It seems to me that the nature of the ultimate revolution with which we are now faced is precisely this: That we are in process of developing a whole series of techniques which will enable the controlling oligarchy who have always existed and presumably will always exist to get people to love their servitude. (Aldous Huxley)
I thought that the first two of the following strip were quite funny, although I had never come across a ‘free beer Friday’. While being aware of the television series Boardwalk Empire I did not understand the ‘Volstead’ connection. Apparently it refers to The National Prohibition Act of 1919 (commonly called the Volstead Act) this was the legislation that lead to the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, establishing National Prohibition of alcoholic beverages. Read more of this post
A previous post Seeking Keynes – the cake introduced John Maynard Keynes and his book THE ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES OF THE PEACE. Keynes wrote the book in 1919 following his resignation from the British delegation to the Paris Peace Conference, when it became evident that there was no hope of substantial modification in the draft Terms of Peace. The following is a condensed version of selected parts in which Keynes considered the nature of Europe and the Treaty of Versailles.
Today the American presidential election is over and if my indifference causes offence to any readers in the USA, it is quite unintentional. I’m sure that that we could happily trade insults over one’s indifference to to the other’s ‘affairs of state’. That isn’t quite true of course; the United States’ influence on world affairs far exceeds the arrogant presumptions of those European nations (Britain and France) who also sit on the UN Security Council. To say that the UK and the USA are ‘two nations divided by a common language’ is perhaps trite, but taken beyond any of its original humorous intentions, it nevertheless points to divisions in understanding. It may be that one of our greatest divisions is any common understanding of what we mean, or intend, a ‘democracy’ to be. Read more of this post
The other evening I watched a repeat of an early Lewis episode on the television, with the title Whom the Gods Would Destroy (they first make mad), an episode replete with allegory and allusion to Greek mythology. While no mention was made that the Ancient Greeks counted hubris as a deadly sin, a sure means of inviting Nemesis to bring disastrous punishment, this was exactly what happened. The spirit of Hybris being the madness of the Gods.
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Programmes on television with a historic or political bias tend to attract my attention. I would suggest that history and politics are indivisible, especially geopolitics, either by direct implication or by intended inferences you may be drawn to. I think that political programmes intending to entertain, also intend to portray – or to influence - contemporary history. While this may be obvious, in the past I’m sure that I felt entertained, rarely recognised any attempt at what may be seen as ‘thought reform‘ by the media, in this context, empathy with a programme’s content could also be described as thought reinforcement. Read more of this post
Shame is something that we all understand. It doesn’t need explaining it’s part of the ethos of the society to which we belong or, perhaps to be more precise, that sector of society that we belong to. So Giles Fraser’s Thinking Aloud podcast: how valuable is shame? looked as though it would make an interesting link with my post Shame on you – Shame on me. However, in following up on some links provided in Giles Fraser’s podcast it would seem that I am taking too simplistic a view. Fred Goodwin being stripped of his knighthood and release of the film Shame, has caused Fraser to consider how effective shame is as a means of punishment and how valuable it is in shaping social norms. In doing so, he quotes the American social critic Christopher Lasch who said that “The trouble with modern culture is that we have lost the shared social and legal boundaries that shame once policed”. Read more of this post
Larry the liquidator
While writing the post Other People’s Money (OPM I) I remembered a film that I had seen some time ago, which was also called Other People’s Money. The film is based on the script for a play written by Jerry Sterner who I am sure would wish to be called a ‘playwrite’, but who nevertheless wrote this play based on his experience as a financier. In 1989 the the play became an an off-Broadway hit in New York. The film, billed as a ‘romantic comedy’ is worth watching for its portrayal of the corporate investment world and its characterization of the players in this story. The film contrives a ‘happy’ yet feasible ending to the story, whereas the original play reaches a more realistic and plausible conclusion. The post Other People’s Money: A Tale of Capitalism and Creative Destruction by Edward W. Younkins provides a good synopsis of both the film and the stage version of ‘Other Peoples Money’. With the benefit of hindsight in the form of market crashes and especially in the light of the current financial crisis, I see the story itself and especially the role of ‘Larry the Liquidator’ as an allegory in the context of these. Read more of this post
The recent riots in the UK received worldwide media attention, from newspapers and television to the internet and blogspots. The English edition of the French newspaper Le Monde diplomatique gave one of the more empathetic reports on the riots in its article, UK riots: lessons from the banlieues?. In comparing David Cameron calling the rioters ‘opportunist thugs’, to that of Nicolas Sarkozy in 2005 dismissing the rioters in the banlieues as ‘voyous’ or thugs, reflects terms that are apt when applied to the wantonly mindless acts of destruction that occurred in France and England. However, there are differences between the actions of the rioters that would seem to suggest a lack of ’common purpose’ between the rioters in France and those in England. The French riots of 2005 were mainly directed towards attacking state-owned buildings such as schools and police stations, with less emphasis on looting. The 2011 riots in England focused on looting, orchestrated by attacking private and business property. This would suggest that any comparison is difficult, if not impossible. Yet in both cases the term ‘social exclusion’ has a resonance, even given its nuances when applied to both of these cases. Sarkozy’s 2007 promised ‘Marshal Plan’ has done little to reverse the perceived social and economic problems that divide many in the French suburbs from mainstream society. The reasons for this slow progress towards change are, in themselves, lessons worth learning. As Le Monde puts it:
if the British government can learn anything from the French case, it is that conclusions drawn in the heat of the moment, from a situation that is still fluid and evolving, are not ones upon which to base any longer-term response. Read more of this post
It isn’t lack of opportunity that keeps people poor. A welfare mother in Central Harlem is not poor for the same reasons that a subsistence corn farmer in Mexico is poor. That’s just one of the many self-evident conclusions to emerge from an antipoverty program begun by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg in 2007. This initiative, Opportunity NYC–Family Rewards, bestows cash rewards on (for the most part) single parents and their children if they act responsibly—by attending school, for example, or by working. The program was based on Oportunidades, a Mexican initiative. Bloomberg’s version of Oportunidades officially pretended that New York’s underclass faced similar tragic choices, that the poor failed to “plan for the future” because they were “so focused on surviving”.
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I’m sure that we all like to think that we live in a democracy and that a democracy is the most equitable form of government, and yet successive administrations in the UK have demonstrated how inequitable the democracy that we think we possess actually is. Non more so than the present New Labour administration, but to imagine that a change of the administration will bring about a change to the UK ‘democratic system’ would be naive in the extreme.
“America is almost always described as a democracy in school textbooks, educational programs, and news outlets of every ideological stripe. Likewise, when talking of America, politicians from both sides of the aisle frequently mention “our democracy,” by which they mean American democracy”. This was written by AWR Hawkins a regular contributor to Pyjamas Media, which is a conservative web site in the USA and AWR Hawkins is a conservative writer who holds a PhD in military history.
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