337. SYRIA - Our moral compass is pointing to Hell.

What is wrong with us?

Among liberals in both the US and UK a regular question seems to be

How did we come to this?

It is a conundrum I pose myself.

How did the US and UK, two global powers that would appear to have it all in the eyes of much of the rest of the world, sink so low? And how come Washington and Westminster are now so bent on navel gazing self-destruction that Syria is going almost unnoticed? 

Syria is a conflict that has lasted almost as long as WWI and WWII combined and is now creating the largest humanitarian disaster of this century.

How did the pre-eminent power on the globe end up run by a sociopathic, semi-literate, infantile, deluded narcissist and how did the contemporary world’s first modern democracy end up run by a racist, elitist, womanising, low-life liar?

One very broad answer to both seems to be that the countries that had everything somehow managed to persuade those living there that they are victims. More importantly they are victims not of the elites who cream off the profits and take more than their fair share but they are victims of those at the bottom. Somehow. And the narrative goes on. Now that the people spouting that poison have won high office they are – as the Americans say – doubling down by overturning hard won rights of ordinary people.  Both administrations dish out tax cuts to the rich and ‘free up’ the rich from regulations that might reduce their ability to make even more profit while harming the environment and living conditions of those lower down.

Here in the UK, as the rich benefit and Boris Johnson obsesses over more legacy projects for his glorious memory  (we are considering building an unwanted, unnecessary bridge from Scotland to Ireland over WWII munitions dumps) a drop in life expectancy for poorer women has just been revealed and shames us.

MEANWHILE SYRIA.

In all this mess and ridiculous wasteful diversion, we’ve managed to ignore one of the greatest human tragedies of modern times.

Since I last wrote about Syria things have worsened significantly – from horrendous to unimaginable. (E.g. ref – posts 172 also 152 158…)

It is not (yet) the biggest disaster numerically in terms of human deaths but the abomination of harrowing misery and the depths of human suffering in Syria are happening in a world that we decided –post WWII - would be civilised. After Hitler we said no more. We decided after Pol Pot we would not allow this again. We agreed that monstrosities like those perpetrated by Idi Amin and The Rwandan Genocide and the Kosovo ethnic cleansing would be no more. This deliberate violence against the most vulnerable, the abandonment of the innocent would not be part of the human story in the 21^st century. But it is. And no one with the power to change things cares.

This time the horror is barely making the news. We have run out of compassion and decency. Our moral compass is pointing to HELL and that is reflected in the current administrations of both Washington and Westminster.

336. Coronavirus is just a tap on the shoulder.

It’s not that I wish to detract from the seriousness of serious subjects. But, coronavirus – or Covid 19 - is just a very polite tap on the shoulder. It is the hors d’oeuvre to the heavy sit-down 8 course banquet. It is a delicate overture to a deceptively long dark opera, it's foreplay.

Unlike the UK pop press  I just like some perspective.

On the one hand I’ve written many times about the fact that we are ignoring the things that are going to (and are in the process of) destroying the way we like to live. Or just live.

And yes – I have form on this - check out a very old post  Armageddon Will Not Be Televised

But while focus is on celebrity nonsense, royal nonsense, and column inch after column inch is taken up by stories that are virus-like in their proliferation and destructiveness, we somehow daintily side-step the stuff that matters.  At the same time as whipping up hysteria about things that are big enough to worry us but not so big that we can’t ‘worry safely’ we ignore tragedies under our noses. And tragedies that could escalate into something far worse than covid-19.

So while my last letter published in The Independent went like this -

Dear Editor,

Any new undocumented virus is going to send shock waves around the world but the media-fuelled hysteria over coronavirus is almost medieval in its disproportion. Coupled with the increase in ridiculous posts about our remaining hard-core royals being portrayed as latter-day Waltons – Britain is starting to feel like a cheap, badly produced soap opera.

Let us for balance pick out one interesting stat regarding premature deaths.

Each year – just in the UK – it is estimated that up to 40,000 premature deaths are linked to pollution.

Pollution is not an unknown quantity. Pollution is not something we are powerless to control.

Why don’t we care about that?

What happened to our sense of proportion?

I’m not suggesting that we should not be paying attention to Coronavirus.

We should simply realise that as Cummings/Johnson administration negligently experimenting with the lives of around 70 million Britons is simply pointing us in completely the wrong direction. As is the Trump/Miller abomination across the pond. 

Whether its border walls or HS2, blaming Mexicans or Muslims, failing to produce tax returns or details of holidays in the Caribbean,  building bridges from Scotland to Ireland over WWII munitions dumps or Space Force - the real problems are out there.

Festering away in a refugee camp with roughly 1.7 millon abandoned refugees on the Turkish Syrian border perhaps or in a migrant camp in Greece or in a human trafficking shed in Libya – a disease more deadly than Coronavirus or an ideology more destructive than ISIS may be festering in the misery among the abandoned.

So, while I ask for perspective on covid-19 – don’t mistake the reason. I just don’t think this is THE ONE. Coronavirus is a tap on the shoulder. If we don’t turn around and pay attention very soon the next one will be a hobnail boot in the face.

*

And for children's books, novels, comedy writing and poetry do click on this link to check out  My Books

335. Are Western liberals plummeting into Bunyan’s ‘slough of despond’?

The howling you hear in your dreams is not just the collapse of Democracy – it is the inescapable end of Empires. And it is the sudden, seeming inevitability that is crushing.

The revulsion at seeing social and political achievements rotting before our very eyes is something we should get used to because it’s not fixing any time soon.

As we look on in horror at the US impeachment farce the UK Brexit farrago, one thing might at least save us from waking up every morning with the collective used-to-be-a-democracy hangover.

Whether it was The Romans, The Mongols or The Conquistadors –  we know  that Empires rot from within. They begin with high-minded if misguided people full of energy and self-confidence (and violence and acquisitiveness) imposing their ideas and culture on others while plundering other countries but often imposing strong administration and co-operative structures to shore everything up. They end with the promotion of mediocrity and the corrosiveness of cronyism and nepotism.

Ironically – one thing that helped the UK’s international credibility after the empire fell away and we became "the sick man of Europe" was its association and closer connection with the EU.

And I wonder if, as things imploded in the past, Roman or Mongol or Spanish people watched and asked ‘how did it come to this’? As their leaders failed and the mediocre were promoted and nepotism infected every branch of administration and corruption became normal – did they eventually sit back and despair? Did they drown in the slough of despond?

In The Pilgrim’s Progress John Bunyan’s 1678 Christian allegory, the reader is exhorted to recognise despair as a sin. Bunyan's hero has to be constantly wary of “the slough of despond”. But just how do you avoid despair or despondency? How do you avoid slipping in if you are an intelligent, humane human being in the US or UK for example? Part of what leads to a sense of despair, I am sure, is feeling that nothing works. And that is something many must be feeling now. 

If one regards the very extensive list of undesirables in high office and seemingly immovable, it is hard to imagine there isn’t some outer force working on behalf of the self-serving low-lifes. How do you end up with half-wits running countries? How do you end up with known liars, cheaters, thugs and corrupt delinquents running – not banana republics and communist or fascist states but Western democracies – because that is what we have.

As the UK’s opposition remains non-existent and Democrats in disarray seem ready to help let Trump in for a second term, neither the US or UK look like bucking the trends of the past by rebalancing with strong cohesive opposition to become the first nations to reign things in before hitting the rocks of history.

334 Coronavirus & Carillion show us that in a crisis you either need co-operation or control. Britain now has neither.

As Johnson’s government acquiesces to China doing a ‘bit’ in our internet infrastructure (oh please) it might be worth looking at some other technical know-how that has the UK looking rather pathetic and behind for a supposedly developed nation (Rule Britannia blah blah blah…)

 No. I’m not talking about the failing, under-invested rail network. No. I’m not talking about the stumbling school system. I’m not talking about the horror show which is our privatised energy sector or the privatised water companies that are failing so badly on so many levels. I’m talking about hospitals.

As the coronavirus shows us some of China’s failings, mainly the ones we already knew about, it also shows us that a modern country with modern technology should be able to build standard blue-print structures quickly as needed. So contrast the 1,000 bed hospital in Wuhan being built in about a fortnight with the embarrassing abomination of The Royal Liverpool hospital – initial tax payer bill £335 million – and not usable or even finished three years after its due completion date.

The construction company Carillion – was a mess of a mega monolith with sub-contracted companies so spaghetti like it will take as long to work out who screwed who as it did to build the still-unusable hospital. 

As Carillion was collapsing in full view it was still receiving lucrative government contracts. The hospital Carillion was supposedly replacing has not been kept up to date because there was meant to be a new one on stream. The unfinished structure is unsafe which brings into question why a previous Tory administration (in 2010) took away the right of local authorities to inspect buildings on their territory built by the private sector. Why?

Coronavirus and Carillion show us that in a crisis you either need co-operation or control. Britain has neither.

Related – a recent letter of mine published in The Independent (fuller version in The New European)