It's just struck me (and several million others, no doubt) that there's a very good chance that our Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, may have effectively sold classified information to the Russians by giving the oligarch Evgeny Lebedev a peerage in 2020. (Peerage = seat in the House of Lords. House Of Lords = US Senate)
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| That's not a snarky sobriquet - that's his official title. Lord of Hampton And Siberia |
That isn't the worst of it. The worst of it is that nobody outside of Twitterland gives a flying fuck about it.
Our political system is hopelessly compromised, both the Left and the Right seem to have sold out to the Russians lock, stock and barrel. In fact it reminds me of things I've read about pre-Euromaidan Ukraine.
The only senior person in the system behaving with any kind of honour is the leader of the Opposition, unfortunately he is a bit of a charisma vacuum and he is under attack by the left wing of his own party, who are being suspiciously supportive of the Russians (blaming NATO for everything, etc) and not uttering a peep about the very blatant corruption of the ruling (right wing) party by the Russian oligarchs. They're not demonstrating outside of the many properties owned by them, they're not demonstrating outside the Russian embassy, they're just running around with their dumb placards waving Soviet flags and chanting their stupid, bleating chants.
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| I'm not kidding! Actual footage shown. |
I repeat: The Left in this country are failing to criticize the Right for selling us out to the Russians, which they have done. (For example Brexit was notoriously funded by Russian money). Is this ideological, or have they also sold us out? (They wouldn't be the first.) The ONLY people telling the truth are a few liberal journalists and the not very popular, incredibly bland opposition leader Sir Kier Starmer, who has as much chance of being elected Prime Minister as I have of being elected Pope.
It is worse than you could possibly imagine. We are basically a Trojan Horse of the Russians, we are talking a good fight but actually giving them time to hide their money before we implement any sanctions. At this point I have to wonder if any of the weapons we're supposedly giving the Ukranians even work.
Speaking of which, we're now officially turning away Ukrainian refugees. I guess it helps that the electorate have been conditioned to see refugees as the enemy by the same right wing politicians that Putin has obviously compromised - in the case of the PM, by literally having him along to a massive party in an oligarch's castle.
Links as and when I can be bothered. I just had to get that out of my system.
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| Lebedev with his other dog |
Paranoid theory: The Russians have given up on conquering Ukraine and are now deliberately trying to cause a nuclear disaster, or "If we can't have it, nobody can!"
Ukraine is notoriously a breadbasket region: when famine hit, it was often because the Russian government had stolen all their food - and they certainly wouldn't help them if they were in need (A bit like the way the English exploited the Irish).
This is doubtless part of why Ukraine is considered so strategically vital by the Russians - and why a bunch of crazy bastards, who fucking hate us so much they've spent the last decade pushing literal Fascist propaganda into our homes, probably would cause a nuclear disaster if they felt cornered.
In a way, it's perfect for the Fascist mentality: You get to nuke someone without nuking them; remember, Fascists are cowards, and everyone knows that the next person to die after you press the button will be you. But to cause an "accident"? It's ideal! As with Coronavirus, they get to try out their theories of eugenics on an entire population, ie, "The weak will die, the strong survive!", and punish their enemies, AND scare the fucking crap out of everyone on Earth, all at the same time.
I really, really, really fuckiing hope it ain't so.
Sources:
https://carnegieendowment.org/2022/02/24/most-immediate-nuclear-danger-in-ukraine-isn-t-chernobyl-pub-86521
https://www.npp.zp.ua/en/activities/performance-indicators
https://www.wiredprnews.com/russia-ukraine-live-zaporizhzhia-power-plant-on-fire-mayor-says-russia-ukraine-war-news/
https://www.ukrinform.net/rubric-ato/3419559-zaporizhzhia-npp-on-fire-due-to-shelling-by-russian-invaders.html
I didn't think they'd get away with it, but now it looks like they might well do.
That being said, for the sake of argument people are saying it won't be Sunak cos the Tories are too racist. I think it WILL be Sunak, or at least it's possible that they'd pick him anyway because these days even lots of racists like to pretend they're not racist - and he would be the perfect answer to such accusations.
Also, a lot of Labourites have started to completely lose their shit over India / Pakistan (having already done as much damage to themselves as possible over Israel / Palestine), and an Anglo-Indian would cause them to 'sperg out bigtime. Remember that horrible election poster that portrayed the PM meeting the Indian PM as a betrayal of the electorate? That times 100.
That one.
Additionally, Sunak's relatively untainted and nice enough looking that he'd tick boxes with middle class liberals, a demographic that Tories have had mostly lost and desperately need back.
Here's the thing though - nothing is going to change. We're like the Soviets, stuck in a rut, nothing ever changes, politics is just a bureaucratic power struggle for the boss class while the economy is controlled by a rigid, sclerotic ideology.
It's hypernormalization: Everyone knows the system's broken but nobody is allowed to fix it. So we just pretend it's working.
Maybe the reason that dictatorship never really took off in the Anglo-Saxon world is that our ruling classes don't need to impose a dictatorship - they already have absolute control over the country.
Even Mao-Tse Tung, Stalin and Hitler did not go as far as to make swimming illegal. David Cameron did. (He also passed laws which would see the following activities criminalized: Skateboarding, walking dogs, passing out leaflets, busking, running, cycling, sleeping and sitting down, as well as napping, shouting, climbing trees, and feeding the birds.)
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| Boating on the boating lake is a serious crime! | |
Comfortably nested and sclerotic, the British ruling class face no external threats and no internal rivals. Unlike Fascists, they don't have to resort to mass murder to preserve the existing order, and unlike Communists, they do not have to purge an existing order themselves. They are the existing order, one which has existed since 1066 and shows no sign of losing power a millennium later. Open warfare, mass genocide, political purges, civil wars? That stuff were all settled centuries ago. We just don't do that anymore.
Literally - our last genocide was over a hundred years ago, and nobody even remembers it. Even the notoriously tenacious IRA have called it a day and quit. (fortunately - I am NOT an apologist for terrorism!)
All our rulers have to deal with these days are a few working class Johnnies, who are for the most part shut up in large cities away from "decent folk" (ie, rich people). If we stray out of our little bantustans a few Bobbies will suffice to herd us back where we belong but otherwise, all's good in the hood for those toffee nosed fuckers.
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| Remember the Beanfield! |
Also, people don't fight for their rights - so they have none. Britain is so depressingly tame; beneath the radical pose, our activists are pussies when it comes right down to it. After all these years, they still don't understand that class conflict takes place in the terrain of everyday life, not the battlefield of the Spectacle. You can have all the riots you like, we'll still have to go to work in the morning, live in overpriced, rabbit-hutch accommodation, play in controlled, contrived corporate nightmares little different to our workplaces.
And we'll be happy. That's their secret. Somehow, for some reason, most people in this country are happy with their lot. The government treats them like shit, but they love it. They enjoy being treated with contempt - unless of course the people dishing it out aren't in power. Then they get pissy - not so much because they feel insulted by how patronizing liberals and socialists can be, but because liberals and socialists are "getting above their station". They're upsetting the "natural order" which my overly-deferential countryfolk worship like a god - constantly and unconsciously.
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| How fucked up do you have to be to admire these things? |
All of which changes our entire problem from a political one to a personal one: How do I exist in such a suffocating society when I'm the only one who actually feels suffocated by it? Drugs suit some people. Others, insanity. Still others play revolutionary, like those role-playing games that are so popular: LARPers, as they say.
But let's deconstruct this problem we have with deferentialness. I think it comes down to the rural mentality. Anglo-Saxons never really urbanized psychologically, even as they were among the first mass urban societies since ancient times. Perhaps it came too early. In Britain they speak with provincial accents even in the middle of big cities, while in the US they do not entirely retain the same rustic mentality, elections there are rigged to ensure their large rural population has enough political power to decide a Presidential election even with three million fewer votes than the "loser". Meanwhile Australia is still actually a predominantly rural society - as is Canada.
Culturally, Anglo deference shares the same origins: The British peasantry. We have never quite shaken that off. The Russians and French murdered their aristocracy, the German Kaiser abdicated in disgrace, and the other Euro-monarchs have all succumbed to some degree of humility, made some concession to democracy, if not outright Republicanism - but we have always worshipped the royals, the aristocracy, and the rich, and that is our main problem: We have a peasants' worldview.
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| On the nose. PS: Please don't sue me! | |
Perhaps the greatest irony of modern anti-racism is that, far from considering themselves a master race, the problem with white people is that they are so submissive to those in power that they cannot countenance anyone overthrowing their masters for any reason - and will fight tooth and nail to retain their own chains, let alone those of other people. Of course the bastards are racist - they're even bigoted against themselves!
Until that stops, until we see working class consciousness and working class unity, nothing will ever change. People in Anglo-Saxon societies will continue to be dominated by the same arseholes who have run the show for a thousand years: The rich.
Until then, like the song says: Pray for daylight. Or you could always make it happen!
