no more gimmicks, lies
self-serving self-obsession …
elected to serve!

From the opinion piece, The arrogant, reckless Tory government left behind a mountain of mess. In one week, we’ve begun to clear it by newly elected Brit PM Keir Starmer where Mr. Starmer writes, “Now is the time for politics as public service.

A government committed not to its self-preservation but to uniting the country in the shared mission of national renewal.

The start of the road back to restoring people’s hope and faith that politics can be a force for good.

No more gimmicks, lies and self-serving self-obsession – this government knows we have a duty to the people we are elected to serve.”

In the book Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton’s Doomed Campaign (Crown, New YorK, 2017) Jonathan Allen writes, “Interestingly, both Bill and Hillary were paying attention to British politics. In 2015, when conservatives thrashed the liberal Labour Party, Hillary confided in aides that former prime minister Tony Blair had predicted to her that the left would lose if it ran a “base” election. She appeared to worry about being drawn too far to the left, rather than seeing the conservative takeover as an affirmation of nationalistic populism. Bill believed the push for Brexit—and its eventual approval by voters— showed a strong contempt for existing power structures that reflected the mood of the American electorate. You guys are underestimating the significance of Brexit, he told Brooklyn and his own advisers over and over.”

Maybe once again, our Brit cousins are pointed a path.

be drifting towards
catastrophe, everybody …
wishes to stop it

In a House of Commons debate over the news from the Spanish Civil War titled, The Situation at Bilbao on April 14, 1937, The Hon. Winston Churchill, said:

We seem to be moving, drifting, steadily against our will, against the will of every race and every people and every class, towards some hideous catastrophe.

Everybody wishes to stop it, but they do not know how.

Worry has been defined by some nerve specialists as “a spasm of the imagination.”

The mind, it is said, seizes hold of something and simply cannot let it go.

Reason, argument, threats are useless.

The grip becomes all the more convulsive.

But if you could introduce some new theme, in this case the practical effect of a common purpose and of co-operation for a common end, if you could introduce that, then indeed it might be that these clenched fists would relax into open hands of generous co-operation, that the reign of peace and freedom might come, and that science, instead of being a shameful prisoner in the galleys of slaughter, might pour her wealth abounding into the cottage homes of every land.

Everybody wishes to stop it, but they do not know how.

Reason, argument, threats are useless.

The grip … becomes all the more convulsive.

This was 2 years before the start of World War 2 for Great Britain.

4 years before the United States would get involved.

And 8 years until the war in Europe would be over.

We seem to be moving, drifting, steadily against our will, against the will of every race and every people and every class, towards some hideous catastrophe.

had the ultimate
effect of saving the Crown
… and much else besides

These engrained habits of toleration and respect for law sank deep into the English mind during the hundred years that followed the Revolution, and had their effect when the stresses of a new era began—with the democratic movement, the French Revolution and the social problems of the great industrial change.

The habit of respecting constitutional rights acted as some check on the violence of the anti-Jacobin reaction, and the same habit of mind carried the Radical and working-class movements into legal and parliamentary channels.

The victims of the Industrial Revolution at the beginning of the nineteenth century sought a remedy for their ills by demanding the franchise and Parliamentary Reform instead of general overturn; this happy choice was due in part to our national character but largely also to our national institutions, in which the oppressed saw a way of escape.

The English Revolution had the ultimate effect of saving the Crown and much else besides.

The closing conclusion from the book, The English Revolution, 1688-1689 by G. M. Trevelyan, (New York, Oxford University Press, 1938).

The very first sentence says, “Why do historians regard the Revolution of 1688 as important? And did it deserve the title of “glorious” which was long its distinctive epithet? “The Sensible Revolution” would perhaps have been a more appropriate title and certainly would have distinguished it more clearly as among other revolutions.“

Sensible Revolutution?

Great Britain votes on Thursday.

Not sure about sensible as why in the world would they select the 4th of July for a game changing election?

That date has worked so well for them in the past?

best and the brightest?
nobody said it better
words come back to haunt

At the Trump Inauguration in 2017, it was reported that after the Inaugural address of the New President, according to three people who were present, Former President George W. Bush gave a brief assessment saying, “That was some weird shit.”

The Trump years …

The COVID era …

The Biden / Trump Debate …

Nope there aren’t any better words.

There was a term that was used by the author, David Halberstam, to describe the Kennedy / Johnson Administration.

The best and the brightest.

At least that is how the book was titled.

The Best and the Brightest.

When in fact, it should have been titled, The Best and the Brightest?

Mr. Halberstam would later write that the phrase “… went into the language, although it is often misused, failing to carry the tone or irony that the original intended.”

In other words, in describing the Kennedy / Johnson Administration reaction to Vietnam, Mr. Halberstam was saying, THIS IS the BEST and THE BRIGHTEST?

THIS is the BEST THEY CAN DO?

Instead it became a badge of honor.

That these people WERE the best and the brightest and they were there to serve.

Yeahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, sure.

Ironic ain’t it?

This election cycle the irony flows thick and fast on both sides of the aisle.

THIS IS the BEST and THE BRIGHTEST?

THIS is the BEST THEY CAN DO?

That is some sad shit.

On the other hand, something did come through to me lately and that is a sense of hope.

Yes, I did say a sense of hope.

Not that the problems presented by the current political cycle will be solved but that have become magnified out of context.

The people involved in politics today, the best and the brightest, are just too small to be of concern unless you are a 24 hour TV news station and you have to fill 24 hours of news so these small people become big.

If the HEADLINE is big enough, the NEWS IS BIG ENOUGH said Charles Foster Kane.

Well, maybe, the sky isn’t falling.

Well, maybe this just a bump, a bad bump.

I am remined the movie The Adventures of Baron Munchausen where the ‘elected official of the people’ forbids anyone to go outside the city walls … ‘as the Turk is out there’ and when finally Baron Munchausen sneaks outside the gates, the isn’t anyone there at all.

The good news is this election will be over in 4 months.

The best news is that we get to do this again in 4 years, and maybe this time, the best and the brightest just might show up.

We DO have to get there and to get there we will, as President Bush put it so well, go through some weird shit.

But I am confident, get there we shall.