Speaking in 1938, Neville Chamberlain, then the British Prime Monster, said these famous words: “How horrible, fantastic, incredible it is…a quarrel in a far away country between people of whom we know nothing…a quarrel which has already been settled in principle.” He was, of course, weaselling out of the UK’s treaty promises to come to the aid of Czechoslovakia if it was attacked. We all know what happened next.
Fast forward to 2010: today the UK is having what Yuko, a Japanese woman I used to know, once referred to as a ‘general erection’, as a result of which the latest in the chain of which Chamberlain was a link will ascend to the giddy heights of daring to assume that he knows how to run the country. And what a meal they are making of it. And with such unsavoury ingredients. Just look at these guys.
And these are the cream of the crop, the publicly acceptable faces, the top boys; no way they’d fiddle their expenses to keep their ducks in five-star style, be non-executive directors in firms flogging arms to anyone with the cash, or pour the pork to their cabinet colleagues while wearing nothing but a football shirt. But there are surely others who, if you opened the door and found them on your doorstep you’d be calling for the police at the double and telling your partner to hide the kids, the family silver, or, in Cameron’s case, probably the dog.
Of course, the media have been running saturation coverage the last few weeks; every time someone running for office opens their mouth it seems that someone is on hand to record it and comment on it, however dumb and fatuous it may be. And let’s spare a thought for the poor old spin doctors. They must be running on fumes after all the sleepless nights they’ve surely been having.
One thing that strikes me like a sledgehammer between the eyes is just how grotesquely melodramatic the language being deployed is. Look at this, for example:
The article that accompanies it is full of quotes like this one: “The Conservatives are the only choice if you want to rescue Britain from disaster.” Disaster? Guys, all we’re talking about here is a change of government in one of the most stable and prosperous countries on a planet that these days is largely run by multinational corporations anyway and, as we all should know by now, there’s not really much of a difference between any of the main British political parties these days. If these people spent the first fifteen minutes of their day in the skin of an African villager they’d perhaps wake up and realise what a pile of crap they are talking. This poster has more bedrock common sense in it than the Sun and most of the rest of the UK press ever have:
In Czech there’s a term for this absurd inflation of the trivial into matters of life and death – hence the title of this post. The more I think about the election, the more I'm reminded of Chamberlain's words, but from where I'm sitting it's the UK that seems far way and overly fixated on its parochial business. Whoever wins, most of the campaign promises that were made will be conveniently forgotten or watered down or explained away as being impossible because of something or other that has cropped up. Whoever wins, nothing is going to change too dramatically. Whoever wins, life will go on. Because, as Proudhon said, “All parties without exception, when they seek for power, are varieties of absolutism.”
He also said this:
“Whoever lays his hand on me to govern me is a usurper and tyrant, and I declare him my enemy.”
“To be GOVERNED is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so. To be GOVERNED is to be at every operation, at every transaction noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorised, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be place[d] under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolised, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, harassed, hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonoured. That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality.”
Cool guy. Much, much more on the ball than any of those lummoxes beseeching the British public to vote for them today. Where is he now that Europe needs him?
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