If you’d called my home a rat hole last week, you’d have wounded the dignity of fleas. I was a disgrace, and one with no memory of ever uttering the words “Tawny Port”, much less of Tawny Port’s ingestion. Still, the archipelago on the kitchen floor could have been formed by no other wine, and no other person but me. When two independent parties agreed that yes, it was Tawny Port, I had no choice but to conquer this, and all other islands of filth. I cleaned house for two days, then, with bleach and port all gone, I spent a third day aiming to chuck the least of my books.
This work, as you probably know, is pointless. I find a passage of such resonance so quickly, I stop tossing. I praise myself for acquiring such a rich collection, forgetting that (a) I still own an awful lot of awful Margaret Atwood, and (b) the resonant passages were not resonant, nor were they found by chance. These were passages marked by my teenage thumbs.
“Hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man.”
“Wow,” I said, before accepting that this bit of Nietzsche resonates only in my memory and not in any adult head, with the likely exception of this one. Uncut pessimism is only for the emo teen, and/or Clinton supporter. In 2017, we grown-ups must see some glow in the abyss, or give up on human history.
There were very few signs of light in the West this year, but, in the effort to grow up, I figured I could spot three:
1. UK election
Yes, the Tories cling to power, but much in the way Mark Latham clings to a conviction that he’ll ever clock more views on YouTube than my 12-year-old niece’s unboxing of the PlayStation 4 Pro. To be fair, my niece is much more telegenic than The Outsider, and far livelier talent than the UK Prime Minister. Then again, the box in that unboxing video is more compelling than May, who is unable to convince voters she is either an empowered Spice Girl Thatcher “I Don’t Need No Man” type or a sentient human.
Let’s set aside the failure of May and her party to stand for anything but an austere past and mediocre present. Let’s consider the figure of Jeremy Corbyn.
It is, perhaps, no secret, that your reporter is a fan. Give me any chap who can make his own jam, any politician who can utter the name “Marx” without dry-heaving, I’m basically gone. Give hundred of thousands of young Britons a basic tutorial in their economic history, however, and history will change, whatever I have to say about it.
It is true — for the leftist, at least — that Corbyn’s prescriptions are more Keynesian than commie. It is also true that he has liberated politics from the parliament and pushed it to the place that most of us agree is rightful: with the people.
2. YES
I do not buy very much at all of what was sold by the Yes campaign. Those claims that marriage can cure the mentally unwell, pacify malignant homophobes or legitimise relationships already recognised in law were shaky. Those corporate endorsements made me nervous — will the state only listen to a “grassroots” movement when it comes with the approval of our biggest banks?
But I guess I don’t get to say that hundreds of thousands of young people are marvellously engaged if joining UK Labour, and just a bit dim if they enrol to vote for a principle that doesn’t excite me at all.
The point is, they were excited. And, now, they are triumphant. My historic hope is that this mass of kids becomes very used to getting its own way, and when it’s time to tell the policy class to shove its avocado moralising and make with the wealth equality, they’ll do it very well.
3. Donald Trump
No, this is not that thin argument advanced by some celebrities that a bumbling nativist could bring forth revolution. You don’t need to be Nietzsche to see such hope as torment.
You might be one of the better authors on an old bookshelf, though. Antonio Gramsci’s old advice for changing history is usually written as, “Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will.”
Trump accelerates not just the crash-landing of American Eagle spirit, but those market-friendly policies both Democrats and Republicans have built since the death of FDR. The change was once so gradual and politely explained. Now it is acute, and plainly vulgar. It leaves a trail, and it is my evil hope that this will be recognised by the many as history.
OMG! OMG! I tried, I really rilly tried to find something at which to cast nasturtiums but.
I couldn’t.
One of Mz Razor’s finest ululations.
you many well mean “Tropaeolum” but nasturtium will do because of the plant’s relationship to watercress. There is also the implied inference that Ms Razer is, in your appraisal, a shrinking violet. Be that as it may.
As to the article, it is actually a rather lucid assessment but it ought to be four or five times its current length (to enable additional qualifications and detail). A few links or correlations to politics in Oz would also have been useful.
> Still here?
whenever you need a neck massage (with a baseball bat) I’ll be here (for you) AR. I’m sure that chafing at my heals gives you something to do (or at least it is rewarding in some behavioural sense).
> I assumed that your contract with Menzies’ House had expired.
That is a (web) site that I have yet to scrawl upon. Frankly, Crikey offers topics of greater interest.
You do not heal – you are the epitome of a verruca.
Overall, an interesting article but, considering the last paragraph, “Trump accelerates not just the crash-landing of American Eagle spirit..”
I haven’t a clue as to what this turn-of-phrase might mean, however to continue :“but those market-friendly policies both Democrats and Republicans have built since the death of FDR.
The economic ethos, in broad terms, hasn’t changed in the USA since Nixon; his setting up of the current (cough) employer-based, tax benefiting, health-care system has had the effect of creating a perception that only those who wish to change the system must be Communists.
Whether Trump appreciates it or otherwise (he probably is oblivious to it) Trump is an alternative to the Hillary-Wall Street-W.J. Clinton-Bush (father and son)-Obama brigade. One needs only to consider just how much fatter the fat cats have become to identify the “gutting” of the middle and lower orders – who, incidentally, support the status quo in regard to health care. Even FDR eased up on government programmes/spending in 1937 and the economy declined (again) in 1938. The remainder of the world was more or less out of the depression by this stage.
Trump is representative of the new right. Various organisations such as NATO and the UN will find themselves having to pay their own way. The recognition of Jerusalem could be rescinded in a tweet along with a pardon or two in the same message.
“The change was once so gradual and politely explained. Now it is acute, and plainly vulgar.”
I think I’ve just heard the glass break in the glasshouse. There are more than a few Ministers who would have lost their portfolios thirty odd years ago but being caught is the crime nowadays. Crikey has even come to the defense of a few of the culprits.
As to the future of Labor (or Labour) parties in general Corbyn is one of the few (or only) politican(s) who realise that the Party much determine its own course and not seek appendages of agenda items from the Greens or whomever. Work practices have changed and consumer debt is endemic. The game has changed utterly.
The comment “.. and it is my evil hope that this will be recognised by the many as history” rather assumes that there will exist those with sufficient (literacy) skills to read and interpret history. We’ll see!
Still here?
I assumed that your contract with Menzies’ House had expired.
The crash landing of the American eagle?
Just some words about the end of exceptionalism. The eagle is well known, right?
Yes. I could have gone on much longer. But this was a quick review. You will find that I have written about these things often. I do appreciate your critique and love that you want the longer read. But, we’re a daily news and analysis concern, here, K. Can’t be doing the novellas. Not more than once a month, in any case. Folks have places to be!
Thanks for your comments and interactions throughout the year. Hope to see you here again in 2018.
That goes for youse all.
Yeah, right. Just the rise of fascism accelerated the crash-landing of German Eagle spirit and the market-friendly policies of industrial and financial capitalism in the 1930s. Somehow I can’t hear Gramsci (who died in a fascist prison) cheering you on.
Gramsci wrote about the possibilities of the interregnum. The answer need not be fascism. Which is kind of what his writing was all about, no?
Well, pleased that you had some glimmers, if not quite a rainbow? Agree that the SSM thing was a victory of substance over style, a majority of the population just saying to our juvenile politicians “get on with it!” Not quite as sure of those committed enthusiastic young voters however.. probably approached the issue with the same conviction as the right to be “pretty little things” or wear man buns?
Corbyn does come across as a politician you might actually want to hug, but be wary that the current crop of naf conservatives in Britain make anyone look warm and intelligent.
And USA well.. maybe I shouldn’t have started reading “Collusion”, by Luke Harding. Any twinge of paranoia may well become psychosis! But enjoy!
I think it is maybe a little dismissive to say the 100,000 odd kids who registered to vote (after people in that age range not bothering to do so for some decades) are just all a bit man-bunny. They felt strongly about what they saw as justice.
Just to have that political will is important. For them to have this experience could be really key.
I don’t object at all to SSM, and if we are going to live in a largely unchanged liberal democracy where we all pretend to believe in equal rights that can be delivered by law (of course they can’t. A poor young queer kid is still a poor young queer kid and will face exactly the same difficult as they did before the legislation. Our poor queer elders, of which there are many, will still live their particular hell. Those raised in an age where they were routinely cut off from family, ergo with even less support than those of their comrades who never faced that particular rejection) bring it on.
I voted YES. But I didn’t feel the result was anything more than a good rubber stamp for some. Which again is fine. Of course people should have that right. It is just like “don’t confuse this for the sort of thing that will actually change our ideas around justice and equality”.
But (I do go on!) it is mostly for me that some very young kids got involved. And which of us when we were 18 could say that we knew what was true justice, and what was just a cultural nod? My gen didn’t have this experience. There was no mass enthusiasm for anything much in what we could call the political realm. But, here we have kids who did have that experience. So who knows what alliances they could build? Their age might be a bit like the sixties and the seventies where you have a very diverse group of protesters and activists working with each other. Remember when the BLF was forced, by its own rules, to take up feminist causes? When Land Rights campaigners worked to draw attention to Apartheid, when they were no otherwise busy making plans with unions, feminists, public housing tenants and others?
Well. No. I don’t remember it either. But, I’ve read about it 🙂
This could be a beginning. Who knows? Maybe 2018 is the new 1968?
I expect that in 6 months SSM will be accepted as a way of life by all, just as happened after homosexuality was legalised in each state.
Classifying myself as a “queer elder” I have lived through all of that; not sure that anything has changed in terms of reaction by family and friends, its in a persons own insecurities whether they can really accept difference.
(BTW very good foreign correspondent program 18/12/17 on gays in China about this).
I do tune in to a lot of young culture; what despairs me is an eagerness to label themselves in an environment of apparent greater tolerance. That genetic stuff, given too much credence seems to have really just forced orientation decisions instead of maybe trying a bit more life experience.
So your ray of light was that there involvement in this campaign indicated a semblance of political activism; just not as optimistic of that, sorry!
One or two remarks on the observation thus far :
“Just the rise of fascism accelerated the crash-landing of German Eagle spirit and the market-friendly policies of industrial and financial capitalism in the 1930s”
There was nothing remotely anti-capitalistic with regard to the National-Socialists (a wonderful oxymoron); in point of fact Kaiser Wilhelm and Adolf Hitler shared a common trait; viz., their arrogance well exceeded their ability. Had they not become involved personally with the (respective) war and thus permitted their (professional) officers to manage the war the result would have been quite different. Militarily Germany was “ahead” at the commencement of both wars.
> Somehow I can’t hear Gramsci (who died in a fascist prison) cheering you on.
Actually he died a few days later after his release from prison [international demand one might say] but the prison life, inflicted upon him, was the cause of his death. At the risk of typing a “throw-away” remark the working class were encumbered with children up until about WWI. With the advent of pensions family size declined. Excepting the depression, i.e. from post WWII to about the late 70s the economic and political conditions were utopian.
The picture began to change with the loss and manufacturing and the (necessary) increase in service industries in all first world countries and now, instead of children, the lower and middle orders are encumbered with debt. The capitalists could not hope (or dream) for a more compliant workforce! Having written that, it is only too obvious that the lower-order capitalists are being gutted by the higher order capitalists (qua small retailers competing with major franchises and internet purchasing) all the way up to companies that have never heard of taxes. Marx foresaw this event (the concentration of Capital) about 130 years ago.
Returning to Gramsci he was writing when it was all “happening” ; Lenin etc. (whom the Germans permitted to return to Russia [from Switzerland] believing, correctly, that Lenin would withdraw Russia from the War) to circa 1924. The economies of both Italy and Germany collapsed (for various and some similar reasons) during the early 20s; the Gold Standard was still in vogue and the Lira lost 80 per cent of its value between 1914 and 1920.
Have I made the point? Contrary to the opinion of the contributor, Gramsci WOULD, very likely, have “cheered” Mr Corbyn (and Ms Razer) on.
As to one of the replies : it would seem that Ms Razer, perhaps for the sake of brevity, has borrowed Mr Keane’s 6” paint brush. Assuming that the readership of Crikey is knowledge-rich but time-poor Ms Razer, referring to her of her admission, endeavors to write as succinctly as possible. Frankly, in her position, I would give the reader the choice. As with a dog the reader may return for a “bit more” later.
“Remember when the BLF was forced, by its own rules, to take up feminist causes?”
It rather depends upon what we might mean by “feminist” or feminism; nevertheless it is all too frequently overlooked that the Communists (Russia & China) DID educate the women and did offer equal-opportunity (subject to Party allegiance of course). From this perspective, the highly sensitive to surplus value (i.e. as to how it might be retained for the workers) BLF merely observed “their betters”; noting more! The BLF was not so much “forced” but obliged to maintain elements of consistency in respect to the larger model.
“When Land Rights campaigners worked to draw attention to Apartheid, when they were no otherwise busy making plans with unions, feminists, public housing tenants and others?”
Laudable pursuits but it is precisely at this juncture where the “real” Left is disposed to self-harm by intentionally screwing its logic. Sentimentalism may be acceptable in fairy tales but it does not serve well as policy. Avarice is no more common among the rich than among the poor. As Nietzsche pointed out : “morality derives from being able to do harm/evil (translations vary) but refraining from doing so”
“This could be a beginning. Who knows? Maybe 2018 is the new 1968?”
I sincerely hope NOT Helen. Contrary to expectations (I was attending high school at the time) 1968 proved to be the last whimper of a remarkable decade – albeit conservative by modern standards; not the heralding of a new anything. Regarding avarice, contrary to the Logan Act a number of Republicans convinced personalities in South Vietnam that they would get a better deal with the Republicans. As it turned out they received the same deal as Johnson offered! If the 1968 USA election was a “success” I would not regard the election of either Hillary or Donald as a failure.
It seems to me that the year 1969 was more “encouraging”; consider the musical “hair” and a number of intriguing European films. On the other hand Hefner revamped (a more revealing) Playboy. Perhaps it balances-out.
“1968 proved to be the last whimper …”
I agree it was a remarkable decade – I was there too. But maybe instead of a whimper that was just you actually starting to grow up?
you be the judge Lee but the events that began in Paris and came the occupy the entire country did not lead to anything. In any event I would be most surprised (and flatted) if my maturation had a settling affect on world events. The trend over the last 50 years has vindicated Marx and Orwell (in that order).