La La Land

From the topsy-turvy, roller-coaster, fantasy world that is global politics, we bring you Barack Obama’s pronouncement that, during his presidency, he promises “...for the most part, race relations have gotten better.” Ignore the Black Lives Matter outpouring of hatred for anybody white and the spate of cop killings in their name; lest we forget, Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009, so his word as a saint must be taken as gospel. In other news Cambodia’s Pol Pot and Uganda’s Idi Amin never did get the recognition they richly deserved for their work in ensuring their populations never grew to place too much strain on the infrastructure.

In similar vein, Mussolini made the trains run on time, Martin McGuiness only had killed those who were necessary for peace, Fidel Castro did wonders for Cuban cigar sales and the NHS is an inviolable national treasure which must be worshipped as a deity. Never mind all that ‘populist’ negativity, let’s focus on the good things, ignore what doesn’t work and forget actually getting things done, just sell, sell, sell. Tony Blair’s period in government was a masterclass of smoke and mirrors, as focus groups and statistical conjuring told us the story they decided they wanted us to believe.

This is the kind of governance that leads to enormous numbers of the disenchanted turning away from the path of righteousness and voting with their feet for a world view that resembles, at least in part, what they live every day. Glorious diversity may bring nebulous benefits to the reality-challenged, but it brings chronic misery for entire communities. The imagined and much broadcast ‘net benefit’ of immigration is a mantra chanted by those who are in thrall to the magical realm of beautiful rainbow people who, mounted atop their trusty unicorns, wield the sword of social justice and don the rosy spectacles of blind faith in the inherent goodness of all mankind.

That man stabbing you? He is simply frustrated by climate change. The new weekly stoning spectacle over there on Westminster’s College Green? A vibrant display of multicultural togetherness; see how the men in pyjamas ululate in ecstasy with each fresh wound. And the ‘so-called’ housing crisis? Deliberate propaganda from the dreadful goblins of the far-right, to make it seem as if the cosy, cheek-by-jowl proximity of our ever more diverse population mix is anything other than a marvellous opportunity to comingle and blend and share. Sharing, that’s the key; what’s mine is mine and what’s yours is mine; extending the concept of forced marriage to society itself.

If everybody gets prizes, nobody wins. And humanity is nothing without its winners. If you don’t have top dogs all you have is a load of dogs. The aspiration of equality, while fluffy and lovely in theory, is unrealistic and can only be achieved in practice by hampering the aspirations of excellence. And like enterprise, human ingenuity and social cohesion all attempts to force it, constrain and control it, tend to do the opposite. In the face of failure, no amount of spin will convince those who see the failure at close quarters. So yes, Barry, you leave the White House imagining you brought peace. I hope you still believe that when you wake up and see what you and your kind really did.

Cheeky Fakers!

You are entering a world of pain. A dark forest in which Little Red Riding Hood is swallowed whole by the wolf and instantly dies, to be slowly digested along with grandma as the wolf sleeps off his repast. There is no woodcutter, there is no happy ending. Nature gets its way and they stay dead forever. Is that what you want? Is it? Is it? Well then if you want the happy ending you have to listen up and do what you are told, else it’s the dark, dark woods of truth for you!

It’s only a story, but the swirling mists of disinformation thrive on the primal desire for happy endings and the fear of being thought a bad person. Any deviation from the narrowly defined path is met with stern stares and dirty labels; descriptions such as psychopath and misfit are anathema to a race comprised of individuals who, above anything, want to fit in. So a long litany of epithets exists whose sole purpose is to mark out an individual as a dangerously different from the supposedly settled will of the masses.

Being berated as a racist is losing ground though, as ever more tiny transgressions against approved thought are called out as racist. Wanting to live among people like yourself has been denounced once too often as evidence of ‘far-right’ allegiances when in fact it is nothing more than wanting to feel comfortable and safe. The increasingly desperate lies that organisations like Tell Mama promulgate are beginning to look unhinged; those who cry wolf without a thought are themselves becoming marginalised and irrelevant.

The campaign to leave the EU was never waged by a government in waiting. The referendum wasn’t an election and the suggestion that what we paid to the EU for no net return could be spent here at home on one of the institutions held most dear by the lefties and remainers was only ever that, a suggestion an idea, a possibility. And a clever one at that, in the scheme of things, as it focused attention on how our hard-won public finances were spent. It was a story to appeal to a target audience and it may have done the trick.

Attempts to now call ‘broken promise’ when the promise was in nobody’s gift is disingenuous at best, downright dishonest in reality. But if you honestly thought you were saving the NHS by voting out and now completely regret that decision then frankly you ought not to be voting at all. This is just another fairy tale the remainers cling to, that out-voters didn’t know what they were voting for, while, presumably, in-voters were marvellously well-informed and competent to exercise their ballot.

Among the other lies – and there are many - confected by the losers is the idea that the right is rising. But there is no real organised right as such; the only organised politics is leftist in origin and using terms like ‘far-right’ and ‘extreme-right’ is just driving the wedge deeper between politics and people. All that’s really happening is that the ‘man in the street’ tired of being ignored is saying okay, you’ve had your fun but the world cannot function on advisers and focus groups and studies and experts in things nobody needs to understand. We need machines and tools and food and stuff grounded in reality and all of that requires real work not fancy words.

But still the war of words continues as the increasingly fake news site, The Guardian, does its bit by helping to create the story rather than just telling it. In a preposterous piece of naked propaganda it spins the yarn that in the aftermath of Saint Jo Cox’s death 50,000 tweets ‘celebrated’ her death. Notwithstanding the fact that this number pales into insignificance against the numbers who burned effigies in the streets on Margaret Thatcher’s demise or wish death on Tories on a daily basis, the story is based not on rejoicing in her death but rather refuting the canonisation of a politician not in tune with her party’s core supporters. 

"What a big tongue you have, Grand-mama!"

"All the better to lie to you with..."

And never knowingly out band-wagonned, Sunny Hundal leaps aboard the Jo Cox Express to denounce the new Ukip leader as soon as his win is announced with his claim that Paul Nuttall is metaphorically marching death squads to the doors of other Labour incumbents. The hyperbole is almost deafening as the story-tellers of the mesmerised try to maintain their hold on their listeners, while increasingly losing their grip on reality. But it's time to let reality back in. The big, bad wolf won... get over it.