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Sunday 3 January 2016

Old gods are dying


Men of courage, with strong bodies and quick brains, men who have come of a strong race, have taken up what they had thought to be the banner of life and carried it forward. Growing weary they have stopped in a road that climbs a long hill and have leaned the banner against a tree. Tight brains have loosened a little. Strong convictions have become weak. Old gods are dying.
Sherwood Anderson - Windy McPherson's Son (1916)

As ever it pays to be realistic about cherished ideals and our ideal of Britain as an independent nation seems destined for the chop. It’s a tragic spectacle for many, but that’s no reason to deny the reality of it. Devolution is merely a stage in the process, the shadow of the axe.

There may be a few moves left such as a solid rejection of the EU in our forthcoming referendum, but if that one fails surely it is game over. It appears to be our last move with nothing else on the horizon. The demise of Britain won’t happen quickly but if current trends are any guide then happen it will. In which case the Britain many of us grew up in will have gone forever so we may as well get used to it. Goodbye Britain, hello whatever.

So what to do? There is little one can do other than look after personal and family interests, enjoy life and say what ought to be said within those ever tightening political limits. Apart from considering the possibility of emigration that’s about it.

The world is changing because that is what it does and here in Britain we voters have put far too little effort into working out how to guide the changes to our national advantage. We were too complacent, too lazy, too happy to park our trust with those who never deserved it. As a result Britain has all but gone and there is no point in piling all the blame on the political classes. We voters did our share simply by knowing nothing and doing even less.

For now the names and the history remain plus misleading echoes of business as usual, but all that seems likely to change as the global net tightens, as freedoms are forgotten, as people are forgotten, as you and I must one day be forgotten.

7 comments:

Sam Vega said...

How I wish that this post were fundamentally mistaken. But it's not. I guess we will have to find different entities to identify with (as you say, family is about it at the moment) and hope that the protection which nationhood afforded will come from somewhere else. It would be some consolation if Europe had survived, at least as a possibility of cultural orientation; but that is also going fast.

Sackerson said...

Where's you like button/ I haven't anything clever to add.

A K Haart said...

Sam - some of those entities could be Facebook, Amazon, Manchester United, Waitrose, the BBC, Eastenders, Christmas etc. Queen and country are long gone.

Sackers - thanks, I've given a like button some thought but it feels too casual to me.

Scrobs. said...

As for the BBC, we find more and more that the mute button and a well known expletive, does the trick.

Other than the bits of news we choose to know, the rest of their programmes can go hang!

At our ages, we don't really give a hoot; family and friends are much more important.

Flyinthesky said...

Like Sackerson says, you can't add much to that just be awestruck by the reality of it.

To me it's all based on risk aversion and we have been carefully programmed to be risk averse.
The siren call at every occurrence "what's the government going to do" The population have been systematically disempowered and infantilised.

Gone are the days of gung ho, let's get stuck in, take a chance.

I fear the status quo will carry the day, what you can't seen to get across to people is the benefits of the status quo are diminishing daily.

Demetrius said...

Wotan, where are you when we need you?

A K Haart said...

Michael - I find that as I care less I seem to see more, which doesn't help.

Fly - yes attitude to risk is a major issue and it isn't easy to see how things could improve.

Demetrius - not in Dave's cabinet that's for sure.