As I saw Kim Jong-Un press his flesh into the small of the Trumpmeister’s lumbar region I had that sense of two Nurse Ratcheds going less than gently into a goodnight for the rest of us inmates in the world asylum. Somehow or other we have accepted electroconvulsive therapy and become, like Randle McMurphy in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, compliant vegetables while various forms of lunacy break out near and far.
The world’s attention is focused on a Korean madman and an inarticulate Yankee Doodle. Closer to home we have voted in one of the worst governments in memory – alongside one of the worst oppositions in memory. The reasonable, principled, humane centre of social democracy has been binned.
Self-interest and unthinking prejudice seems to have wormed their way into human consciousness around the globe – and compassion and reason are currencies which, along with sterling, have been seriously devalued of late. What a mess.
There are plenty of precedents, of course, for lunatics running asylums. Extremism in all things seems to work and enables lunatics to gain power. The moderate voice is drowned out by the white noise of lies and the power of wealth and self-interest. And the people, we are led to believe, enjoy the ‘fuck you’ attitude of a Putin, an Assad, an Erdogan nd so on. And here, we seem not to mind the callous ambition of Boris the Spider, Pouty Gove, Magenta McDonnell and the rest of our tawdry bunch of front-line politicians. We tend to sack the principled ones – or they retreat corners to lick wounds and write memoirs.
I am generalising wildly, of course but don’t you think, just occasionally, that we have allowed lunatics to run our lives? Indeed do we somehow welcome them in and, masochistically enjoy the cultural, economic and ethical turmoil that plays out before our eyes? Look around.
My next posts will pursue this theme but I will hope to leaven the diet of disaster with the yeast of hope.
simplysorro 