Putin on the Blitz

If the first victim of war is the truth, the Ukraine adventure must surely stand as an exemplar of that pithy maxim. Suddenly, all the Covid experts, the 5G conspiracists, the media and the general commentariat have become authorities on warfare, espionage, logistics and the inner workings of Vladimir Putin’s mind. I know we are hungry for information but are we so desperate that we consume the packaging rather than the comestibles and can’t discern the difference?

The last couple of years have really given me food for thought, especially about thought itself. Rather than the rich nourishment of haute cuisine I have learned that the teeming herds of data-grazing humans would rather ruminate on a constant diet of nutrient-free tabloid pap, highly processed and filled with fizzing sugars, than savour the more subtle, protein-rich steak which is expensive to buy and takes a little more effort to digest.

Enough of the lazy metaphor, let’s get down to business. Within minutes of the Russian advance the usual suspects were trotting out their pet theories about Brexit. So far I have seen articles and comments linking Putin to the overthrow of the EU since the day he came into power. Apparently, he ‘owns’ the Tory Party, pulls Tony Blair’s strings and was entirely responsible for Nigel Farage’s spectacular feat of bringing about our departure from that sclerotic Brussels cabal. Why, even the Prime Minister’s own name – Boris – betrays a sinister, subliminal Russophilia.

Give people like Carole Cadwalladr the tiniest opportunity and she can link everything back to Cambridge Analytica. Global warming, global cooling, oligarchy, autocracy, the subversion of democracy... whatever the current consensus, for her it all connects. Gender dysphoria, cancel culture, anything you like, there is nothing she can’t shoehorn into the plot. Me, I can’t wait for the movie; a summer blockbuster of brave, mild-mannered Clark Kents fighting globalist superpowers.

But we’re not in a movie, we are in the mundane. For every phenomenon that may have been deliberately constructed there are a thousand far more ordinary happenstances. In the same way that planned economies tend to fail, grand societal experiments are doomed to fall against the combined might of everyday people making everyday decisions. Sure, you bought the sugary cereal because your kids saw the commercial, but you wouldn’t keep buying it if the kids didn’t like it.

The demand for prurience seems coded into the DNA of humans. Don’t tell us the boring story of how we lurch indecisively from one fad to another. Instead tell us how we were manipulated, against our will to act against our own interests. Whenever I hear tales of great cunning, I try to remember that humans are ultimately motivated by the primal urges which ensured our species' survival: eat, fight, flight or fuck.

I have seen a couple of stage hypnotists. I’m not convinced at all. In the more scrutinised world of clinical psychology, hypnosis is recognised as a pretty much hit and miss affair and you can’t be hypnotised if you don’t want to be. But in the heat of battle – and the world of information is a constant battle for your attention – it is easy to get caught up in it all and be seduced by shiny, contrived plots instead of the dull action and reaction of boring reality.

Balls!

I have no idea what is going on in Ukraine. I certainly have no idea what Putin is thinking and I’m not sure I even care about that detail. What exercises me far more is the sudden hike in energy prices, the plethora of competing theories on the way the world works, and the absence of any unifying thesis regarding how we get back on track, if indeed there is a track. You can bang on about the World Economic Forum and the New World Order all you like; all I see are the normal human tendencies to seek profit where one can, and to see collusion where there is really only chaos.

Fighting talk

What on earth is going on? A golden rule in big business seems to be that if it’s all going wrong, reorganise. Or if it’s going okay but nobody’s noticing, reorganise. Or, what the hell, it’s two years since we last reorganised… reorganise. Maybe it’s all the jibes about parties being filled with career politicians who’ve never had a proper job? I know say Dave, Ed, Nick and Uncle Tom Cobbley and all, let’s make like a PLC and have a bit of a tidy up.

So, while the world was wondering what sort of a stance they should take towards the Ukraine and brushing up on their Crimean history, Ed Miliband, realising it had nothing whatsoever to do with him, took a break from standing in flood water looking baffled. In an effort to distance himself from the pratfalls that have marked his leadership and put the ‘special’ back into Labour he held a special conference on… now what was it? Everybody has already forgotten because of Andy Sawford’s brilliantly timed idiocy, writing to Waitrose to urge them to cease and desist handing out free coffee. (If you haven't already done so you really must watch @LeCreusetFiend's excellent Downfall spoof.) 

The Internet was alight with Costa Living Crisis jibes within moments and whatever electorate-engaging bollocks, Ed thought he was dabbling in, Sawford’s petulant missive took centre stage instead. If free coffee harms local coffee shops, then free food must hit the takings of local grocers too; so by Labour logic must they also demand the closure of their beloved food banks? It would be like the coal mining industry all over again - Labour hitting their own the hardest. Just what is it with socialists that they need to dictate how everybody should think and speak and act? And every time they do so, they demonstrate how completely unsuitable they are to hold any such power. Joined-up thinking? I wouldn’t trust ‘em with joined up colouring-in.

Under Labour we’d see quotas, tokenism, compulsion and incompetently micro-managed social engineering; they just can’t help it. What happens every time they speculatively float a policy? Shares plummet, companies threaten to leave the country, insurers refuse cover on yet another sector and wealth producers quietly take stock and calculate how soon they will be able to sell up and leave for early retirements abroad. But here’s the worst bit: if things remain as they are there is a very good chance that this clown will become the next Prime Minister, because the bulk of Labour's vote is delivered loyally and without question by tribal morons who harbour a seething hatred of the alternative.

Blind to reality all Labour has to do to guard its vote share is to tell people that Labour is good, Labour is kind and you are good and kind if you vote for them. It works; keep telling them, over and over again and watch as righteous, ill-informed mobs picket banks and factories and hospitals and crusade against cruise missiles, save whales, ban bombs and if necessary pillory people and harm their families, put them out of work and sometimes beat them up, all in the name of the loving kindness that Labour will bestow. “Labour evil is so much nicer than Tory evil, isn’t it?”

Some people actually feel good about themselves when they vote for Labour. They are bringing ‘social justice’ by condemning their own kind to perpetually rely on the state. They are ‘saving our NHS’ despite the partial privatisation of services being rife under Labour and its crippling inefficiency wasting ever more money. With unquestioning zeal the faithful accept at face value every lie they are told about the coalition. Or the simple ‘kind’ lies; that everybody is beautiful in their own way; that everybody has a talent; that ADHD explains and excuses poor behaviour. Leftism relies on having a narrative, even if it’s a warped one.

Cafe Warrior

But look, it’s so much more serious than that. Branding the Tories as ideological, Ed presided this weekend over reforms that may well give the unrepentantly Marxist unions greater power still over the party. If you want to see where communism inevitably leads, ask any citizen of the former Eastern Bloc. And here’s the kicker: if Labour DOES get in next year and if Ukraine’s civil war sparks off World War Three, we’ll be relying on Ed ‘Wallace’ Miliband to step up and be our next Churchill! Oh, yuss!