I am going to call my Brexit/Trump pantomime/musical Hair of the Dog Politics (H.o.t. Dog
politics). If you don’t have this phrase in your country, it is something
people say when they have too much alcohol the night before and start
drinking again the next day as a ‘cure’. The full saying is ‘Take a hair of the
dog that bit you’.
Hair-of-the-dog is the equivalent of getting
hit by a car and deciding that the cure is to throw yourself under a bus.
So
Forget Hamilton
or Mamamia. I gave you Brexit the
poem (see blog 207 Brexit means Brexit)
now –its H.o.t. Dog politics the show.
I cannot help wondering what Castro, the life-long
revolutionary would have made of this ridiculous mess. The Brexit/Trump results
are as close to a contemporary revolution as the craving-for-the-days-of-empire
dullards of the UK and the we-wish-it-was-1950 crazies in the US could do.
Imagine a sort of ‘d’ grade pantomime version of the musical,
Cabaret with Nazi ditties
playing in the background sprinkled liberally with cheap glitz, rubbish
costumes and pre-recorded music.
This is the broad narrative of the new production -
There is grumbling from rent-a-mob because the theatre
managers took their money, turned down the heating, took the stuffing out of
the seats and told them they can only eat straight bananas. Then the managers
told the mob its all the fault of the low-paid immigrant cleaners. Rent-a-mob tear up the theatre and scream at the cleaners.
Un-elected prima donna Theresa May, rushes in to replace the
weak previous headliner, David Cameron. Cameron suffered a terminal case
of ‘oh shit, what have I done’. She finds herself thrust into the footlights
where she lip-syncs catch-up while stumbling badly, repeating her lines and
boring the audience.
The increasingly unfunny buffoon is played by Boris
Johnson. Every time he appears on stage a groan goes through the audience. They
yell, ‘how did he get up there’ and ‘seriously, he’s the best we could do?’ as
he mumbles, leers at the chorus girls and hurls abuse at people far more talented
than himself.
The chorus is made up of a motley crew of has-beens and
never-weres belting out the production’s main theme tune,
Britain
can be racist
Myopic,
xenophobic
And
still get everything it had before
Yes we’re mad and shifty
We
want article 50
And
We’d
rather drown in our own mess than help the poor.
And so on and so forth until everyone has lost the feeling
in their legs.
In the background is the mesmeric beat of the Chancellor’s
autumn statement song -
Hey
baby, we’re in the shit now – you better believe it - etc.
No one is actually paying attention because the Remainers are
dazed and depressed and the Leavers still think they won something.
Usually in such productions there is a primary villain with
a side kick. In this production, there is a veritable football stadium of
people jockeying for the roll of moron-in-the-spotlight. MP John Redwood – an oily, creepy private school cadaver - really should have been the director’s
main choice. Redwood is always there, ready to sneer at the truth, denigrate
anyone who may have actually checked the facts and dangle the rotting, whiffy carcass
of empire glory under the noses of potential non-believers. For a while he was
upstaged by the flamboyant racist Frothy Farage but Farage is chasing a bigger
gig state-side.
As for Fidel Castro, the CIA once thought of eliminating him
with an exploding cigar. That’s as close to pantomime style slapstick as you can
get. It’s also an example of how the US has behaved like a colonial power intervening
in any administration that doesn’t take their fancy (unless it ploughs
substantial funds into the pockets of the US elite, like Saudi Arabia). When
Trump trots out his one liner ‘make America great again’ I wonder if he is
thinking Bay of Pigs! Or is that just the name of his new administration?
Few media outlets highlight the fact that Cuba has, for
example, a better fairer health care system than many so-called democracies. But
a couple of serious papers in the UK have pointed out that Castro replaced
dictator Batista in 1959 only to become de-facto dictator himself. Maybe this
marked the start of the popularity of Hair of the Dog politics. Look at both
Brexit, orchestrated in part by UKIP / rich kid Frothy Farage and privileged non-tax paying Trump.
In the US and
Britain, arrogant, privileged white blokes have been messing up badly for decades. So, what did both countries do? They listened to privileged,
arrogant, bigoted white blokes when those men said ‘hey – we have the answers’.
Hair of the Dog politics is so in fashion. Fidel Castro
would be proud.
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*
For all you folk who've enjoyed this free blog it's hand in pocket time. At less than the price of one cup of coffee, read my new novella zero one, zero two. Check it out - https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1539762602
Or buy the paperback version for Christmas.
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