fairly rare in the animal kingdom and that social monogamy (mutually exclusive pair bonding which is not necessarily connected to reproduction) is common amongst birds but atypical amongst mammals of which we humans, of course, are a species. Humans <i>appear </i>to be unusual - even amongst primates in being monogamous (in effect, a partly social construction) and (he avers) "only mildly polygynous in "genetic" and "social" terms'".<br />
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The <i>mildly</i> appears to be an extrapolation from claims about sexual dimorphism and male-female variability in reproductive success which we can take as read. But the reading of that evidence suggests that mildly polygynous does not mean not polygynous and that might be read as either that most people are occasionally interested in two or more partners at the same time or some (a relatively few) males are always interested in two or more partners. This gives us a picture of a free 'natural' society in which most people lived in monogamous states but enabled people in monogamous states either to be temporarily non-monogamous or people to be fully polygamous. The rise of polyamory in itself within conditions of relative social freedom implies the reality of these possibilities although polyamorists still find themselves <a href="https://tonic.vice.com/en_us/article/43y4kd/polyamorists-are-secretive-stigmatized-and-highly-satisfied" target="_blank">faced with enormous stigma and social barriers</a> to contend with.<br />
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Scheidel's analysis of social conditions perhaps confirms that the polyamorous trend in a post-Christian free society fits with a situation where, historically, most bonding and mating arrangements are monogamous but where societies generally accept polygyny in both its generic and social forms. We might say that most humans most of the time (outside the West) are not rigid in having one system for all but provide flexibility in accordance with the underlying structure of human biological preference. 93% of societies have some form of socially accepted polygyny (polyandry is entirely another matter). Convenience, preference and resource limitations might tend most to monogamy but there is no barrier across the bulk of humanity to multiple relationships in principle, especially amongst elite groups and as 'concurrent concubinage'.<br />
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Now, the key element is '-gyny'. The vast bulk of historic social forms are related to multiple partners for males and not for females and may be read in two ways - either that, in general, men and women do not want multiple relationships and are more tolerant of sharing space with other women (which is interesting but unclear and which we may explore in the next posting) or that men simply are so dominant in most social situations that they can impose these social standards and that women are their 'victims' which is probably the 'normal' narrative of most women in the contemporary West. We can read the process of shifting from polygyny in all its forms (including concurrent concubinage) either as the progressive liberation of women from male oppression or as the progressive imposition and cultural enslavement of men to a feminised society. I suggest that both processes have operated in tandem.<br />
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The problem with the simple ideological interpretation that monogamy is a liberation of at least half humanity from the other half (or, less charitably, that it is one half's victory in a cultural power struggle over the other half) is that the current stage of human history is unusually free of socially imposed restrictions on sexual conduct. It has become very clear that there are as many women, possibly more, who want sexual relationships classed as polyamorous (that is, the freedom to love more than one person) as there are men. The conclusion may be that women are as mildly polyandrous as men are mildly polygamous and that it is probably true that most women are occasionally interested in two or more partners at some stage while some
(a relatively few) females are always interested in two or more partners. In other words that, in a totally free society, and although there may be differences in approach to specific situations, there may be more similarity between men and women in this regard than social norms have permitted.<br />
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What we are suggesting here is that we should not entirely confuse polygyny with patriarchy. Nevertheless, what Scheidel does point out is the correlation of matriarchy with monogamy and patriarchy with polygyny. At first sight, this suggests that the link with patriarchy is to be seen in terms of female liberation and female exploitation but this may not be quite what it seems because we have to think about who are the mothers and who are the fathers who rule and how they relate to others of their gender. I would contend that gender here is of less importance than the fact of ruling - it is power that matters.<br />
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For example, the logic of the relationship between monogamy and matriarchy might be seen immediately in terms of the need for the mother-to-be to remove all competition from the household - the competition is not men but other women so that monogamy is not a strategy to contain or control men (though that is the net result) but a strategy to exclude other women. A dominant woman can demand in the right social circumstances the exclusion of all other women and the exile of the male's sexuality to the margins in return for exclusivity and stability. That offer, made at point A when emotional bonding is high, might be regreted at point B when the male has literally gone through a ritual that socially closes alll doors to his own future needs and desires - in effect, he has been deluded perhaps by his own hormones or social pressure into a form of quasi-enslavement to which he either reconciles himself or around which he is forced to skulk like a dog. In short, matriarchical monogamy is a power play as anti-liberatory as patriarchical polygyny because it structures social norms around the thrusting of other women to one side (into social nothingness as hidden mistresses, lovers, sex workers and so forth) in order that one woman be dominant in the household. Thus women may be said to oppress women through monogamy as much as (it could be argued) women control and contain (and so oppress) men.<br />
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To be fair, we should say, of course, that there are parallel oppressions in patriarchical polygyny but resource poverty means that most normal relationships in such societies remain monogamous - the woman, in such societies, might reasonably say that the man can have his concubine or second wife when he can afford it and not before and such a new entrant into a household would be in a pecking order and be expected to wash the dishes. Elite patriarchal polygyny, on the other hand, brings women into a wealthy household and so provides security but their dependence on the male is clear - the women are not truly free but no more, one supposes, than men who are answerable to other men (the condition of most men in most societies) or if a modern high status female decided to have a harem of poorer males in tow.<br />
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The latter type has been historically rare to the point of my knowing of no case beyond some notorious super-elite women such as Catherine the Great and a few Empresses but the point here is that the oppression is at all times one of relative power and wealth before it is one of sexual predation. The predation follows on from the disparities of wealth and power just as the casting couch mediates between the desperate desire of a beautiful young woman to be an actress and the hunger for power and sex of an inadequate pot-bellied aging man with capital. I have no doubt that a society of Amazons with high sexual appetites and great wealth in a resource poor society with too many men around who need to eat would soon develop forms of sexual organisation and household that reflected their power albeit one that would have to deal with the problem of pregnancy. We may live in such a society within our lifetimes.<br />
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Monogamy thus has its politics - it is both a means by which women contain and control men and out-compete other women and it is a means by which partnerships of bonded humans are formed to create children or security often under conditions of resource scarcity. As an ideology, it emerges from the first whereas, as a practice, it emerges from the second. It is why so often women engaged in the practice and not requiring to contain and control or out-compete can often reject those ideologies of matriarchalism (such as that of catholicism) and feminism that grow out of anxiety and ressentiment.<br />
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Polygyny or polyandry or community variants, conversely, are both a means by which men show their dominant status and control of resources and a means by which in a resource-rich culturally free society individuals meet their psychological and emotional needs. Clearly, the situation is complex but the critical element is competition for, control of and access to resources. We can see that a resource rich society (assuming cultural freedom) is always going to tend to have more polyandrous and polygynous forms without such forms ever being dominant - after all, polygyny and polyandry (like polyamory) are extremely emotionally and resource-demanding alternatives to monogamy. If you do not have spare capital, high revenues and more leisure time than average, monogamy is the easy option and polygynous or polyamorous instincts can be satisfied when it all gets too much by 'cheating' (playing the field and then going home when the game is over).<br />
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Scheidel, as a classicist, is particularly interested in Greco-Roman monogamy (as we are for different quasi-political reasons). He presents it as at the geographical faultline between the moderately patricentric Indo-European zone and the more patriarchal world of the Eastern Mediterranean and West Asia. The point about the Greco-Roman model is that it did not permit the exceptions for rulers and elites permitted to the Eastern world. This is important because the constraint here on polygyny is not economic (see above) but a matter of norms - a norm has appeared that restricts others, interestingly the power elite more than anyone else but implicitly anyone else who might accumulate the resources to engage with it. And it is this that was inherited by the Christians as the model to be imposed on the West for the next two thousand years.<br />
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In this regard, Christianity cannot be blamed for the imposition, only for the brutal intensification of the system. Homeric heroes lived polygynous lives but monogamy was firmly established in Greek culture at the beginning of the historic period and was presented as quintessentially Greek compared to barbarian culture. In this respect, Christianity followed Greek practice rather than the other way around: it may be useful to consider Christianity as a partially Hellenised heresy of Judaism. This Greek practice did not stop concubinage (and certainly did not stop slave exploitation or the hiring of sex workers) but it did draw the line at co-habitation. Rome too appeared to be monogamous from its early origins although it too may have seen concubines of which it culturally disapproved but in separate locations (like the French 'maitresse'). Slave relationships, which may not always have been obviously exploitative, existed and could result in issue which could be recognised by the fathers.<br />
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And we have not mentioned that the modern institution of serial monogamy is also very ancient. Roman divorce law enabling a succession of wives if that suited the man - so that the law provided a form of patriarchy in simply changing sexual relationships from being lateral in time (the harem) to being vertical with one woman after another. Christianity innovated, almost as a trades union for women and slaves, by making divorce harder and then impossible. Roman men, in effect, found the vertical approach rather easy to have stopped whereas unravelling a harem might have been a lot more difficult, certainly harder for Christians to legislate against. After all, protecting incumbent women conservatively in monogamy would then have been replaced with a strategy of 'firing' lots of women to benefit just one of them under polygamy. I do not believe it has been studied but perhaps Christanity found fertile ground in the West and had more difficulty travelling East because its power to create a mass female base was restricted by its inability to represent all women in principle under patriarchal harem systems whereas it could purport to represent all women under systems of serial monogamy and slave exploitation.<br />
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It is thus Christianity that strengthens monogamy to the degree that we now see it today but on this Greco-Roman base, with subsequent wars on barbarian polygamy, divorce and elite concubinage that became central to the Catholic Church's sexual politics (which has never been seen by feminists as particularly progressive in most respects). One might say that male power was systematically endorsed by the Church in return for its sexual containment. This is not the place for cod psycho-analytical theory but the levels of emotional and physical violence that became part of the description of masculinity in the West might or might not have something to do with this 'turn' - while it would be naive to believe that males did not have sexual outlets outside the household, the ideology of sexuality and the household itself became zones of male constraint and emotional silence.<br />
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Even today, the norm is that the household is so much 'owned' by the couple (which means, in fact, though not in ideology, by the woman) that it becomes unthinkable for a man to invite a female friend into the home without negotiation on the precise terms of entry. How many women or men would freely enter a married British household without 'clearing' it first with the woman or man who co-habited ... at a certain point, both husband and wife lose all rights to the most innocent of friendships with the opposite sex under conditions where the household is territorialised as sacred space and yet there is no other space that is not public space or the friend's sacred space. And how many partners would be wary, without reason in most cases, of entering the private space of another person of the opposite gender in return. These codes are not rational but encoded from a particular truth ... the monogamous person has no private space unless they have an agreed space within a space which cannot be accessed except through the coupled space with its rules and taboos. <br />
<br />
Jewry followed Christianity much as Christianity followed Hellenism. The West in the last 1,000 years (bar a few radical communitarian experiments and Mormonism) has been resolutely monogamous to this day. Even Mormonism recanted in 1890 and then again in 1904. Today's polyamorous tendency has not actually exhibited itself yet as a movement to change the law to permit consensual polygamy and the few Nordic attempts to recognise Muslim polygamy are really responses to the cultural war between Leftists trying to score points against nativists and populists amd have little to do with any seriously radical or well thought out response to what we are as persons. Monogamy is, in short, the 'norm' in the West (and now not only in the West) and remains the norm despite its lack of normality in history and other societies, the undoubted suffering caused to millions of people 'trapped' within its demands over centuries, the effective death of the Church as moral arbiter across much of the West and the fact that it has declined back into its serial Roman form but with women permitted the same rights as men and despite serial monogamy's often bad effects on children. Indeed, it is so normal that the homosexual community have yearned to enter into that state as civil partners or more.<br />
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We might say that monogamy, despite its unnatural (as exclusive) state and oppressions and its undoubted false consciousness, is one of the defining characteristics of the West which has been exported globally as part of the West's contribution to modernisation. Japan legislated against polygamy in 1880, Thailand in 1935, China in 1953 (under Communism which is a form of Western heresy and so ultimately a derivative of Hellenised Christianity), India (for Hindus) in 1955 and Nepal in 1963. That means billions of people shifted into monogamous mode in under 65 years. Whole populations have been 'modernised' into a particular gender relations practice by States with no religious intervention. Only Islam (with secularising exceptions) and Sub-Saharan Africa stand out and both are under immense pressure from modernisers and Christians alike. In the latter zone, something like 20-30% of men are in polygynous unions which might suggest the 'all things being equal' norm that might apply in relatively resource poor and non-free (meaning where women do not have the same choice) societies.<br />
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The obvious question is whether the West's new interest in polyamory under conditions where the State does not dictate personal morality and where there are relatively prosperous middle classes (albeit under economic pressure) will reverse this trend eventually. Indeed, it might be that resource pressures on equal young men and women (especially over the costs of a household) might actually encourage polygyny and polyandry. Given a figure for 'natural' polyamorists of around 15% of the population, one might anticipate the emergence of such households who will require legal recognition under conditions of serial polygamy/polyandry - that is, core stable units with partners entering and departing over time until a final stable unit, which may revert to monogamy, emerges over time. Legislating for such a development to cover property relations and child protection while not interfering in private choices may present a challenge for traditionalists and legislators as difficult as past struggles over abortion or gay rights and marriage.<br />
<br />Tim Pendryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03079486837930544558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-72932514640610937.post-72024187710867831392017-09-23T15:53:00.000+01:002017-09-23T16:04:50.706+01:00Charon - Lesser God of the Dead <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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</xml><![endif]-->Diodorus Siculus claimed that near Memphis, within Lake
Acherousia, there was a House of the Dead to which, under the Egyptian rites of
the dead, there was a ferryman called Charon whose boat would take the body of
the deceased to its new home. There was a death demon of the Etruscans called
Charun. But neither story convinces many as the origin of the myth. <br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Burn the body, close the grave, pay the ferryman, place the
coin in the mouth (since the soul departs through the mouth at its last breath), the ritual is all necessary, and so the deed is finally done.
An apple or honey cake, a ribbon or a wreath are all signs of the passing. Later
(when people might have believed that the dead were going to a better life),
the departed would be given perfume, garlands of flowers and food to take on the
journey to their new life in death. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There is also a prayer to be made to the spirits of the River Styx since,
without their help, Charon himself cannot easily cross the river and may be
forced to wait outside the entrance to Hades’ realm. The mourners cry and as
they cry the soul passes into the hands of the God of Death. Their wailing is a
call to tame and calm Death and to ask for his care and protection of those they love or to whom they have a duty. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Imagine him! – very aged and close to senile but strong and
horrible in his filthy cloak and proletarian tunic, the hair around his bald
pate still black and wild but with white hairs both there and on his bearded chin, eyes
that glow and flicker with a radiant soft flaming and skin wrinkled and
scorched black by Phlegethon.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Insatiably hungry to get the job done, instinctively harsh
and merciless, a supernatural demonic creature, a lesser God, he visibly enjoys
preparing the places for the dead in the boat, gently placing the corpses of
the innocent to ensure an easy passage while forcing the less than innocent to
come to sufficient zombie-like life to row the boat forward.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
He is a terrible creature, who takes pleasure in the tears
of the grieving. He steers the black boat of the dead, decked in trailing river
weed, across the Styx, the howling, wide and bottomless Acheron Lake and
across the Lethe towards a place which Apollo never visits. Charon thus removes us from the exhaustion that is life. He
takes slaves and freemen, putting all at the oars or at least those he dislikes
and he hears no claims for precedence.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
For the journey, all we need is a jug, the clothes we are
buried or burnt in, a bundle of necessaries and the ‘obol’ – the coin that is
the price of a day’s wage, the last day on earth. Hades is a mercenary place. Hermes
Psychopompos who guides the soul to the boat, wants his payment from the
obol he gives Charon (which suggests that change has to be given somewhere in the transaction), so does Charon, of course, often considered greedy, and
so does Aeacus the greedy gatekeeper into Hades. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The chthonic gods are human traffickers. It is a business.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We might add the greed of Pluto (though not the Greek Hades) though how one obol would cover all these costs is another mystery.
It must be a bulk commodity business. War must be profitable. This mercenary side may just reflect a late Roman obsession with contracts and consideration (we
pay, we get entrance). Some in the lower classes would put in more
coins into the grave than a Greek would have needed. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Some have said that there is no fee, some just the obol and
some, though they are wrong, two. For the Greek, the real price is the burial rite or the funerary
pyre. Those who have no burial rites, no mourning, no pyre, are
left to wander on the near shore of the Acheron pursued remorselessly by
vicious beasts and demons, not on life’s shore but another shore altogether.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The obol is symbol of all our earthly wealth being transferred to the
ferryman and lost to us forever. It is our passport and also the confiscation
at the frontier. As refugees from life, we go into the shadow world with nothing. The payment is also the closing of the grave as much as the tombstone being in place. What
you can take with you (according to the philosophers) is your wisdom, your integrity
and your true nature.The payment may also reflect a far
more ancient fear of the dead as avaricious, hungry ghosts. If you pay them now then perhaps they won't come back and ask for payment later. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There are two sides to this coin – the obverse is the
remembrance of the dead by the living and the reverse is a new existence in the
realm of the dead or non-existence. It is the representation of a new mode of
existing at the cusp of two worlds – mental and supernatural. If a man refuses to die willingly, Death will give him a
nudge. He will execute all who refuse to die and without mercy. He kidnaps the
young. All are equal in his attention even though he will show unaccustomed grace, gentleness, kindness
and tenderness to young mothers and their babes, to the innocent who may even be exempted
of their fee. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And, though fearful of Charon, men still praise him when a
tyrant dies. A cult of Charon emerged from Palestine to Mauretania and up to
Milan and coins were widely placed in the mouths of the dead in the Second
Century AD. Just saying the name Charon could inspire fear by then. He becomes
Charondas in much later Greek folklore. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Once in the boat, there is no return. Only the dead can
cross the Acheron. With so many sallow-faced souls on board, the boat threatens
to sink but it never does. Some say that the boat expands to fit the dead and
grows to huge size after major battles. Some say Charon even carries the souls of
all the animals as well. And some say that there are places on earth which provide
a shortcut to Hades – such as the land of the Hermionians. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Very rarely a hero such as Hercules (the only hero strong
enough to beat Charon in a fight), Orpheus or Aeneas or heroine such as Psyche
may enter Hades as a living soul and return, but for the rest of us there is no
golden branch or road money that will allow us to enter and return to the land
of the living. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We cannot pass in and out of death or ride on Charon’s boat
and enter Hades before our time. Even Orpheus was denied a second visit until his time was due and
Charon was himself punished once for letting Hercules through, albeit that he
probably had little choice in the matter. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And if we think this is a fairy tale and there is no Hades
and no Charon, still it is true that Death subsists in any case, as an eternal
exile from Existence, irrevocable. But we cannot accept the late glosses that
merge into the Christian mythos in which Dionysos represents the triumph of life
over death. Perhaps many Romans (though not the Greeks who
had a grim view of the underworld) believed that Charon was taking their souls
to a better world beyond the grave. But belief is not truth. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Tim Pendryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03079486837930544558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-72932514640610937.post-76729439137796729942017-09-23T11:38:00.000+01:002017-09-23T11:46:39.104+01:00The Freedom Agenda - Polyamory as ExemplarI have made no secret to my true friends of my polyamorous nature. I not only make no apology for it, it helps define who I am. It is by no means all that I am but I would not be true to myself if I did not accept that it was an important part of who I am. I am lucky to live in an immediate environment that finds this no problem but, observing the reactions to polyamory of those outside that immediate environment, it has given me an abiding intellectual interest in the relationship between individual freedom and society and the cultural pressures that effectively enslave people to the control, expectations and aspirations of others.<br />
<br />
Freedom is never just about something as one-sided as sexual orientation - freedom is about belief systems, consent, relations to the state system, the family, the locality and the work place, one's positioning by others in a corrupted media, control of your body, adequate resources (which is why the true libertarian must ultimately be, at least in part, a form of socialist), politics, education, friendship and emotions. Freedom is about the totality of being in the world.<br />
<br />
My own position is that each person has the right to express themselves in any way they wish so long as they do no harm to another person. I cannot count harm as challenging other people's emotions, sentiments and thoughts but I can count harm as hurting their material selves, their private property and their reputation or status.<br />
<br />
The society that controls my language to save the feelings of another is an oppressive society but the real harm it does is in not creating the space to enable a culture of good manners to emerge that will minimise harms without suppressing risk and challenge. It would be bad manners for someone to disrespect me as polyamorous but it would also be bad manners for me to 'out' someone polyamorous without their very specific consent. The failure to create this space is why we live in a culture of weak emoting and terror-stricken snowflakes instead of increasingly strong, resilient and fundamentally compassionate people.<br />
<br />
The fine balance between an individual (which, in the sexual sphere, includes all orientations including the often forgotten asexual and, of course, the monogamous) and society is sometimes difficult to hold. In my case, the discussion of these issues is conducted amongst friends in a set of Facebook Groups that have now been running for nearly six years in some cases and cover a wide range of freedom and society issues (<a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/alt.rightandleftresponsediscussion/" target="_blank">ideology</a>, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/193493287656/" target="_blank">culture</a>, the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/129273417143398/" target="_blank">internet</a>, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/2378718078/" target="_blank">sexuality</a>, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/175251142131" target="_blank">philosophy</a>, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/1074540032556529/" target="_blank">music</a> and <a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/1177583815697115/" target="_blank">art</a>). A six year old erotica one is now moribund because of mounting Facebook intrusion into a secret group of consensual adults of around 30 people (actually disproportionately women!). The group was a deliberate canary in the mine to track Facebook's emergence as social control mechanism and it has proved fruitful in defining this even if the canary is now effectively as dead as Monty Python's parrot. Facebook's social control role was tracked and exposed over time.<br />
<br />
What is clear is that the total social system is now tending towards a top-down corporatist control of freedom not out of malice but out of fear of the system's own lack of control of the general situation in response to the failures of a globalisation that it had promoted and the sometimes spurious and sometimes real threats arising from terrorism and organised crime. The system created the conditions for terror, economic collapse and organised crime and now wants us and not itself to pay the price. Big business, fearful of regulation that will cut into its profits, is conniving in the process, most notably with its setting of online standards that intrude into private life.<br />
<br />
My own view is that the genie of freedom is out of the bottle and that there is no way that the total corporatist system can crush dissent except by cultural means which is why it has turned its attention to its alliance with the media again. Controlling culture is the standard mode of the hegemonic system - with cash if necessary as we saw in the promotion of abstract expressionism by the CIA in the 1940s. Today, we are increasingly able to see through this manipulation and create islands of cultural resistance that can connect with others despite the attempts at informal algorithmic censorship and control. The new technologies increase control and increase abilities to resist in a call-and-response process that means that the controlling system can never quite win over all aspects of human existence. Sexuality is increasingly that canary in the mine - now repressed, now channeled into an absurd identity politics, now culturally appropriated and now a mode of resistance. <br />
<br />
In fact, the means and modes of resistance through the internet and through a new awareness of personal freedom (and, above all, a new preparedness at the margin to stand for personal autonomy and take risks) have resulted in a powerful half underground and half overt energy directed at ensuring that every strike against freedom results in a tenfold determination to strike back, often in a fluid and 'queer' way so that eventually the state system is going to have adapt to us rather than we to it if we are both to work together to remove those who are actually dangerous to safety and society (as opposed to those periodically witch hunted in order to enforce policy). The really dangerous person is not at the top but at the white collar middle management (the 'kapo') level and the soi-disant 'creative' or 'intellectual' embedded in the cultural or policy system - these people are generally second rate minds living in a state of anxiety. It is these people who seek to master the algorithms. These are the people who failed to protect the child abuse cases in Rotherham. This is why the Labour Party is now dangerous. It is becoming the party of that class. <br />
<br />
Crude attempts at censorship and cultural control are yesterday's tools ... the system can track everything we do or say but what it cannot do is stop us doing anything legal (and sometimes illegal) or saying what we like or kicking back to organise to make what we want to be legal to be legal, sometimes simply by making the law unworkable if it is foolish. Censorship of hate speech has simply made heroes out of the hateful. Attacking pornography has simply normalised it. Disrespecting sex workers has provoked them into more effective organisation. The destruction of the authoritarian pseudo-liberal Left has now become as important as the containing of the authoritarian Right - more so, since the Right has adopted the freedom agenda for private life in stages since the 1990s.<br />
<br />
The new Einsteinian politics of individual mobilisation and volatility which is replacing the systems-based Newtonian politics of the West is only in its early stages. The Catalonian experiment under way today is an amusing and even playful as well as deadly serious game of cat and mouse between a pompous State machine and local aspirations. Brexit is going to go in the same direction as the attempt to ensure a corporatist solution to a populist decision results in the slow emergence of a country revolt against the pretensions of the liberal middle classes. <a href="https://youtu.be/fRf9K4RFd00" target="_blank">As Frank Furedi has pointed out</a>, the Hungarian resistance to cultural bullying is another, wholly misreported in our increasingly unreliable official media - the BBC is little more than the Pravda of a failed system. <br />
<br />
There will be flows back to the Newtonian and then new discoveries until a major paradigm shift takes place and we are in a new world of Globalisation 2.0, intelligent and stabilised populism and strong but responsive States that have been forced to abandon their presumption that they are more important than the people they serve. The Churchillian Imperial approach is dying on its fight but so, we will find, is the absurd 'all must have prizes' New Left Socialism of the narcissistic Baby Boomers. Identity politics is rapidly travelling up its own orifice.<br />
<br />
In that context, since the personal is the political, I produced a discussion paper on just one small aspect of the Freedom Agenda for the Facebook Group on Sexuality (which anyone can join who is not a troll- we are not snowflakes, we execute trolls). I reproduce it below for the record. Variants could be produced for all parts of the Freedom Agenda - other forms of sexual conduct, mental health, internet freedom, personal liberation from party, corporate or tribal loyalties, child-rearing, property-holding, corporate demands on our time, virtue and moral obligation, freedom to believe nonsense if it does no harm, command of our own bodies, fair redistribution, the management of technologies and community and family obligations. Try inserting asexual into the text and with a few sensible adjustments you have a liberatory strategy for asexuals. <br />
<br />
The challenge here is to balance an oppressive inherited communitarianism in society, which still has some value as solidarity in bad times and which need not be oppressive at all, with a new and responsible libertarian impulse that still permits the freedom to create sustainable communities. So, here are seven propositions about polyamory for discussion and you can insert any orientation and any private belief system you like and adapt it to your own needs:<br />
<ol>
<li>
Many people who are polyamorous generally cannot be happy without
recognition of their polyamorous nature although others can be happy
enough but not entirely fulfilled. The polyamorous need to connect
emotionally with others. They are not driven primarily by sexual need
although the sexual element cannot be ignored. The essential drive
remains emotional. Why this is so is irre<span class="text_exposed_show">levant. It is not a disease or a weakness. It is simply so. </span></li>
<li>The bulk of society cannot comprehend the polyamorous sensibility, largely because it does not think about it.
This is its problem which has become that of polyamorous people.
Polyamorous people should not allow it to be their problem. </li>
<li>The social barriers for polyamorous people meeting other polyamorous
people and developing sustainable relationships are formidable. </li>
<li>Many people who have a polyamorous orientation cannot communicate
that orientation to their family and friends and so they are not able to
develop an open and transparent relationship with others. They are
locked into social conformity by their condition. This breeds not so
much loneliness (because they have existing sustainable emotional
relationships) but lack of personal fulfilment and dissatisfaction.</li>
<li>The ‘self-closeting’ of the polyamorous (out of concern not to cause
pain or upset to others for whatever reason) is a serious barrier to
the sustainability of polyamorous relationships as well as to meeting
other compatible polyamorous people. The pool of possible contacts is
thus made smaller by social conformity.</li>
<li>There is no intrinsic
reason why anyone should limit their natures to the private and the
secret to satisfy the social prejudices of others. It is a form of
subservience to society which society has not earned the right to
demand.</li>
<li>Lifestyle polyamorous communities (centred on the
narcissism and anxieties of defensive polyamorists) are simply
reproducing the anxious defensiveness of the communities that they are
trying to isolate themselves from. The polyamorous person must be able
to assert their normality in all those respects that matter while
remaining polyamorous.</li>
</ol>
<div class="text_exposed_show">
If these propositions are true, what conclusions can we draw from them? It is from the answers to that question that liberation can start to take place.<br />
<br /></div>
Tim Pendryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03079486837930544558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-72932514640610937.post-29298158289903818352017-06-30T10:36:00.000+01:002017-07-22T13:28:22.380+01:00Facebook & Arbitrary Power"Rise like Lions after slumber<br />
In unvanquishable number,<br />
Shake your chains to earth like dew<br />
Which in sleep had fallen on you-<br />
Ye are many - they are few."<br />
<br />
Facebook has just proved itself to be an idiot again - or rather its
algorithms have proved idiotic. Its guidelines on 'nudity' (a particular
cultural neurosis emanating from the dark recesses of American disgust
with the otherwise perfectly natural human body) are actually crystal
clear that if an 'artist' paints a nude, then it is somehow just dandy.<br />
<br />
This is, of course, a concession to the nonsensical idea that, for some romantic
reason, artists can represent safely what is not permitted in the real
world. However, those are the guidelines - no nudity (except for a political concession to breast feeding mothers) unless it is art and then it is permitted. <b>Let us be clear - if it is an artistic representation, it is expressly permitted.</b><br />
<br />
In this particular case, I posted, in a Closed Group
dedicated to art and with members who are all invited adults, a picture
by the mid-level baroque female painter Artemisia Gentileschi, somewhat
of a feminist icon. Indeed, I have the cynical notion that Facebook only
backed down when I threatened to set the feminists on it for blocking
their heroine, one of the few female artists to 'make it' in the
seventeenth century - actually a fairly average and over-hyped artist.<br />
<br />
Anyway, to
cut a long story short, not only did their moronic algorithm not
recognise a work of art and blocked it but the operation did something
unconscionable - it arbitrarily halted me from posting anything and
anywhere for 24 hours. It gets worse by the way, but wait for the end on that one.<br />
<br />
My response was
immediate, aggressive and utterly contemptuous. They got a message on
their help desk every five minutes for two hours pointing out the idiocy
of the blocking with a one hour twitter campaign of direct contempt for
their inability a) to recognise art and b) to understand their own
guidelines as well as an expression through every means of direct anger
and outrage that they should arbitrarily block anyone for 24 hours
rather than just block something that their idiot algorithm could not
recognise as a rather unerotic bit of baroque flummery.<br />
<br />
The net
result was that the block on my posting was lifted within six rather 24
hours and the picture was restored but my contempt for this arbitrary
act and algorithmic stupidity has returned me to my high level of
distrust for Facebook that had existed some three or four years ago when
they suspended my account without adequate cause and were forced to
relent after another time-wasting and determined twitter campaign and
complaints to the regulatory authorities in Ireland. At least this time,
it was a matter of hours and not months!<br />
<br />
But then they blundered again. This time in a way that is almost comical. I made it clear to two Groups that I would no longer be posting on them as a mode of resistance to self censorship but also to preseve rights that now seemed to threaten my right to post in some 15 or so others of an educational nature.<br />
<br />
A debate ensued in which a bit of consciousnes was raised about Facebook's arbitrary power and then I commented on another sixteenth century Northern Renaissance nude, posted in the past where others saw 'attachment unavailable'. In other words, Facebook had arbitrarily stopped others from seeing it without giving me fair warning of why this was so. When I commented on it, the result was that the algorithm stupidly marked this art work (well within Facebook's guidelines) as problematic <b>and, yes, in another arbitrary act, banned me from posting for another 24 hours. </b>There is a moron out there, either a programmer or an AI.<br />
<br />
Facebook needs to
understand that it has every right to set the rules for its platform but
there are two things it cannot do. First, it cannot breach its own
guidelines - those guidelines give a rather silly priority to art but
that commitment to permit art must be met. Second, blocking a picture
may be unfortunate and immature but it is permissible within those
guidelines. However, it is outrageous that it can behave like a medieval
despot and remove posting rights and make threats of loss of account on
any basis, let alone a breach of its own guidelines. Body neurosis is
tiresome - it shows a weak and decadent culture incapable of standing up
for maturity. It also evidences an even more tiresome American cultural
imperialism. But this weird thing about Art/Good and Body/Bad remains Facebook's privilege. Arbitrary incompetence or algorithmic malice does not.<br />
<br />
<b>What is really disturbing here is something much deeper. Because of its administrative errors, my digital existence is being put at threat because these blunders are inexorably leading to my own digital arbitrary execution. </b><br />
<br />
The Debate on the Art Group during the brief period when I had access to posting was instructive because Facebook's acts are raising a sort of 'revolutionary consciousness' through its arbitrary acts which have not just affected me. It is a sinister algorithmic attempt at socialisation that is going very badly wrong.<br />
<br />
<span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g">
I do not accept defeat but I recognise the reality of power which is that
Facebook, if I persist, can remove, in an arbitrary way, my entire six
year Facebook ouevre comprising engagement in over 15 groups
and with nearly 400 Friends and 160 Followers. In other words,
Facebook, like a despotic ancien regime estate, can execute me in the
digital world on the whim of one of its own aristocratic algorithms. It
is as decadent, corrupt and villainous as any ancien regime. </span></span><br />
<br />
<span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g">So what
does a rebel do? He does, as Churchill points out, like any oppressed
peasantry take to the hills ... or he engages in guerrilla activity
or he emigrates or he gets educated and plots or he engages in a
calculated 'dumb insubordination' and 'go slow' or he raises the next
generation to understand power and eventually seize it. Or all of those
as circumstances dictate. The understanding of power is a fine art -
first one must know one's powerlessnes (which few really appreciate) and
then one must know the power of the powerless (as Foucault pointed out)
in its insidious ability to destroy its oppressor. Eventually
conditions change and there is a revolution against arbitrary power.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g">Every
arbitrary act by the ancien regime increases resentment and eventually
the heads of the aristocrats roll, eventually humanity will command
these AI-driven platforms by revolutionary fiat. I engaged
the platform in struggle and temporarily won the
'pay rise' to which I was owed anyway but the power relationship has not
changed and the capitalist may still fire me at will when conditions
change. He may have put me on a blacklist. Indeed, that is what happened. Within hours of the first suspension, I got 'locked out' again with the suspicion that I am a 'marked man'</span></span><br />
<br />
<span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g">I can engage in an idle
and short term trades union reformism or I can take the revolutionary
route and plan for the long game - the utter overthrow of the arbitrary
regime and its replacement by a dictatorship of the subjects! The Art
Group remains - it just does not have me posting. It is for others to
carry on the revolution in the factory. Better to die on your feet than
live in fear on your knees so off to the hills I go with mental kalashnikov in my fist. My investment elsewhere is too valuable in
the revolutionary cause and there is nothing they can do about that except 'kill' me. And, if they kill me, others will arise to protest their arbitrary power. My
very small amount of power has been redirected with more force. The only
thing I can hope is that I have raised the revolutionary consciousness
of my own fellow Facebook proletariat.</span></span><br />
<br />
What is going on here? I think Facebook is running
scared of legislation from an equally neurotic government structure and
is trying out algorithms that restrict and contain us, all on the
spurious grounds of protecting us. The platform is weak and governments
are oppressive and, between them, we could be but nuts in their
nutcracker. The answer is simple as it is to all arbitrary power -
expose it, fight it and apportion blame where it is due: in this case, cowardly
and greedy unchecked corporate power and weak and oppressive states. We must never be the nuts ... the
nut cracker must be broken, and we should be allowed to grow into great
oaks.<br />
<br />
<u>Appendix: My Protest At The Second Suspension</u><br />
<br />
<i>To Facebook</i><br />
<br />
I cannot believe your stupidity or is it the stupidity of your
algorithms. Yesterday, you suspended me for 24 hours on a seventeenth
century artwork which met your guidelines. Six hours later you restored
me. I commented on 'old' posting of a sixteenth century artwork (well
within your guidelines) this morning and you suspended me again for 24
hours. Now I fear that your algorithms are marking me out for account
loss on your idiot mistakes.<br />
<br />
This really is not acceptable. I
want the painting restored. I want the 24 hour suspension lifted. I want
my algorithm corrected to remove all references to these arbitrary
actions outside your guidelines.<br />
<br />
If this is not done clearly
and quickly, I will do the following: I shall write to the regulatory
authorities and to my elected representative (who is a
member of a minority government putting datas regulation through
Parliament); I will produce a blog posting on your failures which I shall
circulate widely; and you will have a Twitter reference every ten
minutes for as long as it takes. <br />
<br />
This is an absolute outrage -
two blunders in 24 hours against your own guidelines with arbitrary
and unjustified attacks on service provision.<br />
<br />
<u>UPDATE</u><br />
<br />
On July 22nd, 2017, I posted a photographic art work in a thread on the photographer Man Ray in the same closed Art Group censored above. In this case, it was borderline because it is moot whether a photograph is art to some people though few actually contest Man Ray's status in this respect and the picture was part of a series, all classically correct, as representative of Man Ray's work including his anodyne but attractive 'Pebbles'.<br />
<br />
This particular work was interesting because it was a staged (and very obviously staged) image of 'crime passsionel' which only a moron would not see as expressive and poetic rather than either as a) an incentive to crime or b) some sort of vicious misogyny though, of course, some of the half-educated wallies coming out of the universities nowadays seem unable to draw a mental distinction betwen reality and fantasy which is, I suppose, a sign of the times. If the American President cannot do this, it is probable that his subjects may have difficulty as well.<br />
<br />
However, accepting that Facebook are not sophisticated and they have rules, in this case, I am perfectly happy to see the picture removed as borderline since they are clearly trying to protect any one in any sex-negative, body-fearing, unthinking culture to which they want to flog their advertising from having their imagination or brain cells tested very far.<br />
<br />
What I do not accept is a) the blocking from posting for 24 hours and b) the bullying threats associated with the blocking. What they should do (as I made clear in my main posting) is remove the picture without threats and advise that this has been done and suggest the possibility of a problem if there is a pattern of such activity <u>within some system of adequate due process</u>. This is what I wrote to them: <br />
<br />
<i>"You've done it again .... removed an art work. In this case, a clearly staged photographic art work by the great photographer Man Ray in a thread about Man Ray's work in a closed Group dedicated to Art. <br /><br />"I have dealt with your censorship behaviours in depth in the past (as above) which I urge you to read with care ....<br /><br />"In this case, I recognise that it is borderline in terms of the actual posting and that it is reasonable for you to remove the picture in the light of your guidelines - idiotic though the act is in every other respect (the closed and dedicated nature of the Group and its dedication to art amongst consenting adults who do not include primitives).<br /><br />"However, it is not acceptable to block an individual for 24 hours and offer threats but only to remove the picture and a note to this effect will be added to the posting if posting rights are not restored within one hour. <br /><br />"I accept that the picture may be removed. I do not accept your arbitrary decision to block posting without due process."</i>Tim Pendryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03079486837930544558noreply@blogger.com0