Rant, no, vent,yes.

[smokingboot]

So I left the studio a long time ago, but maintain friendships as best I can. I've made some fabulous friends there, and of course, I have had other colleagues who, while not necessarily close, were at least bearable.But cirumstances bring a harsh light to bear on every wart and pimple, and enough is enough. The same bloody idiot who recently tried to claim that the Normans winning the battle of Hastings is proof that GB can never be conquered, has just come out with the statement that London should be wary of Sharia law taking over because Islam 'over-ran' Southern Spain for 500 years which is why it is called Andalucia.

I didn't lose my temper with him,though perhaps I should have done. I set him straight politely enough.  To equate the Nasrid dynasties with some trumped up fantasyphobia Mail/Express bollocks , as though the Alhambra wasn't a superlative creation, as though Sevilla and Cordoba and Granada had cause to regret that extraordinary flowering, is just so breathtaking in its ignorance,I honestly think if this man picks his nose his brain will cave in.

And yes, I blame Brexit. I blame the fecking license given to be stupid and insulting, all right, my outer friends may say, all right, he's a shit-for-brains, but  at least you know he is now; Brexit didn't make him that way, it just gave him a safer option for self revelation. But there's fecking hundreds of them, all talking nonsense that isn't even internally consistent,  legends of the post factual world. It is right and proper that this imbecile farts through his mouth on the same day Trump is nominated Time's Person of the Year. Holy feck. Pilger hints at a coming war; if avoiding it requires foresight, truthfulness, honesty, or anything greater than the ability to stick our heads in the sand and present our buttocks to the setting sun, we are bloody doomed.

Comments

[semyaza.livejournal.com]

I'm reminded of something that I must have been told at elementary school - that England was never invaded again after 1066. That left me scratching my head since it had enough internecine wars, civil insurrections, bloodless - and bloody - coups, and imperial adventures to keep everyone busy for hundreds of years. So my response is 'same old same old'.

The history of Muslim Spain is going through a revisionary phase and he may have been picking up on that - or maybe he's a know-nothing.

We were always doomed. I knew we'd dodged a bullet at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis but I didn't realise until I started to read more on JFK that we dodged any number of nuclear bullets in the 60s. The generals were itching to nuke anyone they could - East Germany, Vietnam, Russia, Cuba... It was all good.

[smokingboot.livejournal.com]

This gent is a cretin, so I should accept that and be kinder. He believed that somehow the Normans had been defeated 'throughout the years,' after 1066, and that being invaded by the French proved we could never be invaded; he also believed that we needed to get out of the EU in order to maintain the Falklands. These extraordinary interpretations of British history/ policy are lucid compared to his pronouncements on other cultures and countries.

I am out of patience with him.

Re the doom,I honestly thought we had some hope. After all, considering the 60s and 80s, are we really in as much trouble? I thought we had learned. Me and my thoughts.

[semyaza.livejournal.com]

The first part of that sounds like standard schoolboy history - 'we can't be invaded' combined with an intense fear of invasion. It's better to ignore it although I know it's hard when everyone is being so damned stupid. Don't get me started on the Falklands.

The people learn but the powers that be never learn. I'd feel much safer in a multipolar world. Whether we have any hope of such a thing under a Republican administration remains to be seen but I don't believe that we'd have had one in a Clinton administration. She worried me greatly. Not an opinion that I was willing to express on LJ - even skirting around it caused me problems - but I'll say it to you.

[smokingboot.livejournal.com]

I was disturbed by certain aspects of her approach and campaign; We came, we saw, he died? I know that a female candidate may well feel the need to be uber tough in order to dispel the myth of womanly weakness, but it was unseemly. Nor did I like the implication that all feminists had a duty to support the candidate with a vagina; freedom surely is the ability to support the candidate whose policies make most sense to you irrespective of those things.

But, had I been an American, I would still have voted for her over Trump. All Trump really has going for him is his potential turn away from current bombing campaigns, which is great unless he replaces them with others. And of course, he has other policy 'ideas' bouncing around his cabinet of curiosities...

[semyaza.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't have voted for either of them but, like John Pilger, I was more worried about Clinton. If nothing else, and as one progressive commentator has said, Trump will put an ugly face on policies that the Democrats have been getting away with for years.

Trump might want to withdraw from foreign wars but US interference abroad has been a long time in the making and is likely to continue. Ah well. Keep the plebs happy with bread and circuses and perhaps they won't notice.

[smokingboot.livejournal.com]

I do not understand why Obama, whom I am inclined to like, presided over such a pigs ear of foreign policy. I know American foreign intervention is an old devil and thought he would be the one to rein it in.

[semyaza.livejournal.com]

There are two possible answers and they're not mutually exclusive - he never meant a word of it and/or he was so surrounded by neocons that he was unable to push back. Personally, I'd go for 'lame duck president with no substance'. In any case, Democrats don't have a good record when it comes to military adventures abroad.

Yes, I'm exceptionally cynical.

[smokingboot.livejournal.com]

I am not sure what he could have done, given the activities of Congress; but I am not very au fait with how American politics really works. I do not think that America or the world will benefit from the replacement they have chosen, unless they can keep him tweeting so constantly that his hands never hover over the wrong button.

[semyaza.livejournal.com]

Not endorsing the suspension of habeas corpus would have been a good place to start.

[smokingboot.livejournal.com]

Indeed, that seemed neither honest nor wise.