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My blood is thick with
surrender.
Sherwood Anderson - Dark Laughter (1925)
Modern political life is indeed thick with surrender. It is one of the most characteristic features of our times, that constant, nagging demand to surrender as an individual, to submit to the politically fashionable will. Not that this is a dramatic change in the long history of the human condition, but a little while ago something less oppressive and more rational seemed to be in the air. Now all that seems so long ago.
Cameron and Corbyn both preach surrender as a political
philosophy. Neither man seems to have any real notion of the individual as an
agent of change or progress. They expect us to surrender as they themselves have surrendered body and soul to the shifting sands of political fashion.
Surrender to the EU is one of our big
issues at the moment, but there are many more. Cultural surrender is another big one. It swirls through the immigration debate without ever solidifying around the cultural preferences
of those who are already here. Whatever they might be, we are not encouraged to clarify because even our cultural future must be surrendered to the fads and exigencies of the elite.
The whole spirit, the whole ethos of political surrender seems
to be an end in itself. Surrender is what totalitarian political regimes require
as their basic political philosophy. Surrender is the groundwork of modern political thinking where genuine democracy has become a quaint relic of more optimistic times.
4 comments:
I sometimes find myself thinking "It would at least be a bit easier and a bit more dignified if we knew what our masters want to do with us". Is it merely to keep quiet? To carry on producing? To not rumble some big secret? To love them?
And could we surrender without knowing that we have done so? That would be the bitterest realisation, were it to come.
The countryside slowly awakes, pruning apple trees has started, a Polish worker togged up against the rain. But the ditches remain undug, the rivers choked with reeds, the lanes potholed, neglect is everywhere. The yearly cycle has begun. Soon be Easter and the floods forgotten, the funding deceits quietly packed away and new deceits beginning to blossom.
IMHO the EU in/out is irrelevant, our main problem is regression to the mean, each of us worth no more than any average European but many many still overpaid. This game is propped up by property and must come to an end. But Cameron dare not speak its name and must keep the game going as long as he can. Traditionally the Tories go into meltdown every 10 - 15 years through incompetence, arrogance and sleaze and like a crocodile Mr Corbyn's successor will be waiting for us to surrender to his/her jaws.
I give up.
Sam - "And could we surrender without knowing that we have done so?" Many already have and will again when it comes to the referendum.
Roger - couldn't agree more, our main problem is indeed regression to the mean. Not just the EU mean, but the global mean.
Demetrius - a glass of something warming helps.
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