Hugh Walpole - The Secret City (1919)
A sobering observation but Walpole was right, we never made much use of our victory over tyranny. Spend decades selling oversimple political solutions for important but complex issues and sooner or later things just fall apart. Too many dud moves have accumulated in the great game. Too bad – we lose.
The coronavirus debacle is a hint of what is being done by the elites to stop things falling apart after decades of political ineptitude. The answer is something which doesn’t work but it suits the elites to give it a go – totalitarian rule. Forget democracy, that has gone the way of the dodo.
The only significant political message from the coronavirus debacle is the draconian police state response by supposedly democratic countries including the UK. The pandemic has gone but the police state continues and it has become painfully clear that this aspect of it is not accidental. How did a police state come to be seen as a solution in a democracy? Simple – there is not enough democracy left to make a difference, merely the shell of what we once relied on.
In a tightly connected world such as ours, even an unforeseen pandemic can be used to further totalitarian political moves which were never unlearned even after the disasters of twentieth century fascism and communism. Here in the UK we see this quite clearly in the coronavirus disaster. The political trend is entirely totalitarian and there is not much further to go before it is complete.
2 comments:
I think Walpole might not have considered the possibility that the victory over tyranny was far from easy, and might well be the best that any polity can manage. Everything else, like the near-boundless natural resources of the USA or the easy climate of the Ancient Greeks and Romans, was just luck.
With regard to the UK, it's interesting how there has been little significant change to our political institutions. It's not like the Civil War. The major change has been cultural, how people - the decent, sensible people, at any rate - will now apparently put up with anything.
It's good to be back, by the way. We have moved to a tiny village and BT have really taken their time over connecting broadband. Still, we can all remember when it was far worse...
Sam - that aspect bothers me, the possibility that decent, sensible people will put up with anything because as you suggest it seems to be so. Important boundaries drift but too many of those decent people do not appear to notice.
A move to a tiny village sounds exciting - dealing with BT not so much.
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