A good friend directed me to a (now) chilling snippet of Benjamin Zephaniah on Question Time outlining the clear and present danger of a Boris Johnson leadership back in 2012. BZ points out that Johnson is a. racist b. not fit to be in charge of the lives of others.
I bring this up only because I’m sick of the now
tired line – usually trotted out about the pandemic – ‘yes its bad but no one
could have known’ when in fact lots of folk did know and tried to prepare (a.
President Obama b. anyone else with a brain cell) but which is also often
spewed out about Johnson – like people are surprised what a total disaster HE
is personally and politically. We knew.
It inspired me to look back at some of my early
posts and in honour of BZ and any number of other folk who pay attention, I dug
this one up for this week. If something can be truer now than when it was
first true – this is… so here from Tuesday, 30 October 2012 a scenario we are
now simply 8 years closer to…
12.
Armageddon will not be televised
I
enjoy a pacey paranoid action movie as much as the next person. Give
me Bruce Willis saving the world at the last second with a self-satisfied smile
any day over another Jane Austen adaptation. Show me silver screen worlds
exploding in Technicolor, tidal waves engulfing everyone apart from the main
character plus love interest, asteroids missing the earth with only meters to
spare, sudden freezes that only the good-looking survive. Dish up alien invasions
from creatures able to cross galaxies but unable to anticipate a sucker punch
from Will Smith. Tremendous. In reality the four horsemen of the apocalypse
aren’t galloping out of the gates of hell on their white, red, black and pale
green stallions, they are plodding about even now on knackered old nags in a
dull, bored way because frankly they’ve nothing to do.
Is
it too extreme to suggest that the woman parading down the high street with the
$1,000+ designer handbag may as well be walking round with a sick child under
her arm? Might the guy driving the sports car fuelled from products that could
have fed people, just as well line up twenty sub-Saharan villagers and run them
over? Ok, maybe that’s a bit dramatic for this blog space especially when theorising
that Armageddon could be a surprisingly limp affair. All I’m suggesting is that
like a Hollywood blockbuster, the event in all probability will not live up to
the testosterone-charged trailers. It may just be a metaphorical dismal couple
of hours in the dark where nothing significant happens and then it’s over.
It’s
not that designer stuff is intrinsically bad nor is the fast car or any number
of things that we don’t need; it’s just that life has a very simple equation to
offer us, one we are constantly told is more complicated than it is. If some
folk have too much others get too little. Let me say that again – if some
folk have too much other folk have too little. There is no getting round it or
under it. There is a connection between some people owning three cars and
living in mansions and other people living on less than a dollar a day. Why
does saying that feel like claiming moon is made of cheese? Perhaps because
vast amounts of energy and money go into maintaining the more comfortable
collective falsehood that there is no direct connection. We believe the world
somehow got so complicated that 2+2 no longer = 4. But is it an unfathomable
mystery that desperate farmers grow cash crops such as tobacco and coffee
instead of food for their families?
During
the Blair affair with Britain we got used to the phrase “difficult decisions”
which was euphemism for ‘the wrong decisions made in the face of the absolutely
bloody obvious’. Though he was not the first to employ this euphemism it
settled, through persistent use, as a staple of political rhetoric. In the same
way that Cameron’s “I’m absolutely clear on this” as double speak for ‘this may
sound like bollocks but I’m saying it anyway’ is bedding in. The idea that
things are way more complicated than logic or common sense suggest is a notion
we are force fed to steer us away from seeing that the emperor is wearing no
clothes. The brother in arms of this falsehood is that someone who makes
‘difficult decisions’ is off the moral hook. Sister to these two
bastards is the notion that ‘there isn’t anything we can do’.
Let
us deal with the first tired old horseman representing conquest and social
inequality. Has there ever been an era where inequality has, in the light of
our knowledge and technical skills, been more inexcusable? What I’m saying is
that if our Victorian forebears could see that it was wrong, it’s got to be
more wrong now. Close to home, how many of us have considered, when choosing a
bank or law firm, checking what proportion of senior employees are state
educated before giving them our business? I’m state educated and I haven’t.
As
for war – there are more conflicts raging round the world than you could shake
a stick at – using more sophisticated technology and on-going for reasons that
defy not just ethical considerations but basic common sense. Death and disease
are bestial bedfellows and never more so because we know so much about
preventing and avoiding much of the disease that leads to premature death. Do
you need to say more than that we have Viagra but no cure for Aids? The new
strains of deadly malaria were upon us without adequate medicines when we’d
known for years that they were heading our way or at least their way.
Now that aesthetic (cosmetic) surgery is spoken of as if it’s as normal as
going to the dentist, it seems outlandish to ask why personal or public
resources are being spent in this direction when children die in obscene
numbers for want of a diarrhoea tablet costing pence. When I was last asked my
opinion on animal testing I had to say I might be more positive about it if the
medicines and knowledge we already have were being used to their full effect
and for everyone.
Stuff
Botox and ‘shopping therapy’, if you want to feel better about the life you
have, spend a week in a refugee camp and it’s likely you will have a very rosy
view of your existence when you return. You may even have younger looking skin;
certainly you might lose some weight. Meanwhile the bees are not pollinating
properly, the ice caps are reducing, the coral reefs are dying and a huge
percentage of preventable western disease is the result of affluence. The
system we idolatrise is based on shoring up this monstrosity. It is ultimate
pyramid selling and the pyramid is one of humanity. The world will not go out
with a bang but a whimper. The four horsemen of the apocalypse returned to
their hellish caverns a long time ago and are playing scrabble to pass the
time. We have unemployed them. The world is already the cancer
patient in denial still puffing away on that cigarette. Armageddon will not be
televised because it will not happen in a sudden identifiable place or time, it
will not be dramatic and it will not star Bruce Willis. It is happening now in
a bland, slow, miserable way. If you stand still you can sometimes smell it in
the air, sense the paradigm shift, feel it like a depression. At
some point we will become aware that we recognise the plot and the narrative is
near the end but there will be no one around to see the credits roll.