HAPPY EASTER

I hate politics.  The painful irony of that is that one cannot feel so passionately about something one doesn't care about.  And that is possibly why I hate it so much.  I love people.  People are lovely.  Even the worst ones are vulnerable, feeling, passionate, creatures.  It all goes wrong when they harm you of course.  When they harm you personally it is bad enough but when they violate your love and compassion for life by desecrating some innocent child in front of your eyes it becomes intolerable.  A raging fire of fury rises up inside to oppose the malevolent force and to vanquish the vile transgression of everything you hold dear.  I am no stranger to intense anger at the profane injustices committed by corpses that still think they are alive.  And so we have politics; the art of fucking up an otherwise reasonable situation.

I have found it interesting that Jeremy Corbyn's initials are the same as those of an old friend of mine from 2,000 years ago.  It has always struck me that JC consistently puts himself at the front line of opposition to injustices both locally and internationally.  He is appreciated by many as a gentle man of honour and integrity.  I suspect that he is not ambitious in the normally presumed interpretation of that word and has little personal interest in being such a high profile figure let alone the leader of the opposition to HM Gov in the UK.  What I imagine he is ambitious about is justice and peace.  So far both JC's seem to have a lot in common.

I notice recently that the press have been putting words into his mouth.  Even to the extreme extent of the "Stupid Woman Gate" fiasco.  It has been conclusively demonstrated that he mouthed "stupid people" and anyway it should never have been an issue in the first place.  An irony never mentioned is how so many people were so quick to accuse him of what was clearly in their minds for them to have interpreted his lips as mouthing "stupid woman".  But that that issue could dominate the airwaves, even above an implausible drone attack on Gatwick, is juvenile and fatuous in the extreme.  Whilst May and her cohorts are performing very real and very dangerous fascist Nazi pantomime tricks in disguise, the public fall for the narrative projected by the main stream media, and hardly notice they are a substantial part of the problem.

Now I am suddenly hearing louder and louder anger and vitriol polarising around the false constructs of right and left politics and the leave and remain camps as if there is some coherent correlation between them.  Yet it doesn't take much awareness of recent history to see that they have very little common ground or relationship.

I sometimes see it as school children with an abusive teacher who always blames the head teacher and asks the class if they want to get rid of the head teacher as if that will shut them up and reinforce a status quo that suits the teacher.  Unfortunately for teacher the kids were ignorant of the details of the administrative hierarchy and were persuaded by irresponsible rabble rousers to oust the head teacher.  The teacher now sees this as an emerging opportunity to garner more personal power for their abusive treatment of their class of contemptible urchins.  The kids didn't realise that the head teacher was possibly a moderating influence on the teacher, much as the whole situation was evidently unsatisfactory.  What the kids did want, in the main, was to eject the unaccountable abusive dictators from the stage whatever their position or title.

All of my life experience to date informs me that this is not going to end well.  But strangely I am not without hope.  Going back to the comparisons between the two JCs I notice the crowd are now baying for JC's crucifixion.  Although many people decry the media because it is untrustworthy they still choose to believe the deliberately provocative sound bites and rise up in indignation and fear.  Sound bites that claim JC plans to leave the EU and JC won't allow a people's vote.  Suddenly the frightened people are literally calling JC treacherous for not saving their sorry souls.  Biblical or fucking what?

I have yet to see any substantial or convincing report of JC's views that confirm the above examples of  manipulative fear mongering.  JC possibly believes we should not, ideally, be in the EU and on that account he might be right.  It is worth remembering that he promoted and voted for remaining in the EU at the referendum because he believed it was the best way forward from that point in time.  The EU is a difficult, and sometimes unaccountable, political monster.  The EU is largely controlled by the IMF and the IMF is essentially neoliberal and extremely authoritarian and hierarchically oppressive.  A problem with the UK leaving the EU is that the UK government is clearly unaccountable, neoliberal, extremely authoritarian, and hierarchically oppressive. 

Suddenly and dramatically leaving the EU is most certainly a destructive act.  It might be possible, given the right time span, to renegotiate our arrangements and to withdraw from the less productive aspects of the relationship.  It is criminal that the Tories have had the best part of three years to negotiate and have essentially done nothing.  I imagine this is due to many factors including an inherent disbelief and a profound sense of denial.  Tories are essentially polarising adversarial competitive beasts and negotiations must have been akin to looking in a mirror.  Both sides probably became distracted by preening their own reflections.

We are currently in a catastrophic situation precipitated entirely by the dysfunctional Tory Party and their neoliberal fascist policies.  I suspect May and her cohorts have never managed to negotiate anything because they cannot imagine anything independent of the EU.  Hierarchical thugs are inherently cowards and rely on sycophantically gaining their bosses approval.  Take their boss away and they have no idea how to independently act responsibly.  Lord of the Flies springs to mind since Golding's novel was intentionally countering the rather banal self delusion represented in Ballantyne's novel The Coral Island.  Corbyn has made it clear that he will strongly oppose May's 'deal' and doesn't accept a 'no deal' exit from Europe.  He has also stated that from this point in time, given where we are, he would immediately go back to Brussels to attempt to get a better deal.  No one has made it explicit but this would include a holding position giving significant time to negotiate complex details.  This is not very far removed from putting 'Brexit' on hold.  And need I emphasise that he has not excluded the possibility that if he couldn't get a satisfactory arrangement that he would rescind Article 50.

But the public, the baying crowd, the frightened mob, daren't pause to think and seem to react to the smallest most succinct uncomplicated sound bite.  "Are you 'for' or 'against'?"  Corbyn is refusing to have words put into his mouth but too many of the public are happy to read and believe those words he has never uttered.  Corbyn has probably been the most consistently respectful politician to both leave and remain voters.  Corbyn maintains a perspective on the broader issues and the profound underlying forces in the political landscape.  Corbyn remains clear that whoever we have alliances with, whatever arrangements for trade we have, however we negotiate, we must always do it with the wellbeing of the population in mind.  He is clear this is the point of the negotiations.  This is why he doesn't polarise issues into winning or losing but remains focused on getting the best outcome for the people.

What we are being forced to confront is whether we, as a population, want consensual negotiated self governance and responsibility or do we want to remain irresponsible and hope some power structure or corporate interest will govern and control us.  I certainly do not want to leave the EU only to be ruled by an inhumane, neoliberal, dysfunctional, out of control, right wing, Tory Party.  I doubt leaving the EU dramatically now would bring anything but chaos and pain.  I would vote to remain in the EU if there were another opportunity.  But give me a genuine socialist system of collective governance in the UK I would prefer not to be dragged along with the imperial, capitalistic, neoliberal, out of control, European Union.  How to negotiate a different arrangement is beyond the scope of this missive.

It is not the idea of being out of Europe that frightens me.  It is being wretchedly dominated by inhumane neoliberal monsters that frightens me.  So in order of priority we need to get the Labour Party into government with Corbyn as Prime Minister and we need to rearrange our relationship with the EU.  So far I don't see that being a very different view from that espoused by JC.  But will the hysterical crowd vote for Barabbas or Jeremy Corbyn?