The last few lines of John Buchan's poem -
PLAIN FOLK
Unnumbered as the autumn corn,
With all the brains and all the skill
Of stubborn back and steadfast will,
We rose and, with the guns in train,
Proposed to deal the cards again,
And, tired of sitting up o' nights,
Gave notice to our parasites,
Announcing that in future they
Who paid the piper should call the lay!
Then crowns would tumble down like nuts,
And wastrels hide in water-butts;
Each lamp-post as an epilogue:
Would hold a pendent demagogue:
Then would the world be for the wise!—
But ah! the plain folk never rise.
4 comments:
It might be that the act of rising causes the "plain folk" to change character and become the demagogues and the tyrants. Historically, that seems always to have happened - it's the circulation of elites written about by Mosca and the early 20th Century elite theorists. Our problem seems to be to fend off the snotty types on horseback, and also the intellectually defective ideologues that mass education has emboldened to take their place. The Tsar is terrible, but the Bolsheviks are even worse.
Sam - yes it does look like circulation, revolutions brings it into sharp focus. Unfortunately the intellectually defective ideologues go to great lengths to persuade us that they are far better than the snotty types on horseback and it seems to work.
I'm kind of hoping that the plain folk will rise when the true costs and consequences of Net Zero finally start to hit them properly.
Well, one can hope; there's not much else left.
Peter - that's one of my hopes too. I don't think it's a forlorn hope either, because Net Zero is likely to be too problematic to fix before the problems become embarrassing.
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