Skip to main content
The West's Dilemma

A recession, or a war, in the past could bring people together and restore a sense of our community. It cannot do so now. Debt has been loaded on individuals and paper inflated out of all control. In addition, the structures of reflection and communication in society have been taken over by people of no faith and few morals, with a self-serving ethic dressed up in righteousness.

They have no intention of protesting at the transfer of vast sums of public money to the financial industry; at illegal wars; at anti-family cults; at the sexualisation of everything; at abortion; at an environmental cult demonstrably not based on science; or at any reified desire of any id, anywhere, unless that of an acceptable social outcast.

But you can complain about two radio characters on the BBC or engage in a harmless but oh-so-thrilling bit of militant atheism on the buses, if it takes your fancy.

This country could renew itself, but it feels to me this morning like a Western state in decline. I also am not sure of any hope from either side of the sea; the eurozone ought to be in meltdown and the clock is ticking. Across the Atlantic, John McCain has shown that he can only go wrong, whereas Obama might eventually go right; but even his capacity to grow might be severely delimited by events.

Barack Obama can't afford his spending plans, won't get his tax cut, the Democrats in congress don't understand that the roads are falling apart and that they must stop spending on pet projects and wars and take care of the homeland. The republicans are basically gone over to a form of fascism which is actually quite popular, as fascism always was. Obama may also just not get elected, in which case the roof will fall in. If he does, the Republican party and its supporters will just basically go mental.

I use that term 'fascism' advisedly too--democratic liberalism, socialism and fascism were genuine and overlapping political systems in the twentieth century, and people got by for decades under all of them. The caricatures of each system which have since emerged shouldn't scare people away from using the terms.

I just want common sense and serious politics back, conducted with good will and a relish for a fight that is worth it. I have no idea if it can be recovered, because the individuals now involved in politics are basically running sects rather than parties, based upon closed minds, everywhere.

God help us.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Congressional Healthcare Bill in America I spent a good deal of this morning and yesterday reading over the proposed American healthcare bill (or at least, a compound version; there appear to be five doing the rounds). I don't want to blog on the details of it immediately. It's also a bill, which may well stall in the Senate or be overtaken by events, and which could yet be critically amended. It is the product of Congress, not the administration per se, and the lawyers have not yet got at it. I had some instant worries about it though. In no particular order, I'll list them; Firstly, it can't allow individuals to choose their doctor and treatment in the long run; instead, it will practically formalise the role of doctors as salaried employees of large medical groups. Sarah Palin is onto something with the idea that this will then allow essentially ideological or non-medical outlooks on, say, euthanasia, abortion, transgender issues, or non-emergency treatments of c...
6 comments
Read more
William Orpen There are four major Christian traditions, which are of course Catholic, Orthodox, Armenian and Coptic. Some sects and cults also exist, like the Moonies or Anglicanism. Yet in some bizarre way this weekend, protestant contributions to something other than the seizure of churches have been making their way into my consciousness. I suppose that the first indication of this trend was a reflection in an old copy of Gibbon that he actually became cultured because of Calvinism. Packed off to Switzerland because he went Catholic at an otherwise boring Oxford, Gibbon fell in love with Suzanne Cuchod, and with Greek because of instruction from a Calvinist mentor. It's an odd thing--I keep coming across indications of Calvinists who could have fun, though they doubtless thought that they would pay for it later, and whose political intelligence was second to none. Althusius springs to mind, for instance. But then what am I thinking, I thought to myself? I've sat on balconi...
11 comments
Read more
Damon Buffini I'm not quite sure what to make of this story. Damon Buffini, a multi-millionaire in the City, and a very accomplished man, seems to have heard staff he regarded as lazy and ungrateful at the upper levels of management complaining about restaurants. He subsequently forced them all to eat two-day old Big Macs whilst reminding them of how lucky they are. It's nice to know that Saturn--in the form of a sort of globalisation guevara--could force his children to eat rather than devouring them, as in Goya's painting. How broken do people have to be not to walk out, though? I guess from his point of view, if they had any spine they'd be in business on their own. The whole thing is horribly fascinating.
Post a Comment
Read more