 |
| Stormy weather in Horseshoe Bay. |
The Donald...Duck...Dux...Il Duce...Duckie (pronounced with a long u, the way I used to be addressed as a young lad on the buses in Nottingham!):- Fiona and I are still trying to decide what to call the new incumbent of the White House. After all it’s presidentially infradig to use the name blazoned on the baseball caps, carpet slippers and just about everything else in Trumpland! We seem to be settling for Duckie. 'America first, quack quack!'
He certainly is proving a Godsend to the newspapers that he purports to despise; never a dull moment so far! And he certainly has a knack of putting everyone on the spot! Here am I, a conservative liberal rebel just back from ‘metrosexual’ London, having I hope adequately spelled out my opposition to Brexit, nationalism, isolationism, chauvinism, narcissism etc, but who nonetheless has to admit that this Duckie fellow does have just a few points going for him that the liberals cannot get.
It’s undeniable that his cavalier attitude to facts and his vanity are appalling, and these are bound to result in incoherent and dangerous policies. However there he is with whatever it takes to throw political correctness to the winds, and with it some of what might be termed the foundational lies of the post-truth age. I refer to old chestnuts like calling the deliberate destruction of a human life a ‘right’, or a relationship of two persons of the same sex a ‘marriage’.
Likewise I realise better than most that the Brexiteers are challenging the European establishment to face up to many issues that they seem to have thought they could safely ignore. I have witnessed the systematic destruction of the hopes of Irish fishing communities, for instance, which occurred primarily on the watch of the Common Fisheries Policy, although the national government was not shaping to do any better before it. Looking through the American prism helps us to see that this is just one little piece in the failure of neo-liberal market capitalism, which has left too many people out of the technological wonderland that it promotes. The whole creaking system of bureaucracy meanwhile gobbles up public money more for its own survival, it sometimes seems, than for whatever good it may or may not do.
While I can sympathise with the Brexiteers and Trumpites thus far, I completely disagree that we will solve these problems by going back to nationalism, that has failed so catastrophically in the past. Anyway, I cannot get away from the suspicion that their so-called ideals are more of a cover for the shady corporate interests that tend to dominate the modern world than anything else, while the national governments tend to be more accessible to graft than the EU. I recall brown envelopes for politicians being even a help in securing fishing licences! Also, contrary to the impression generated in sections of the British press, it is obvious that there are all sorts of efficiencies to be gained by combining the work of 28 separate governments.
I may have spent my life trying to find an effective alternative to neo-liberal market capitalism, but I do not claim to have one. However, I have some firm convictions as to how to set about developing one, while I'm quite certain Trumpites and Brexiteers will not do so, with their dreadful divisive ‘cowboys and indians’ approach, their 'might is right' attitude and the everlasting glamorisation of wealth.
One good place to start along the path to a real alternative is with the recognition that we are all, I mean the entire human race, in this together, and the reckless pursuit of our own interests or supreme prioritising of our own security will be counter-productive. There is no real way forward but by listening to ‘the other’, in humility; by striving for consensus, being ‘slow to claim one’s rights’, endlessly patient. A reverence for truth and physical reality will go a long way to help as well, and steering clear of bogus notions like ‘the will of the people’.
I may have spent my life trying to find an effective alternative to neo-liberal market capitalism, but I do not claim to have one. However, I have some firm convictions as to how to set about developing one, while I'm quite certain Trumpites and Brexiteers will not do so, with their dreadful divisive ‘cowboys and indians’ approach, their 'might is right' attitude and the everlasting glamorisation of wealth.
One good place to start along the path to a real alternative is with the recognition that we are all, I mean the entire human race, in this together, and the reckless pursuit of our own interests or supreme prioritising of our own security will be counter-productive. There is no real way forward but by listening to ‘the other’, in humility; by striving for consensus, being ‘slow to claim one’s rights’, endlessly patient. A reverence for truth and physical reality will go a long way to help as well, and steering clear of bogus notions like ‘the will of the people’.
Western democracy only became possible when mankind began to admit that the only will capable of uniting human beings in freedom and integrity is that of God. While we Christians pray that this will of God be done on earth, we also know this to be a work in process beyond any secular set-up. But surely one does not need to be a Christian to realise that life is infinitely more grand, complex, interesting, mysterious and exciting than any human ideology or set-up can do justice to!
Democracy allows people to have their own wills and respond in their own way, and when anyone who disagrees with the current dispensation are told that they are ‘traitors’, well then we should have learnt by now that we are being short-changed and on the road to tyranny. The institutions of democracy have indeed to do their best in the circumstances of the day, making messy compromises if necessary so that vital common action may be undertaken; but meanwhile Lady Truth herself is rather more likely to be found among the poor and in those whose minds are not distorted and clouded by the pursuit or enjoyment of power! Any real democracy must learn to hear their voices, though if the wheel turns and they do come to power, well she will probably swing around to the other side!
By the way, if such considerations as these don’t
convince you that nobody has any business trying to close down the Brexit debate on account of that referendum, nor Mr Kenneth Clarke's eloquent words in the House of Commons, how about this:-
 |
| Back to work. |
Thank God we decided to rear our family here in Ireland, but it’s a pity that Irish opinion has not been taken into account although we are bound to be profoundly affected by the outcome. I can only hope we will find the strength to contribute to a European Union that will hopefully become much more proactive and dynamic without the constraints imposed by the everlasting imperial nostalgia of too many of our neighbours on the bigger island.
As for the Brexiteers palling up with Duckie, all I can say is Good Luck, and I sincerely hope they will be able to put some manners on him! But unless most of what we have been taught about economics for the last fifty years is rubbish, he will provoke an economic disaster. Then it will be time to find someone to blame, and I’m not sure the Arabs or even the Chinese will altogether do for that. One has to remember that these dudes in Washington got their education from Hollywood. It is extremely disquieting and ominous that they are already lining up a dodgy narrative about Germany.* But I even heard a perfectly intelligent person in England, who voted for Brexit, blaming Germany for it. Oh...My...God!
No comments:
Post a Comment
I welcome feedback.... Joe