This is a modified (edited for poor and potentially misleading syntax) version of my contribution:
This is one of the best posts (including most of the comments) ever, on this blog. It has captured the zeitgeist entirely.
FWIW, I don’t think Tom is guilty of being one of the “chattering classes” or a rocket munching Islingtonista. This post is one of several that have given clear signals about the dangers of swallowing the myths of the liberal elite, and as I implied yesterday, the tumbleweed could be heard wafting around the HoC in the arid wilderness of political imbecility (when it comes to Tom's refreshing take on young single mothers, for example)
If, as some think, the worm is turning, it is because people are smelling change. There is probably going to be a change of government in May. It is here that history, in one crucial respect, will repeat itself. Margaret Thatcher stands in symbolic relations to the end of union tyranny. She did not destroy the unions – they were decadent and moribund and had run out of moral authority. Everyone knew that the driving mandate of Trades Unionism was not fairness, it was greed.
What is happening today is that the liberal elite have run out of moral authority; they are revealed to be empty of goodness, of patriotism and of principle. If nothing else “climategate” is a paradigm of this.
Why did they do this? Well, it’s mostly their own guilt at being an elite in the first place, mediated by fuzzy existentialism and belief in nothingness.
The deserving poor, are conceived in the crucible of their cynicism and sentimentality, not reality.
If you have lived at the bottom, if you have known what it is to be the only person in your family who had a job or a degree or achieved any measure of success, you know that to be poor is not noble, it is shit.
“They” just don’t get this. Unable to really identify with normality: perpetual poverty, low peer expectations, lack of opportunities, they impose top down solutions which are predicated on revenge and expiation of guilt, not the apotheosis of excellence.
Paulo Freire, in what can truly be said to be a seminal work, “The Pedagogy of the Opressed”, nailed the dilemma. To outrageously precis his libellus, Freire says that in order for the poor (the oppressed masses) to appropriate their due degree of hegemony, of due status in the world, they must first appropriate the word. They must, take ownership of the the narrative, take ownership of the meanings of everyday words and use them to engage in the dialectic.
I wish I could say there is a figurehead, the kind that Thatcher was, that those who are denied a voice can rally around. Sadly there is not such a person. There must then be another way.
The dialectic must be taken away from the nanny-fed, public school educated ministers of New Labour, who have merely extrapolated their own nannying to include us.
The people can rise up. They did it in Switzerland, they can do it here. The major problem is that we are apparently allowed democracy, as long as we vote the right way. Surely some mistake about the concept of "democracy"?
FWIW, I don’t think Tom is guilty of being one of the “chattering classes” or a rocket munching Islingtonista. This post is one of several that have given clear signals about the dangers of swallowing the myths of the liberal elite, and as I implied yesterday, the tumbleweed could be heard wafting around the HoC in the arid wilderness of political imbecility (when it comes to Tom's refreshing take on young single mothers, for example)
If, as some think, the worm is turning, it is because people are smelling change. There is probably going to be a change of government in May. It is here that history, in one crucial respect, will repeat itself. Margaret Thatcher stands in symbolic relations to the end of union tyranny. She did not destroy the unions – they were decadent and moribund and had run out of moral authority. Everyone knew that the driving mandate of Trades Unionism was not fairness, it was greed.
What is happening today is that the liberal elite have run out of moral authority; they are revealed to be empty of goodness, of patriotism and of principle. If nothing else “climategate” is a paradigm of this.
Why did they do this? Well, it’s mostly their own guilt at being an elite in the first place, mediated by fuzzy existentialism and belief in nothingness.
The deserving poor, are conceived in the crucible of their cynicism and sentimentality, not reality.
If you have lived at the bottom, if you have known what it is to be the only person in your family who had a job or a degree or achieved any measure of success, you know that to be poor is not noble, it is shit.
“They” just don’t get this. Unable to really identify with normality: perpetual poverty, low peer expectations, lack of opportunities, they impose top down solutions which are predicated on revenge and expiation of guilt, not the apotheosis of excellence.
Paulo Freire, in what can truly be said to be a seminal work, “The Pedagogy of the Opressed”, nailed the dilemma. To outrageously precis his libellus, Freire says that in order for the poor (the oppressed masses) to appropriate their due degree of hegemony, of due status in the world, they must first appropriate the word. They must, take ownership of the the narrative, take ownership of the meanings of everyday words and use them to engage in the dialectic.
I wish I could say there is a figurehead, the kind that Thatcher was, that those who are denied a voice can rally around. Sadly there is not such a person. There must then be another way.
The dialectic must be taken away from the nanny-fed, public school educated ministers of New Labour, who have merely extrapolated their own nannying to include us.
The people can rise up. They did it in Switzerland, they can do it here. The major problem is that we are apparently allowed democracy, as long as we vote the right way. Surely some mistake about the concept of "democracy"?
2 comments:
Mmmm
Not sure who you would vote for.
Labour, Conservative, LibDems and SNP all believe in the EU. They believe in man made climate change. They believe that mass immigration is good. They don't really condemn the banks for our predicament.
There wil be nothing on the BBC, SKY news or ITV about any of the above that will criticise or question.
Which leaves a lot of folk like myself who are helpless against this wall of misinformation.
And who have just dropped out and are doing their own thing.
Realising that they're too small to make any difference. We'll vote UKIP or whoever but know that most folk are too busy watching X Factor to even notice what we're talking about.
I can't believe it's almost 40 years since Richard Thompson wrote "The New St George" which resonates with me even more today.
verse1
" The time has come for action. leave your satisfaction."
And verse2.
"Don't believe pretenders who say they will defend us. While they shake their fists and rave, the other hand is being paid."
There's a passage in the OT. I can't find it without a long trawl, but the prophet is looking for someone who will stand in the gap, but found none.
There is a sea change going on before our eyes, but under the radar. There's the twin spectacles of politicians and others who know what's going on cosying up to the super-rich in the hope that they'll get a seat on the last plane out of Saigon.
And there's the companion portent in the mass immigration from the sub continent and the Horn of Africa, as millions try to get to the UK in order to escape the environmental disaster of too many people fighting over access to fresh water.
And there's about 30 million sheeple getting drunk or stoned or laid or worse still, staying in to watch Jedward on X factor.
I looked for some one to stand in the gap and found none.
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