Thought for the day.

The language of the totalist environment is characterized by the thought-terminating cliché. The most far-reaching and complex of human problems are compressed into brief, highly reductive, definitive-sounding phrases, easily memorized and easily expressed. These become the start and finish of any ideological analysis.

Robert Jay Lifton 

Politics

You know, I find politics hard to reconcile, you have a bunch of folk that, lets face it, we all know are dishonest and self serving, slagging each other off in an effort to prove there's a meaningful distinction between them. It's a kind of pantomime, except that half the audience are shouting, he's behind you! the other half are yelling, get him! All politicians are dishonest, although not all of 'em are completely without any integrity but that dubious honour is ubiquitous amongst the ascendancy of their number. What makes politics and politicians so intrinsically perfidious? That's a tricky one but I think I have a clue, it's because of their collective identity and the need to distinguish that identity from competing ones. You can witness this in action, when politicians and those members of the public who express a partisan preference, take sides on issues. They always tow the party line, well almost always, there's a degree of fluctuation but their adherence is related to the fervency with they align themselves. Witnessing what seems for some, to be the magic that can turn black into white, night into day, failure into success, can be quite spectacular but raises disturbing questions about the nature of the human condition. I'm just wondering, if there is any way out of this insanity, because as the divisions between the political factions have become less and less profound, the intransigence with which the faithful deny reality has become more and more rigorous.

I'm pondering this subject, not just because of the election looming here but I read a post on a blog recently, where the author saw fit to offer up an apologia for living in a particular location with a prevalent political affiliation. What? I mean what? yeah I suppose that might be understandable if you were living in a town where they shoot grandma for fun but it seems a mite queer, not to say presumptuous, to do that over the largely inconsequential standard political divisions. It kinda implies that he holds the notion, that anyone who votes a certain way is evil. Yeah I'm sure that's true for some of 'em but the rest, they're just ordinary people, like you, me even him. So how do people get like that, is that what he really thinks or does the apologetic tone suggest he said it just to cosset his readers' prejudices? Now just imagine what might happen if I called him out, pointed out the not inconspicuous fact, that this attitude was completely barmy, do you suppose he would make the assumption I was acting through political impetus?  I think there's a good chance there would be, do you see how that works to instil division where previously none existed? What I think that demonstrates is the exponential nature, of the expansion of needless divisiveness, it just needs one teeny particle of contention for affiliations to coalesce around, then it grows like a snowball, pretty soon you've got an avalanche thundering down the mountain.

I said all politicians are dishonest, that may not be true because I have spied the occasional member (very occasional) of that fraternity make a stand in the face of the broader consensus. The broader consensus isn't always the product of cabalistic intercession into democratic process, it's just that we're in a place in history where that has become a dominant factor. No that doesn't mean there's a conspiracy, it just that means policy is generally not formulated in the democratic forums that were intended for that purpose. Instead it's agreed through Institutions like the G7/8, The EU, Nato even the UN and other supernational institutions, then implemented through treaty or a lesser commitment. The point is, that these arrangements circumvent democratic process, or at least they do when such decisions are expedited by democratic institutions with no meaningful discussion. That case would the prevalent condition in this country although it's not always true for every nation, the more powerful ones get to form or modify the agendas imposed though these supernational processes and generally ignore any decisions they find inconvenient. What's interesting about the supernational processes is that the tribalism of domestic political division has become reflected in analogous divisions throughout the supernational forum. This, unfortunately, is where things start to get dangerous, indeed in one particular instance, fostering needless division has become very, very dangerous. Not only has this placed us in very real peril, it has destroyed a valuable accord between two erstwhile foes, rewinding the clock a couple of decades.

If that particular snowball were to become an avalanche, we would all be in very serious trouble, heading for the new stone age I would imagine. This would be one of the reasons, I'm not at all keen on people stoking trivial and meaningless division with inflammatory or pejorative rhetoric, like the guy going on about those terrible people in the place he lived, who voted a certain way. In certain contexts the awareness has arisen that divisiveness has a negative impact, it's even become antisocial to express divisive ideas pertaining to those contexts. Good, but does the concept that meaningless division is wrong have to remain discreet to these contexts? Very few people seem to be able to make the leap of generalising that principle. That's nothing new, most of us can't grasp the universality of concepts like mutual respect, rights/liberties and equitable treatment either, so what's the surprise? Quite a while ago, I wrote a not particularly good short story that tackled this subject, so this issue must've been playing on my mind for some while, I wonder how many other people ponder the issue?

Culture shock

I quite like pancakes, because flour is cheap and it makes eggs go a long way, so during the summer I will often knock some pancakes together, from whatever is available. The batter benefits from some fortification, the easiest way to accomplish this, is to make it with milk, if that's not to hand some other fat: butter, dripping, lard or at pinch, vegetable oil will do. It's easier with milk because there's no trouble with lumps, which saves some effort, you can make 'em without any fat, they'll just be a little rubbery that's all. In my naivety I thought My ad hoc approach to the preparation and consumption of these morsels was consistent with the broader approach but I've since found that, for those for who pancakes are more occasional fare, it's more common for precise recipes to be employed. Which is fair enough I suppose, if you're just eating 'em, once yearly on Shrove Tuesday. However I later encountered a conception of pancake preparation that I found far harder to reconcile. Speaking to a friend on the phone, the subject of pancakes came up, perhaps because I prepared some earlier that day. This friend was from the US, so keen to learn the differences between pancakes here and there, I asked for  details of how she prepared them. I was surprised to be told that something called Pancake Mix was available through normal retail outlets and the method employing that ingredient was the most ubiquitous technique. So I expressed my admiration at the advent of such a labour saving commodity, after all think of the convenience, no need to buy eggs or milk. It was at this juncture that the aspect of the commonly employed method of pancake preparation in the US became something of a mystery, because I was more than a little startled to be informed, that you still needed to include eggs, milk or fat additionally, to this so convenient Pancake Mix that you bought in the shop. "So this Pancake Mix, it's just flour then?" I asked, rather tentatively. There was something of pause in the conversation here and maybe the faint tinkle of one or two pennies hitting the floor.

"I don't know," was the answer that came back, I'm still not sure what exactly is in Pancake Mix, perhaps some powdered glucose, included to boost the calories is the justification for the existence of this comestible, who knows?

Calendars

OK, I wanna know exactly what is going on with the calendars, because it's starting to get irritating. The requirements I impose for such items are modest: girls, beaches, not too many cloths, oh yeah and some way of reading the date. This is the second year I've blanked while shopping for the new calendar, everything was hunky dunky right up till 2013 then all I see is footballers with their shirts off, bloody kittens and the kind of landscapes they hang on the walls of mental institutions. What happened, the cute girls go on strike or something? If you have a clue, please let me know.

Catcher -- Liar

You remember those books from your school English exam? My exam board had some quirky books on their lists, you know the kind of thing they include to modernise the curriculum. One 'em was Billy Liar, Keith Waterhouse's, day in the life work. It's not a bad book actually, from what I recall, I re-read it several years later it's a kinda interesting work because it exemplifies post war English culture albeit through a regional aspect. It's got some mild satirical references to the funeral trade, which went a bit over my head, I think probably because the references are too specific and were a bit dated. My conception of the work didn't really gel in my mind until I read J. D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye, after I'd done so it struck me that Waterhouse was satirising Salinger. Salinger's oft lauded work has a substantial fan base, mainly amongst angst fuelled post teens from across the water. It's unusual, or was, to find British fans of the work though, mainly because Salinger is an apologist for self obsession, wearisome self obsession, the kind of self obsession that spawns things like Oprah.

In Britain, introspection is sitting alone in a corner of the room, occasionally gazing through a window. In America introspection is finding the best corner of the room from which other people can notice you introspectively contemplating the vista through the window. That is, or was rather, the essential difference between Britain and America, from my slightly jaundiced perspective anyway, I make no claims for impartiality. That anology essentially empitomises the differences between the books too, Catcher reads like a tale, carefuly crafted to cast the protagonist in a sympathetic light. Liar reads like a similar episode but as it actually happened, the demonstrative antics exposed as insincere, symbolic and impotent. I once asked someone who recommended Catcher to me, to read Liar and tell me what they though of Billy. They complied with the request but were somewhat confused, they felt no sympathy for Billy, instead they considered him to be a duplicitous, pathetic loser. That's probably a fair assement and I'm sure Waterhouse would've approved, 'sfunny even though I probably feel the same about Billy I'm more inclined to feel sympathetic towards him than Holden.

Anyway, it's been ages since I read either of these, so it'll be interesting to re-read them again just to see if my recollection of the works hold up.

A day

My mood picked up just enough today for me to attempt some household tasks, I did the laundry and although i hung it out a bit late, it was quite a fine breezy day. So I decide to walk into town, on the way I pop into Billy's to get  a snack, there's a bit of a queue, some parents with their kids, you know the sort of thing. So the whole exercise takes a bit longer than it should and by the time I get out of the shop the I notice that, from out of nowhere, the sky has turned ominously cloudy, I decide it would be better to return to take down the washing, as I make my way back the weed blows more briskly and sky gets darker, 50 yds from home the sky opens up and all the shit starts to rain. I pull the laudry from the line as quickly as I can, destroying the pegs in the process -- it  rains harder, it took me about 20 seconds to pull the washing from the line during which it went from dampe to soaked.

I'm just so fed up with this shit.