Kumbaya

It’s a phenomenon I have been observing for some years now, the propensity of a good and growing number of the population of this sceptred isle to seize upon victimhood, rally round a cause – any cause will do – then convince themselves of the veracity of their intelligence, as opposed to the clear evidence of their own eyes. The Tory Party is secretly engaged in a war against the little people, selling off parcels of the country’s infrastructure to private enterprise for the reward of holidaying on Branson’s island, or partying on some billionaire’s private jet. They are the conductors and guards on the gravy train, packing in ever more paying passengers and stealing their luggage. Yes, Tories will do anything for money and they, literally, skewer babies for sport. We know this because people like Owen Jones tell us it is so.

Did you ever tell ghost stories round a campfire? If you didn’t you missed out on a vital developmental experience in understanding the separation of fact from fiction. A ring of glowing faces lit by firelight and beyond them, the impenetrable dark. Open-mouthed and barely breathing you listen to the tale-teller, seeing nothing beyond your closed circle of sameness; all part of the same Scout troop, identi-kit proto humans. The narrator intones the sacred passages, passed from teller to teller over the years, until you get to the part about the lunatic escaped from the asylum and in your mind you all see the severed head as it is gently tapped on the roof of the courting couple’s car.

But then, in a moment of climactic horror, your heart leaps into your mouth as the assistant scoutmaster leaps into the circle with a blood curdling scream. The jolt both intensifies the horror then brings relief as adrenalin floods then leaves your system. It was just a story, no matter how much you were bound up in it; just a story. The bogey man has left the scene and normal life resumes, the only bit of fiction left, a vestigial fear to instil the occasional blurred nightmare.

But imagine if you weren’t in a story. Imagine if your town changed its character in a single generation and the incomers began to oppress and threaten its citizens. Imagine if the traffic was stopped by people reciting the memorised but dimly understood passages from an ancient manual of supremacy while sticking their arses in the air. Imagine the early morning peace being shattered by the garbled and distorted wailing from tinny loudspeakers. And imagine areas that are de facto off limits to whites, women and homosexuals, enforced by the threat of violence. See then, the leering faces of ugly old men in beards appearing all over your television channels to tell us that islam intends to dominate and then subjugate the country. Imagine all that but not being able to wake up, because it's not a story, it's not a dream, it's real.

If you were to sit around Owen Jones’ righteous campfire you wouldn’t see any of that. As they told each other stories of their goodness and light – the true fictions of today – you could look in but they couldn’t see out. You watch as they enact their own rituals, each signalling to one another until this virtuosity comes full circle. Trapped in this self-affirming cycle, this ‘universe of me’, they invent their own demons, secure in the knowledge that as long as they stay in the bubble they can believe.

But there’s good news for the rest of us, awake in the real world. While the counter-Trump demonstrators are self-flagellating in the cold winter rain today they might like to reflect that decades after the ban-the-bomb marches we still have the bomb. Following the never-ending referendum rejection protests the UK is still on course to leave the European Union. And tomorrow morning Donald Trump will still be the most powerful man on earth... 

Trump Crusade

There is a new turmoil on the left, whose adherents are saying that Trump is – literally – Hitler and drawing fresh parallels with 1930s Nazi Germany but that is, of course, simple bollocks. It’s almost wish fulfilment as if, devoid of any sensible policies and desperate to deny power to anybody but themselves, they would rather bring down their own governments and import change on a scale that will assuredly harm everybody.

The younger generations in the west have been browbeaten by left-leaning establishments such as state education teaching colonial guilt, the legal system appearing to put offenders’ rights before those of their victims and mass media like the BBC and The Guardian who act as propagandists against the beliefs of many perfectly decent working people. The legacy of all this is the trope that white is never right and, rather than pursue cultural longevity, to overturn centuries of advancement and atone. Atone until it hurts. Atone until national identity becomes something shameful. (Ask a German, they’re quite good at it.)

But President Trump – they hate it when we use his title - is not Hitler. Literally. And it is the muslim faith which is intolerant. It is intolerant of other religion, gays, women, pork, booze and just about every freedom that the west represents and enjoys. Its avowed purpose is to convert or kill; islam – literally – means submission and in muslim countries no other way is tolerated. If anybody here is preaching superiority and absolute control it is islam and its followers, both overtly – we call these ‘muslim extremists’ - and by meek compliance and tacit support – we just call these ‘muslims’.

America already has its own religious fundamentalism, to an alarming degree, but they are not engaged in the business of killing, rather in the slightly aloof, holier than thou, spreading of christianity which is just really annoying. Oh, except for the bit where they get to have a say over what you do with your body. But christianity is dying out, whereas islam is, literally, proliferating; the fertility rate of muslim immigrants is an overwhelming weapon that needs only inaction for it to triumph. The rise of islam in the west should cause alarm, not welcome.

Of course my views are fuelled by prejudice and preconception, but then so are yours... and theirs. That is how human beings work. But at least those of us on the right don’t try and pretend that we’re not selfish. We don’t really like diversity, unless it is on our terms. We white people are happiest when our black and brown and yellow colleagues blend in and behave more like us. We don’t tie ourselves in knots defending one group of ‘others’ while condemning another; we just prefer the company of our own.

So what is upsetting the clamorous protesters so much? The US has a president who is doing what he said he would, is that it? Or is he demonstrating leadership and power in a way his predecessor did not; is that what’s hurting? The muslims of the world have had over a thousand years to settle down, give up the slaughtering and accept other populations’ point of view. If the left believe islam can reform they must be more barmy than we thought. Until islam can sit itself down on the naughty step and think about what it did, somebody else has to put it in detention.

Show your working...

Trump has come out, as he said he would, firmly on the side of limiting future muslim influence in America. "We don't want to become a Muslim country" he said. With muslim birth rates outpacing that of Americans of northern European origin by six to one, his embargo on immigration from certain ‘troubled’ regions is entirely sensible, pragmatic and predictably has riled the left who, for reasons unknown, simply will not criticise even those whose avowed aim is to obliterate all other forms of thought. Maybe they see a kindred spirit.

But, but, but, we need immigration the globalist cry, as if the Ponzi model that has been operating for decades is any kind of answer. We need to take the young of poorer countries to prop up the outrageously generous pension entitlements of the baby boomers. Has anybody, in any government seriously examined this claim? The relatively wealthy pay the bulk of the taxes, which governments, always desperate to keep the plebs onside, spend on welfare programmes of such indiscriminate profligacy that they need to borrow eye-watering sums to make up the gaps.

Why? Because the flood of low-paid workers contributes nothing at all; in the UK we even pay them tax credits – calling them in-work benefits instead of the dole it is – so that they can get by. And then we moan about our low productivity while tweaking the statistics to ‘prove’ they are essential. This need to constantly expand the population, storing up even greater unmeetable costs and dissatisfaction ahead, is simply ludicrous. It is like putting people on disability benefits or keeping them at school just to make the unemployment figures look better. If anything we should be lowering the population, starting with a reduction in numbers of those who, by design, contribute nothing.

But until we get that contented, manageable population in lucrative jobs, owning their own homes and happy to rub along together we have to make do with what we’ve got. Donald Trump, of course, has a long history of finding people he can work with in order to fulfil his ambitions and right now he is filling positions to bring about the changes he wants to see. To which end he has devised the simplest of job interview tests for choosing the right man. Even as Theresa May was jetting over to the States to meet him, he was meeting eager applicants to run his new infrastructure projects, with budgets of $Trillions.

He asked the first applicant, an ex-journalist, “What is two plus two?” whose answer, somewhat predictably, was an innumerate twenty-two. The next applicant was a social worker and she said “I don't know the answer but I'm very glad that we had the opportunity to discuss it." The third applicant was an engineer of some years; he looked like he could have worked on the Hoover Dam. This man pulled out a similarly ancient wooden slide rule and came up with the answer “Somewhere between 3.999 and 4.001.” The next was a lawyer who declared “In the case of Jenkins vs. the Department of the Treasury, two plus two was proven, unequivocally, to be four.”

The Donald deploys his secret army of accountants...

The President sighed, this was proving fruitless and he only had one more applicant waiting in the ante room. This had better be the man for the job; he needed somebody he could work with. A former accountant for PWC the man walked nervously into the Oval Office, his gangly frame and horn-rimmed glasses straight from central casting. Donald looked him in the eye and asked “What is two plus two?” The accountant got up from his chair, walked to the door, closed it, came back and sat down. Leaning across the desk, he said in a low whisper, “How much do you want it to be?”

Make your mind up!

Sometimes it is better to make a decision, even a bad decision, than to decide nothing at all. The limbo of dither holds glory for nobody. Rather than be a sitting duck, awaiting certain death at an uncertain time, better to fly into the jaws of fate with a chance that fate may be caught napping and you get to quack another day. It is a feature of humans that for all our big brain power we are often remarkably slow to learn such things.

The leap of faith that launches stratospheric success can also plunge the jumper into penury, but at least it’s living. Sitting, waiting, even demanding that somebody, anybody-but-you, does something is a fool’s fantasy. Take a chance, buy that lottery ticket, apply for that job you secretly feel under-qualified for, start that business, jump out of that plane, streak naked down Oxford Street... roll those dice. If necessary roll the dice to decide which way to jump, but for pity’s sake, jump!

What Donald Trump has done – at least on the surface – is dismantle in just a week, all the inactivity of the Obama years. Some of his decisions will reap rewards and some will be simply catastrophic but guess what, the blood is pumping. The USA is alive with tingling expectation or spasms of dread, but it has a pulse again after many dormant years. The pulling together which happened after 9/11 was quickly dissipated as the failed liberal-left project to neuter the world turned unity and pride into shame and inaction. Well, the boot is back on the other foot.

Kennedy said “Ask not what my country can do for me...” for in truth that way lies indolence and weakness. But Trump is saying “What can I do for my country?” and he is asking it out loud with deeds as well as fancy words. Will he be a great president? Will he be a disaster? We won’t really know for years, possibly decades, but right now he is the man in the big chair and all the mewling and puking of the infant malcontents of the destructive and unruly left won’t change that very soon. While he has executive powers he’s shown he’s going to use them.

Whatever you think of the man, however much you need to believe he is where he is from sheer luck, however much you hope to see him fall, the reality is he’s not afraid to ‘just do it’. Maybe, instead of shrinking, horrified, from even attempting to take a lesson from the ginger-mopped monster you could try it some time? Actually, for once, instead of choosing a side that makes you feel warm and fuzzy but ultimately achieves nothing, you could decide to do something; something for yourself, something better than taking to the streets chanting pointless slogans. 

Who are you looking at?

Hey, you might fail, but you already failed yourself and wasted your potential if you didn’t give it a go. While the mob is making a mess you could make a success. Trainspotting 2 opens very soon and as much as Ewan McGregor’s recent anti-Trump sentiments may have fed your fear, Renton’s opening speech in the original movie inspired a generation twenty years ago: “Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family... Choose your future. Choose life.” Choose. Try it. What have you got to lose?

What’s the alternative?

The latest variant in the fake news phenomenon is the ‘alternative fact’ farrago. Both of course, are intended to deceive but as Groucho said “Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others” Over the years many news organisations have been accused of distortion and even gross deception in order to serve a narrative, but in recent years the whole business of lying to the world has been legitimised by spin doctors who are now so bold they can repeat a barefaced lie to camera a hundred times without batting an eyelid.

We used to need an outlandish figure like Robert Maxwell to carry off such astonishing effrontery but now it seems as if it is the carefree, everyday normality of organs which should stand for truth and justice. Ah but, whose truth and what do you mean by justice? Is it just to let people starve while others grow fat, or is it kind to let people grow fat and ill while others stay fit and thrive? Is welfare really a human right? And what is the real truth behind climatological carbon? A good rule of thumb used to be ‘follow the money’, but the democratisation of lying muddies the audit trail.

We seem, many seem, to need a backing track to our lives, a tune to sing along to, a theme to tie it all together, but why do we think, or why do some of us think, there has to be such meaning? It used to be religion but what if – and here’s a shock to the system – there is no order to our universe and things just happen? Some things are true and others are not, but every now and then, quite often if we’re honest, what we expect to be the truth turns out not to be. A nutter kills Saint Joe Cox, which somehow proves that all who voted to leave the EU are vexatious simpletons with Nazi sympathies. Yet looters who plunder businesses and try to harm the police are excused because they’re upset about the outcome of a vote.

These things aren’t really part of an organised whole, but the extent to which some parts of the whole are organised can be telling. It’s hard enough to distinguish truth from tittle-tattle from the vantage point of a distant observer, but how do you do it when you are a throbbing part of the enraged mob? Is it an ideology, or just a fun day out in town? The flimsy rationale for some allegiances often hangs by a single thread; the left is good, therefore the right is bad and there’s an end to it. Once you have decided which side you’re on that side can do no wrong, but how do you break free from groupthink?

To be able to tell fact from fiction you need to do more than accept face-value, bias-confirming soundbites. You need to be educated but not indoctrinated, widely read but not too fickle, informed but also incisive. Oh and you need to be impartial, the hardest thing of all. It is said that critical thinking skills are thin on the ground but even possessing all of the above humans are notorious for making poor choices: ‘I can’t afford the thing, I can’t afford the thing... Honey, I bought the even more expensive version of the thing!’

The expensive thing many seem to want to buy right now is that life can be made wonderful by the application of government. Dream on. You want a good life, you have to work for it. It really is as simple as that... you just have to break free of the chains you have meticulously wrapped around your thinking. It is nobody else’s job to make you wealthy, healthy or happy... or wise. This, undeniably, is true, but it’s also hard. What’s the alternative? There isn’t one, but sometimes it is just easier to accept the truth you want to hear.