Matthew Syed seems one of the more insightful journalists working for the Murdochs though I continue to have obvious problems with Journalists musing on the erosion of ‘liberal democracy’ (whatever that is) whilst taking the filthy lucre of one who is a prime eroder of said democracy.
Here we have a continuation of a genre of journalism, realpolitik, personal anecdote, frankly expressed insight, tell it all-warts and all, which seems to be exploding. It’s breast beating but disguised as insight. It bemoans the loss of what, in reality, never existed, because specific interests with paws on the levers of power cannot in what might be laughingly referred to as ‘their view’ allow IT to happen. What that IT is, is a functional, widespread, engaging and engaged, honest and transparent political system that responds to a series of checks and balances that are beyond the control of individuals or interest groups and to which all subscribe on pain of political disgrace and annihilation.
What we have instead is a philosophical hotch-potch of self interested think tanks, lobbyists, millionaires and billionaires, Corporate interests, Big Pharma, the Military Industrial Complex, Control of media, a militarised Police Force, State Erosion and Public Services nullified with their replacement by inefficient and unqualified private providers seeking profit from said Services.
The family silver has, of course, been sold. The grounds also hived off for luxury flats and crowded estates. The owners are all absentee landlords yet members of all the right clubs. Navigation through the replacement forests of think tanks and special interest groups requires a Privately Educated School System to groom the next wave of Alpha’s in the codes and signals required for flourishing.
The point is that all of this, all of it, was clearly signalled in 1979 with the election of Research Chemist, Margaret Thatcher in the UK and with the installing of the actor Ronald Reagan in the US and the resulting onslaught of neo-liberalist ideology that led to the systematic dismantling of effective democratic state structures and the mass sell-off of public goods at bargain-basement prices to chronically liberalised international financial markets.
Along with privatised utilities of life-essentials like water, coal, gas, transport and public housing came the neo-liberal wraith coming up the rear with the inevitable consequences arising of endless war, privatised military and the hijacking of the military industrial complex by gangs with political masks. The encouragement of massive corruption in the absence of state controls. The exploitation of Africa and Asia for her mineral wealth made inevitable by TIFF and TIPP trade liberalisation as with the continued ravaging of Earth’s resources for short term profit.
The World stares obliterative disaster in it’s ugly face, not only for the humans but for all the extraordinary critters and vegetable and arborial life forms. Shrouded now in our winding sheets, stitched together in sweat shops by children, using micro-plastics dredged from the oceans, we await the inevitable. Mostly with the percolated anxiety of cattle milling outside the slaughterhouse, sometimes with an oddly triumphant and wilful ignorance that seems to celebrate itself. Sometimes we wait frozen with despair or rage.
But mostly we carry on. Fighting, fucking, crapping, littering, music making, despoiling, loving, hating, boredoming, maniacal thoughting, opiated, close reading, not reading, mobile phoning texting, bullshitting, group thinking, micro exploiting, ageing, Being, transcending, being born. Hope, hopeless.
To be alive is to be Cassandra, the doom-caller. There are worse things, but I just can’t think what they are.
