Too Useless

Naturally enough there is already an enormous volume of commentary on Donald Trump winning the US presidential election. Yet assigning motives and influences to millions of voters has too many plausible aspects to be framed tightly enough for articles, interviews and in this case - blog posts.

For example, it was always possible that Kamala Harris was there to lose the election, isolate the Biden era as an aberration of the past and quite possibly make money and build opportunities on a Trump presidency. 

We might back this up by pointing out that the absurdity of the Harris candidacy became too obvious too quickly to have been entirely unforeseen by wealthy Democrat backers. 

If so, perhaps Kamala Harris was too useless and inauthentic to be plausible as a genuine candidate and the political establishment always knew it. Maybe, but this angle is merely one among many, a possible aspect of a complex event with many other viewpoints.

But she was an absurd candidate.

Unburdened By What Has Been

 

It doesn't look very iconic

  

Council signs off on plans to flatten iconic Ellesmere Port youth centre

A landmark youth centre in Ellesmere Port will be flattened to make way for low carbon homes after demolition plans were given the green light.

Cheshire West and Chester Council’s planning department has signed off on an application to bulldoze the The Oasis Centre on Coronation Road to pave the way for a £13m regeneration project.

AI Says -

The term "iconic" typically refers to something or someone that is widely recognized and well-established, often symbolizing a particular quality or idea. It's usually used to describe things that have had a significant and lasting impact on culture or society. For example, iconic landmarks like the Eiffel Tower or the Statue of Liberty are instantly recognizable and hold special meaning beyond their physical presence.

In a broader sense, something iconic often transcends its original context to become a part of popular consciousness, evoking strong emotions or memories.

Nope - it doesn't remind me of the Eiffel Tower or the Statue of Liberty and doesn't appear to transcend anything worth remembering. Maybe appearances are deceptive... 

Maybe appearances are not deceptive. 

Sounds as if he's been reassured

BBC should not have to justify ‘very existence’ every 10 years, says chairman

New BBC chairman Samir Shah said the corporation should not have to justify “our very existence” every 10 years and the Government should have the confidence to say “the BBC is a really good thing”...

He told an audience of leading media figures and decision makers on Tuesday that he questioned whether the BBC needed a “root-and-branch review of everything we do, including our very existence” every 10 years.

If the BBC shouldn't have to justify its existence every ten years then it sounds as if government doesn't expect any such justification and Mr Shah knows it. The BBC as official state broadcaster sounds grim but not unexpected.

Mr Shah said: “In reality, it is possible that in January 2028 the BBC stops existing and the Government just sells off its assets.

He already knows this isn't going to happen in January 2028 and his job is to sell the BBC as hard as possible until it doesn't happen. 

Vote Dystopian

As many will know, "The Machine Stops" referred to in an earlier post here is a science fiction story by E. M. Forster published in 1909. Usually said to depict a dystopian, machine-based future, I've read it twice, once years ago and again more recently. A Wikipedia description and an excerpt are given below.


From Wikipedia

The story describes a world in which most of the human population has lost the ability to live on the surface of the Earth. Each individual now lives in isolation below ground in a standard room, with all bodily and spiritual needs met by the omnipotent, global Machine. Travel is permitted, but is unpopular and rarely necessary. Communication is made via a kind of instant messaging/video conferencing machine with which people conduct their only activity: the sharing of ideas and what passes for knowledge.

The two main characters, Vashti and her son Kuno, live on opposite sides of the world. Vashti is content with her life, which, like most inhabitants of the world, she spends producing and endlessly discussing secondhand 'ideas'. Her son Kuno, however, is a sensualist and a rebel. He persuades a reluctant Vashti to endure the journey (and the resultant unwelcome personal interaction) to his room. There, he tells her of his disenchantment with the sanitised, mechanical world.

To my mind, the fascination is that many people such as the character Vashti clearly do not see their Machine existence as dystopian - they have adapted to it. How many people today are voting, step by step, for a modern version of E. M. Forster's Machine because each step is viewed as not at all dystopian? Especially with a few promotional tweaks. 

A description of Vashti's room from the book -

Imagine, if you can, a small room, hexagonal in shape, like the cell of a bee. It is lighted neither by window nor by lamp, yet it is filled with a soft radiance. There are no apertures for ventilation, yet the air is fresh. There are no musical instruments, and yet, at the moment that my meditation opens, this room is throbbing with melodious sounds. An armchair is in the centre, by its side a reading-desk - that is all the furniture. And in the armchair there sits a swaddled lump of flesh - a woman, about five feet high, with a face as white as a fungus. It is to her that the little room belongs…

For a moment Vashti felt lonely. Then she generated the light, and the sight of her room, flooded with radiance and studded with electric buttons, revived her. There were buttons and switches everywhere- buttons to call for food for music, for clothing. There was the hot-bath button, by pressure of which a basin of (imitation) marble rose out of the floor, filled to the brim with a warm deodorized liquid. There was the cold-bath button. There was the button that produced literature. And there were of course the buttons by which she communicated with her friends. The room, though it contained nothing, was in touch with all that she cared for in the world.

The last sentence is is one modern readers probably understand more easily that Forster's Edwardian readers - The room, though it contained nothing, was in touch with all that she cared for in the world. How many voters are voting for something trending in that direction?

Blessed is the Machine, for the Machine is spiteful

Sir James Dyson skewers Rachel Reeves' 'spiteful' Budget - 'death of entrepreneurship'

Sir James Dyson has skewered Labour Chancellor Rachel Reeves' Budget, warning it will be the "death of entrepreneurship".

Writing in the Times, the billionaire inventor and founder of the Dyson company, has accused the Chancellor of "spiteful" politics after she raised inheritance tax on farms, family businesses and multi-million pound estates, as well as raising taxes on school fees.


From this perspective, Reeves probably knew what she was doing because political spite does appeal to a large number of voters. 

I don't think much of his vacuum cleaners, but Dyson does have a point.

Blessed is the Machine

'The Machine,' they exclaimed, 'feeds us and clothes us and houses us; through it we speak to one another, through it we see one another, in it we have our being. The Machine is the friend of ideas and the enemy of superstition: the Machine is omnipotent, eternal; blessed is the Machine.'

E.M. Forster - The Machine Stops (1909)