Preamble: This is part of a larger opinion piece I wrote on politics, and revolution. I haven't posted to whole lot because it's just under 11,000 words. But if anyone wants to read the whole thing, feel free to pm me, especially if you feel you might have some suggestions or contentions to make. Thanks in advance. Tacit Complicity Whatever we may do, excess will always keep its place in the heart of man, in the place where solitude is found. We all carry within us our places of exile, our crimes and our ravages. But our task is not to unleash them on the world; it is to fight them in ourselves and in others. Albert Camus The Rebel, 1951. This tract was inspired, oddly, by a petty public squabble between two comedians on the subject of revolution. It is an opinion piece cobbled together without a huge amount of planning as to where it was going to go, but with the intent to expose some of the well-known potholes on the roads to change which nevertheless are often either disregarded, or so feared they give rise to docility and inaction. It is a further attempt to support those innumerable and industrious folk who map these roads and any others who have resolved to shed light on them. Finally it is to challenge the stultifying aspects of cynical realism, but also show when this approach is needed because whilst I believe Huxley was right when he said: Cynical realism is the intelligent man's best excuse for doing nothing in an intolerable situation. I would like to add that impatient and overly sanguine idealism, without the barriers of true rational thought, has often fostered an environment ripe for tyranny. Natural and therefore suspicious as it is, that everyone should think that their era is the era in which the whole world must change it is still without doubt that a turning point is to be made in the 21st century if we are avoid catastrophe whether we like it or not, it is the great challenge for our generation and generations soon to come. The Great Trick The philosophical, theoretical and literary tradition which has motivated a wide selection of thinkers to put pen to paper, at their best expounding upon innumerable subjects; all of great importance, with accuracy, passion, intelligence and bitingly critical craftsmanship, has now been caricatured by way of a very simple trick. Leaving aside for a moment the constant debating and filibustering centred around the choices people are told they have which are invariably between evil and more evil, the unspoken alternative, as the aforementioned thinkers have laboured to bring to the fore, which is at its core distinctly moralistic, is now reduced to a subject not even worthy of comedy or ridicule. We can s(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*) incredulously at the current proponents of crony capitalism precisely because they are the face of a system which flounders around with that air of dark absurdity, in a state of inebriation through the house of smoke and mirrors right before our eyes. If we didn't laugh, we would indeed, and often do, cry. But, the alternative, any alternative which is moral, noble and just has been rendered so grotesque as to be too dark, even for humour. Even this rather trepid notion will undoubtedly induce hysteria among those who believe that the only other option besides insanity is slavery. It is precisely that entrenched reactionary thought which will not allow people to see a way out of the Big Six energy companies continually utilising their oligopolistic positions to hike up energy bills by as much as 10 per cent without any tangible justifications. Instead, were supposed to accept that even a price freeze of less than two years as dubiously promised by Ed Miliband could lead to power cuts. Of course, though its estimated that profits have risen by as much as 74 per cent in the last 48 months, and bosses are routinely collecting exorbitant bonuses as a result its just never enough. And that is, and always has been the great trick to moralise the immoral, to demonise fairness which is pulled off by the usurpers of democracy; those who stand on trial before the public explaining away the most conspicuous injustices with, it must be said, an almost scientific cunning. It is the speciality of wrong principles to turn good into evil and corrupt all things M. Louis Blanc It's perhaps no surprise, then, that intelligent people such as Robert Webb are so baffled by those who have decided not to vote -- and rationalise for others to do the same. Furthermore, it's positively to be expected that Webb should start talking flippantly about Gulags as soon as anyone mentions Socialism -- it is just another patent result of the enduring anti-Socialist propaganda which prompts millions of knees to jerk with the same unthinking responses all over the world. I had the feeling that Webb had read perhaps one or two paragraphs of Orwell's and gotten foolishly ahead of himself when he admonished fellow comedian turned self-styled revolutionary thinker Russell Brand to 'read some (*)(*)(*)(*)ing Orwell!' How someone could employ George's name so authoritatively, and in the same rather turgid torrent against Brand announce that he was to join the Labour party, with no sense of irony, as if reading Orwell would somehow make anyone see the diamond in the dirt of modern two-party, corporatist politics, was beyond me. I wont go too much into how New Labour became just another branch of Conservatism. Tony Benn touched on it recently in a telephone interview conducted by the Big Issue: Labour won the election in 1997, he said but New Labour was a Conservative idea. It was the idea of a Conservative group who had taken over Labour. Their idea was that entrusting everything to market forces was the best way to get things done which is a fundamentally anti-Labour idea. There are few contemporary writers who would be as capable of dissecting Labour's persistent kowtowing to corporate whim at public expense (largely through a succession of Private Finance Initiative imbroglios), as Orwell would be, if he were alive today. In fairness to Webb, Benn goes on to praise Miliband, and perhaps wed be wrong to think that Ed isnt the lesser of two evils but its nonetheless hardly surprising that many people have lost faith in a choice which looks suspiciously like it is between Conservatism and more Conservatism, Corporatism and more Corporatism. Webb went on to delineate his fears regarding what he saw as an encouragement for the youth to behave yet more apathetically towards politics, to which we must ask the question: how does one advocate revolution and political apathy at the same time? Logic should dictate that the two are incongruent; the prospect of an apathetic revolution is quite humorous, however, there is surely some material in it for Webb or Brand. I imagine a herd of wretches imbued with McDonalds and Mars Bars all shuffling in no particular direction murmuring: 'What do we want?!' 'We don't care!' 'When do we want it!?' 'Dunno is there any effort involved!?' before succumbing to some slow and thankless death, caused predominantly by boredom and indifference. Needless to say that the apathetic revolution wouldnt only not be televised, but it would barely be noticed, and even less so cared about. Anyone with an understanding of the tricks pulled, and the blunders performed in plain sight might feel pangs of indignation at the thought of having the proverbial wool pulled over their eyes. Yet when we look at the broader picture, how else should an honest person see it? Was it simply that we the people whose perceptions are sharper than ever, whose trees could surely be no obstruction from the wood watched this corporate takeover, in absolute awareness, and chose, consciously, to do little to nothing to stop it? Regrettably it would seem, in many cases, that is the reality of the times.
