ARE WE ALL FROZEN TURNIPS ?

There is much to contemplate on the horizon. Improving movement generally and exercising the little grey cells as well.  (By the way, Agatha Christie was only 26 when she invented Poirot and his notion of little grey cells. It was in the middle of the First World War in 1916.) 

In any event, if one is to sustain a level of freedom of movement and thought, one must make the effort to use every part of the body to ensure its continuing ability to function enough to remain independent. The required discipline to do this is unfortunately lacking in some of us. By some of us, I mean me, regrettably. Be that as it may, on my wanderings around Sainsbury’s, after a peruse of the opinion section of the Guardian, I had a moment. 

I clearly do not read enough opposing views. The viewpoints expressed by the likes of Jonathan Freedland, Polly Toynbee, George Monbiot, Marina Hyde, Simon Jenkins, Andrew Rawnsley, John Crace, etc and Guardian Editorials are all, on the whole, expressing views I already hold. There is some amusement to be had to find one’s own thoughts being expressed by others. There have even been occasions when I have thought I could have expressed things better. 

Unfortunately I have shied away from opposing views because I find it difficult to understand how anyone, with a rational mind and a basic education, can hold opinions that are narrow, bigoted, divisive and generally without any merit whatsoever.  Not that I am prejudiced of course; but, as you can tell, I am, in my own way. 

What with all these thoughts buzzing through my head as I strolled past meat and fish, I took in my fellow shoppers. At 11:30 am on a Saturday there are quite a number, of all sorts. I was struck by a comment sent to me by Clare Clifford from France: 

“The French are calling the British navet congelé (frozen turnip) because they are frozen in their houses and have the brains of turnips for not revolting.” 

Were all these shoppers frozen turnips? I admit to being a snob. The manner of dress of much of the local population around Vauxhall and Nine Elms is very mixed, but there are a number who reflect a particular class of people who, one wonders, give little thought to the politics or politicians of the nation save through what they might read in the Sun, Daily Mail, Daily Express and other such publications, if they read any newspaper at all. These are essentially conservative, right wing populist, Eurosceptic tabloids. 

My reading of the Guardian is just as narrow, but in terms of readership, the above mentioned publications, all together, have a readership thirteen times greater than the Guardian.  13 to 1. Now, whilst that figure does not reflect the voting intentions of the electorate, (according to the current polls - Labour 47%, Con 25%) it might represent a general consensus of thought - conservative, populist and Eurosceptic. Those are characteristics of many labour as well as conservative voters. It might even apply to some liberal democrats and green party members. One can therefore assume that the overall mindset of the British public is not necessarily reflected in how they vote. Voting intention is something else entirely.

 

I have often joked about how it appears the Italians carry on with their lives as if their government was non-existent. It was just something that provided an administrative backup with no specific interference with life in general. Since the Brexit referendum it seemed as if the same thing applied to Britain.  The public carried on regardless of the inanities of the Tory Government. It was treated like watching episodes of Eastenders or Coronation Street. But then the pandemic and a sort of old WW2 sense of togetherness took hold and we were all  more than thankful for the existence of the NHS.  The very fact that the United Kingdom had such an all encompassing National Health Service in place and able to deal with the emergency, even if with some difficulties, was the saving of the Nation. We took it for granted that it would do so - why not? - and we all clapped our brave, tireless and dedicated NHS staff. 

Hardly any time has passed since, and that same staff is willing to come out on strike and even prepared to leave the service, because of their mistreatment by this conservative government. The populace is perhaps sympathetic to their complaints, but as I look around the aisles, I find I am the only one wearing a mask as it isn’t quite over. The ratio of people wearing a mask is probably 100 to 1. They are mainly old people and Asians who still make the effort.  So it’s back to same old same old and the NHS is again being taken for granted, and people are complaining about waiting times and the difficulties in just making an appointment to see a doctor face to face. 

These difficulties are not the fault of the NHS, but of our elected representatives who have allowed and supported a government that is breaking up the entire health service through wilful neglect and carelessness. Neglect and carelessness seem to resonate in this Parliament. Indeed the whole of the social contract to provide public services, from transport, to policing, to security, to culture is being eroded. 

So I look around at my fellow shoppers and I see no evidence of outrage. No real evidence of discontent, save some annoyance with other shoppers getting in their way, or unruly demanding children. Thus the image of Clare’s WhatsApp message about navet congelé comes to mind. 

The various opinions in the Guardian, full of insight and wit, make about as much impression as a flea on a mouldy old furry rug. The flea is probably dead anyway. The publication believes it has a voice and its columnists earn their paycheque, but let’s face it, most of the populace is deaf, dumb and blind and the minority that read it already agree with it and are just as powerless, and need no telling. They already know. Why are we not all out on the picket line with the ambulance drivers, nurses and railway workers? Why are we not all in revolt, out on the streets demanding a change of government? Where are the Gillet jaunes of the UK? 

I have to admit to being a frozen turnip, and I move on down the aisles to fill my trolley with the makings of Sunday lunch.

CHARLES CARNE - A SHORT APPRECIATION

A friend, Charles Carne, died this week. He was a good and wonderful friend. A talented and thoughtful man. In his later life he became a counsellor and teacher of photography. He had a wonderful sense of humour, a quick wit and was very skilled at teasing people. His nearest and dearest may have had other views about him but we all loved him. I am fortunate enough to be godfather to his son Leo.

.

 

In 2005/6 Charles had enrolled at Roehampton University to do, if I remember correctly, a course in Sociology.  In late August of that year, Charles and I were on our way to France to collect some champagne and during the course of the journey, I told him that I had sent off for a prospectus from Dartington College of Art as the list of ‘University Clearing’ places indicated there was a writing course on offer at Dartington not far from Moretonhampstead where we had a house. Charles was very emphatic and said it was a waste of time waiting, and that if I really wanted to do it I should ring and make an appointment to see someone to discuss the situation. The 2006 term was not that far off in September, only a few weeks away. He was right of course and I did what he said, and ended up starting that September.  It was a rapid change of pace. I shall forever be indebted to him.

 

He was later to give me very good advice on the writing of essays. He did say that he sometime found it difficult to write the length of essay some subjects seemed to require, whereas I, on the other hand, found it difficult to edit the essays down to the required limit. He was always far more concise, which is, no doubt, why he was a good Counsellor to many as well as a teacher to his Photographic group.

 

He and Sally were together for over 50 years, and by the look of them one would think they must have got together as babies.

It is difficult to write about a friendship that has lasted some forty years. Not easy to recall the numerous conversations and events that took place over many a lunch and supper around the UK, France and Italy. Wonderful times at La Coupole and Le Terminus Nord in Paris, La Taverna Marconi in Lazise on the shore of Lago di Garda, and in Verona. I confess that I am a bit lost for words. There is just so much more stuff and one assumed it would simply go on and on. Alas not. I will miss him a lot.

Goodbye Charlie xxxxx

 

WHERE ARE WE WITH AMERICA?

Politics in the United States appears to have  disintegrated into factionalism, and not just in the Republican party. Although the Democratic party gives a semblance of unity in the face of Republican turmoil, there are decisive groups within the party. In 2019, the Pew Research Centre found that 14% of Democratic and Democratic-leaning registered voters identify as conservative or very conservative, 38% identify as moderate, and 47% identify as liberal or very liberal. As with most surveys, education has a lot to do with political inclinations. So far as white democrats are concerned, those with college degrees were more likely to describe their views as liberal.

 

What I find surprising, so far as the republican party is concerned, is that Kevin McCarthy, arch Trump loyalist, is having trouble fulfilling his goal to become speaker of the House. The facsimile storm troopers Matt Gaetz and Lauren Boebert are leading a far right group of congressmen and women in the hope of gaining some sort of advantage from Mr McCarthy, presumably being appointed chair of important Congressional Committees.   

 

Since writing the above paragraphs McCarthy has been finally elected speaker, and it is clear that the concessions he has made will mean a disjointed, divided and disagreeable ugly house of representatives. The current make-up of the United States Congress does not represent the American people, nor does it reflect their aspirations. They are far removed from the ideals so bitterly fought for by the men and women of 1776. Whilst they did not behave, individually or necessarily, in an exemplary manner, what they put down on paper, signed up to,  fought and died for, was a set of principles and method of governance that people around the world have, to some extent, aspired to. The numbers of people who flocked to the United States during the next 175 year is testament to that. The very nature of the principles of liberty were reinforced during the dedication of the Statue of Liberty in October of 1886. Emma Lazarus’s poem The New Colossus was engraved on a bronze plaque and place on the pedestal in 1903. It was written in 1883 and donated to an auction to raise funds to build the pedestal of the statue, hence the placing of the plaque, which again rededicated the United States to the principles of liberty.

 

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

 

Just two score years before the plaque was fixed to the pedestal, the United States was on the verge of splitting apart, and in that year of 1863 President Lincoln, in a dedication ceremony at a cemetery uttered 271 words urging Americans:

 

that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

 

A new birth of freedom. Coupled with that freedom was an acceptance of a duty of care. It is very simply put:

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door

 

That is as clear an invitation as one could make.  People from all over the world seem to believe it is true.

 

It would appear from the rhetoric of the right wing conservative republican faction, including the unhinged Trump acolytes, that the definition of American, is an isolationist, rigid religious fundamentalist, sporting a gun, forever ready to defend himself and his kin. (Note the republican holdouts have succeeded in having the metal detectors removed from the Capitol so as to allow anyone carrying a concealed weapon free access – is this in self-defence?) To them, the definition of American is a mirror image of themselves. They do not compromise but they do ‘do deals”. They seek a return to some mythical era depicted by Hollywood legends, John’s Ford and Wayne, together with James Stewart and Ward Bond - the old frontier. Indeed the ‘frontier’ is the dreamworld encompassing America. “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend”

At what point did the fairy tale so completely take over the American psyche or should one say the conservative republican? One has to accept that the American electorate is a total confusion. The majority in the Senate of the United States has been retained by the Democratic party, whilst the House of Representatives has been handed over to the right wing. It seems that local State constituencies favour a more conservative electorate, whereas most States as a whole seem to lean towards a more moderate centrist position, or at least towards Democratic Party candidates. That does not entirely account for the confusion and the current political divide. Where does the frontier fantasy so embedded begin?

 

I lived in America in the fifties and sixties. I was born under Roosevelt, saw in Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson. I voted in the 1964 election for the Democratic Party and Lyndon Johnson. Goldwater and the conservatives were not popular in my family and most of my friends. The post war years of recovery and the popularity and prosperity under Eisenhower gave way to a man born in the 20^th Century. The first President not born in the 1800’s. He appealed to the youth of America, mainly to the burgeoning college educated young and the more socially conscious who responded to Kennedy’s more contemporary approach and his embracing of the cool sixties. The beatniks and the hippies whose influence began to spread across the country, and who in turn embraced the young and handsome erudite Kennedys. There clearly was a leaning towards the left of centre. Freedom marches, integration, free speech movements a great deal of political activity; but, JFK too turned to the dream with his New Frontier. He knew that the dream of the pioneer setting across the country, creating their own way of life, free to do as they liked away from a central government that meant nothing to them, was still very much alive. He therefore added his own twist by proposing a “new” frontier.  (Tony Blair was equally successful with “New” Labour). He won the presidency by a very narrow margin, but the resultant celebrity of the new frontier’s new ‘first couple’ was electric. Like a bright spark it was snuffed out and the man became legend.  To this day people who were alive at the time, knew where they were when Kennedy was shot.

 

Somewhere along the line, between Kennedy and Trump, things began to atrophy in the American mind. The new frontier lost its direction and reverted to the old frontier mentality. Gun toting and xenophobia were back in action. The country folk of America turned to isolation, towards Oath Keepers, QAnon and other extremist separatist politics. A me-first generation has swept the country. They have prised  into congress and are causing great consternations. They like to think of themselves as upholding liberty and the constitution.

 

In terms of analysis of “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance”, they are the quiet man who is behind the legend, the true American Tom Doniphon, played by John Wayne, who had the grit to shoot Liberty Valance, and allow the ‘do-gooder’, Ransom Stoddard, played by James Stewart, to take the credit and create the legend. What they fail to realize is, that it is they who are in fact playing Liberty Valance. Their confusion that they are fighting for Liberty, is just that. They are the bullies who seek power at the expense of everyone else. They see themselves as John Wayne, but they are in fact bad boy Lee Marvin. Indeed, they are the real bandits who run roughshod over the villagers. They are not the magnificent seven, but the twenty plus scoundrels and thieves of democracy.  

 

So I ponder again, just when did the mind of America change from something approaching basic intelligence and the promotion of a caring civilised society, and the closed rigid support of populist barbarism and division?  When did it start to go so horribly wrong?.

 

Perhaps it was always there below the surface. I have no answer. I know many people in the United States who do not form part of that crew of bandits. They also care about America. It is sad to see the turmoil so graphically displayed on YouTube and other venues. It is also sad to note what we do not see displayed, which is the prosecution of Donald Trump for the damage that he has wrought in the country. Since the press conference given by Gabriel Sterling 2 years ago in December 2020, the clearest evidence of incitement has been available. I post it here again:

Why has nothing been done?