'A Form of Tyranny.'

[smokingboot]

A moment's frailty: I am ill. This cold has destroyed my sinuses and filled my head with snotty cotton. Everything is disgusting.

Everything else? So 7 Labour MPs break away, and they are reviled as traitors and villains. Is it about anti-semitism? I don't understand the state of public opinion which says we must believe a woman who says she has been assaulted, but not if she is a Jewish woman complaining of being harassed in the Labour party. What made her suddenly less believable?

From the little I have seen, Jezzah's no anti-semite. I think he, like many people on the left and everywhere else, are not pleased with the Israeli government's policy re Palestine, and for sure feelings regarding Palestine do sometimes lead to a regretful vehemence. But the people who paint swastikas are not lefties. This sort of this stuff isn't Labour's way, but something has gone amiss, the lady feels bullied, and it hasn't been dealt with. This doesn't surprise me as Jezzah doesn't deal with anything.

I can't believe that I am seeing such anger among my friends, or rather, among friends who know each other and are close. I argued with some friends re Brexit, and though I lost a couple, they were not dear. Where those pre-conditions existed, we agreed to disagree. But this, among people who like each other and supposedly give each other credit for good will? And then just as we are hearing this stuff about Momentum purging out its moderates, Tories leave the Conservative party, and Anna Soubry details the harassment happening in the blue corner.

https://twitter.com/Channel4News/status/1098230125131456513

It's just the same. Each side heading more towards the fringes, trying to remove/deselect/silence those who don't share the Glorious Vision. I am astonished to read bloggers such as Thomas G Clark (Another Angry Voice) rant like Paul Staines (Guido Fawkes). One's a red parrot, one's blue, one's furious, one's supercilious. They've learned different words. But they're both squawking.

Over to the Right. Over to the Left. Choose your cliff.

Today's old cliche, for this new form of tyranny.

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

I write this and suddenly the room seems very cold. Just a little virus giving me the shudders is all.

Comments

[mallorys_camera]

Right.

But do keep in mind that when Yeats wrote that 100 years ago, a different center was not holding.

And yet here we are all.

Which seems to argue that some center held.

So it always goes.

[smokingboot]

I hope so. The question is where the new centre is to be found.

Dugin argues that the West must be brought low to usher in the new age of Neo-Eurasianism, but I quite like Western values when we really stick to them, as opposed to selling ourselves out for every greenback. And I don't like Dugin's vision of a ruined West and a rising East riding itself of modernity any more than I like Bannon's fourth turning. The trouble with all these proponents of civilisations rising phoenix-like is that they never trouble their imaginations with the victims of the fire. They see society, they don't see people.

I hear it said that for all of the Trumpness of Trump,his power is limited by time and that, short of nuclear war, he's got six years at the most then he's done. I am not sure. There's plenty of other kinds of damage waiting.

And as to what happens to Britain,Dugin has been quoted as saying 'Britain is not just leaving the EU - it is disappearing from history.' Now I don't think that is a terrible thing, if it's really what is happening, because presumably it happens to all civilisations. The Roman Empire died a long time ago, but Rome is still fabulous! The life of people here and now does bother me. I don't think we will be happy being ruled by extremists of any persuasion, unless we become like them. And I really don't want to live in a land where that's a reality.

[mallorys_camera]

I don't know enough about British politics to comment intelligently upon them.

I do suspect that if the Brexit vote were taken now, the results would be different.

And also that throughout history the pendulum swings between fundamentalism and liberality. It seems to be swinging now toward fundamentalism.

The inequality that characterized much of human history could not last once barriers like distance were removed (whether by airplanes or the Internet), so in part what we're seeing now is an equilibrium reaction: Of course, the high-valence atoms—to really torture that metaphor!—are gonna squawk.

I read newspapers for exactly one hour every morning. And I never, ever watch TV news. I get too upset if I consume more media, and really—how does being upset benefit me? I also have the sneaking suspicion that, really, things are not as bad as we're being told they are, and that the-sky-is-falling spin is, in great part, a media ploy to keep us consuming media. I'm very active politically in my own small corner of the world, and beyond that, there is relatively little I can do. Perhaps I'm an ostrich with my head in the sand. And, of course, I live in a backwater, not in London.

[smokingboot]

Yours is a good method for avoiding dread and depression. I too try to keep my political intake to a sane level because of the limits of my ability to affect what's going on, but right now the British political scene is so intense, it's almost inescapable, every screen, every paper, every column. It suffocates everything else, and there's a craziness about it too, a weird febrile quality beyond reason, almost beyond description. As a historian I find it interesting. As something to live through it's thoroughly bizarre.

[mallorys_camera]

Right. But once again, every age is obsessed with the specter of its own apocalypse.

My big dilemma is finding news sources I can trust.

Like I love The Guardian. I regularly donate to them. But I'm aware that it has a liberal tilt, and I would kind of prefer that it didn't. I mean, I have a liberal tilt! But I would like my news sources to be objective. Just the facts, ma'am (as Jack Webb used to say on Dragnet.)

[smokingboot]

Trustworthy news sources are difficult to find. The Guardian's great though it's soooooo depressing! And my god, the guilt! I read it, the Times, and the Financial Times, though none of these regularly. Occasionally I'll wander across to The Atlantic for something long and interesting, but mostly I'm very piecemeal in my approach.

Facts would be great. I tend to check out AP sources and Reuters for those, and I still trust the Beeb. Beyond that, it's hard to say. You're right about every age and its spectre. It's a point worth remembering, especially on a pretty Spring day like this!