I myself had already spoken to you of that middle class which hungers so ravenously for place and office, distinctions and plumes, and which at the same time is so avaricious, so suspicious with regard to its money which it invests in banks, never risking it in agriculture or manufactures or commerce, having indeed the one desire to enjoy life without doing anything, and so unintelligent that it cannot see it is killing its country by its loathing for labour, its contempt for the poor, its one ambition to live in a petty way with the barren glory of belonging to some official administration.
Emile Zola – Rome (1896)
Today we know all about the barren glory of belonging to some official administration. From prime ministers downwards, all are familiar with a world of bureaucracy for the sake of bureaucracy.
Ours has become a world particularly well suited to a constantly growing and evolving swamp of bureaucracy which attracts and sucks in those its makes its own. The Swamp as it is sometimes called – it’s a good modern name for a not so modern evil.
Should Mrs H and I wish to extend our house beyond certain official limits we’ll have to acquire official approval. The other day I topped up the AdBlue tank in our car, a bureaucrat’s answer to a bureaucrat’s problem. The whole car is a complex web of manufacturer’s responses to bureaucratic interference. Now we have the EV, a bureaucrat’s car. A Swamp car perhaps, to be powered by Swamp electricity - but not when the wind doesn't blow. There is no Swamp wind.
Senior politicians, senior members of the permanent administration, international bureaucrats, senior members of the judiciary, NGO and Quango executives, senior media people, major journalists, politically active celebrities and many others could be considered as a loose caste with one particular interest in common – support the Swamp, grow the Swamp.
We are stuck in a highly evolved bureaucratic Swamp where we cannot vote for anything but more bureaucracy, more Swamp, more Swamp people, more Swamp-related business. We are entangled with a whole caste of Swamp people who can’t do anything but Swamp-work. Even the UK monarchy joins in.
Nothing escapes Swamp-people. They have their Swampy fingers in everything from the corner shop to the local school, from light bulbs to the road network, from paint to social media, from petrol to sausages, from coffee to missiles to Swamp health, Swamp hectoring. Nothing escapes completely and nothing avoids being sucked in further, decade by decade.
The Road to Serfdom was a warning we failed to heed and now we are faced with our destiny – Swamp Serfs. We were warned and warned again, but still we voted Swamp.
Besides that, a wave of regimentation is sweeping the world—standardized schooling, like everything else out of a tin, is cheaper, easier, and certainly safer than my sort of venture. In the educational sense, as well as every other, individual effort is going to be swamped.
Dorothy Bowers - Fear for Miss Betony (1941)
Should Mrs H and I wish to extend our house beyond certain official limits we’ll have to acquire official approval. The other day I topped up the AdBlue tank in our car, a bureaucrat’s answer to a bureaucrat’s problem. The whole car is a complex web of manufacturer’s responses to bureaucratic interference. Now we have the EV, a bureaucrat’s car. A Swamp car perhaps, to be powered by Swamp electricity - but not when the wind doesn't blow. There is no Swamp wind.
Senior politicians, senior members of the permanent administration, international bureaucrats, senior members of the judiciary, NGO and Quango executives, senior media people, major journalists, politically active celebrities and many others could be considered as a loose caste with one particular interest in common – support the Swamp, grow the Swamp.
We are stuck in a highly evolved bureaucratic Swamp where we cannot vote for anything but more bureaucracy, more Swamp, more Swamp people, more Swamp-related business. We are entangled with a whole caste of Swamp people who can’t do anything but Swamp-work. Even the UK monarchy joins in.
Nothing escapes Swamp-people. They have their Swampy fingers in everything from the corner shop to the local school, from light bulbs to the road network, from paint to social media, from petrol to sausages, from coffee to missiles to Swamp health, Swamp hectoring. Nothing escapes completely and nothing avoids being sucked in further, decade by decade.
The Road to Serfdom was a warning we failed to heed and now we are faced with our destiny – Swamp Serfs. We were warned and warned again, but still we voted Swamp.
Besides that, a wave of regimentation is sweeping the world—standardized schooling, like everything else out of a tin, is cheaper, easier, and certainly safer than my sort of venture. In the educational sense, as well as every other, individual effort is going to be swamped.
Dorothy Bowers - Fear for Miss Betony (1941)
5 comments:
Although you talk quite rightly of "swamp people", one of the swamp's greatest triumphs is the erosion of boundaries between the "swamp people" and everyone else; in a way, we are all swamp people now. Incentives and traps mean that if we want any kind of normal life, we have to participate, and even encourage others to.
Perhaps a useful distinction is between those who enthusiastically impose this and enjoy it, and those who have seen through it and have a sense of their own common wretchedness. It goes without saying that politicians are almost all in the former group, and in Starmer we have an absolute crazed zealot.
Perhaps Trump should have kept the 'Drain The Swamp' quietly... some of the resistance to Trump is almost certainly driven by the fear of losing a comfortable life. Sometimes hysterically so.
Back on these shores Nigel Farage also receives the 'benefit' of some Farage Derangement Syndrome.
Threaten the Establishment and the Establishment is well placed to push back. But that appears to be changing.
Sam - I agree, as I wrote the post I recalled my own history of involvement and the present reality of permanent entanglement. It's very difficult to push back against the enthusiasts because losers only become losers in the longer term and have mostly adapted by then.
DJ - put like that, we can see that Trump and Farage have a difficult balancing act because their appeal is pushback against the establishment. I think you are right though, things are changing. Some of that is the conflict we see, a sharpened awareness that the establishment is not our friend.
"We are stuck in a highly evolved bureaucratic Swamp where we cannot vote for anything but more bureaucracy, more Swamp, more Swamp people, more Swamp-related business. We are entangled with a whole caste of Swamp people who can’t do anything but Swamp-work. "
I've said for some time, the only way this ends is when the money runs out, and the whole thing collapses, as it did in the USSR. Until then there is no democratic way out. Even if every MP was a Reform one, elected on a specific manifesto of swamp drainage, they wouldn't be allowed to enact it. The MPs have no power, they can issue orders but if those being ordered ignore them, or subvert them or directly act to the opposite then they are powerless.
God knows when that point will come, but come it will. It will probably be very quickly and unexpectedly, as in the Romanian revolution of 1989. One minute the inhabitant of Downing Street will think he or she is fine, then next, not so much. Probably on a plane out of the country, as in Bangladesh recently.
Anon - I agree, MPs have no answer to policies which are ignored, subverted or delayed until the next reshuffle. Plus media leaks of course. I don't know when or how or how quickly the pendulum will swing back, but a country such as the UK could absorb a lot of damage before change comes.
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