reohn2 wrote: ↑18 Jun 2022, 11:04am
francovendee wrote: ↑18 Jun 2022, 10:42am
Boris did sort of get brexit done. Because of this, are we supposed to ignore all the lies that get churned out about how much better off we are now?
It takes a very special person to ignore the facts.
(snip)
I love the country on the one hand,but I'm ashamed to say I'm British on the other,for way it's currently conducting itself,the king is naked and I'm not shamed to point the finger and claim it as such,the UK has become a joke under Tory rule.
Some of our Panglossian members have an understandable wish for the pleasures of their now nearly past lives to remain unsullied. I confess, this includes me. I'm inclined to the conservative, meaning those tried & tested traditions that provide the rock on which our civilised aspects are built, the fences that keep out the ravenous gharks & hoos intent on feasting upon us all, the safeties of community and mutuality.
.
Those who adopt the faux-Victorian Jingo mode as some sort of attempt to raise the dead past seem not to notice that this would entail them living with a zombie - one that will turn on them as readily as zombies turn on anyone. They also mistake the feeble remnant of the left, or its even feebler ghost, for some sort of change-threat to an imagined stability supposedly pursued by the current ruling political elites, with the culture wars intended to keep alive or even invigorate some sort of golden-past condition.
But here's an alternative perspective of things from the viewpoint of one of those leftist bogeymen (a school of thought known as "Savage Marxism") which the Panglossian supporters of Tories and their ilk paint as the danger to our perfect Britain:
'
Marx’s key insight was that far from being haunted by the spectre of communism (or any other movement on the left), the ruling class is more troubled by the horrifying prospect of all being well with the world. As the American political theorist Marshall Berman pointed out in the 1980s, Marx saw that, far from being the party of order, the ruling classes thrive on chaos. Berman writes that “catastrophes are transformed into lucrative opportunities for redevelopment and renewal; disintegration works as a mobilising and hence integrating force”. All life is disenchanted and de-sanctified before the avalanche of creation, innovation, development, conquest, shock and destruction – elements of the master principle governing all human affairs. As one of the most infamous lines in the Manifesto reads: “All that is solid melts into air.”'
https://www.newstatesman.com/ideas/2022 ... -manifesto
Another and similar analysis can be found in "The Shock Doctrine" by Naomi Klein.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shock_Doctrine
The current Tories are very much inclined to be "the ruling class thriving on chaos". They are intent on creating as much chaos as possible because this is what'll provide them with the greatest opportunity to thrive and prosper via the acquisition of more power and wealth, as opposition to their larger intents is distracted by having to deal with the minutiae of the chaos they constantly create.
Al and his pals don't recognise this. They seem to be going on the same criterion used by my dear ole Mammy to choose who to vote for. "The Tories are a better class of people". As I used to suggest to her, "Oh no they ain't"!
But modern voters go on these queer shorthands - loyalty to a political party no matter how it morphs between vastly different behaviours and intents; the suggestions of the class system still everywhere in Britain that there is a "natural party of government"; the instructions of a mass media organ read in faith rather than with judgement.
Cugel
“Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence are usually the slaves of some defunct economist”.
John Maynard Keynes