Article Headline: "Is this the freedom they fought for?"
Hi, Deborah,
This may not be the answer (or indeed length of answer) you were expecting or would want; they're just the views of a 56-year-old fat-man, some problematic, some very leftfield and all of it befuddled and hazy. "Is this the freedom they fought for?" 'Fraid so, yes, but in a far more subtle and complete way than at first thought, and with our tacit complicity; all of us. Lets start with a truism if ever there was one; "Why of course the people don't want to go to war......but after all it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship.....Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they're being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and for exposing the country to danger." Hermann Goering said that at Nuremberg in 1946. The only thing missing from today's ideology is that he should have included a message from his sponsors..........Krupp possibly?
My father and millions like him joined up, got called up whichever and fought to give his children and their children's children a shot (forgive the pun) at a better future than he'd been offered by either his social position or Mr. A. Hitler. All would probably have been OK-ish if the development of the euphoria and sense of "freedom" that followed VE and VJ days and "an end to hostilities" (that's what we've got now, in case you were confused) had, by and large, remained in the hands of those who fought for it; it would also have helped to ensure that the pace of change remained at a speed they could cope with. But, as is the way with most if not all 'ends' of hostilities' (that word again) the powerful few who'd manipulated and manufactured the wars (you know, politicians, fanatics, conglomerates, you know, those people who gave London's - and every other city's - suicide bomber the reason to 'get it on') increased their grip on the psyche of the masses and perverted their desire for peace and prosperity into a self-serving desire for "fluff". A confused and shell-shocked nation quickly succumbed to the lure of the ad-man's brave new world, sold to you exclusively by the very British firms who'd sold barbed-wire to the Germans in 1913-14-15-16 so's our troops could get snagged on it when they advanced on the enemy trenches. Then they'd be used as bayonet or long-range, rifle target practice by that enemy after "the rush" subsided. Left to "the people", you see, the movement forward was insufficiently fast enough for those brought up in an era when the maxim was "Get on - Get honour - Get honest".... Gosh, two truisms in one Email!
Time was (no I'm not going to wax lyrical about "the good old days", relax) in my father's and your father's day, and even though they weren't in positions of power, there was a season to everything, a time for everything, and everything happening in its own timescale at the correct pace. In this way the population had an opportunity to get used to new technology, practices, social changes, new rules and behaviour alterations at a steady pace, learned of possible pitfalls along the way, adjusted their patterns of work, behaviour, fiscal power and acceptance levels, social betterment..........JEEESSUUSSSSS!!!! Too damn slow! There's no profit in patience! With the second World War out of the way and so the closing up of an easily followed profit route, there was a short-lived opening rush to re-equip and re-build the communities so badly damaged by hostilities (word of the week, methinks) that allowed them to turn a coin, but that, too, soon reached an end. Lesson 1: If you build a house, a car, a vacuum cleaner or a washing machine that lasts for a lifetime you soon run out of options for profit. At first they made things simple but then everyone thought they could do it. Lesson 2: Fluff it up in a veritable smokescreen of verbal trouser-rolling that's as obscure and as codal as Sanskrit.
The reigns of control were relaxed on a relaxing generation who now got their bread from a packet, ready sliced, dyed white and pure and lasting an astounding three days before it went stale, that and the promise of white teeth and even whiter sheets. Their circuses comprised of fancy footwork to dance bands and not the fancy footwork required to dodge bullets and new wonders were rolling off the production line and hitting the shops as fast as a bren-gun empties its clip; all that was needed was a way to keep the public dancing and dancing and buying and buying. Enter T.V., disposable income, rock 'n' roll, the marketing trick of crossing out "dog" and putting in "goldfish", "lifestyle" magazines, marketing advisors...........the list goes on and it's what we want, isn't it? Would you go back to rubbing the clothes up and down a washboard for three hours every Monday, having no buses on a Sunday, no shops open at 01.30, a 12 hour lifestyle instead of a 24 hour one.....'Muffin the Mule' instead of 'Celebrity Love Island'....? Bugger, might have slipped up there.....
The lifestyle carrot was stewed with ersatz fluff and sold to a gullible, still reeling public who believed a clean toilet and frozen dinner would be the zenith of the very freedom their folks had all fought for (somehow missing the point along the way that, if they bought the frozen dinner took it home a tipped it down the pan then they could cut out the middle man altogether). Social and political calendars were run by and for the 'Society People' (important sporting events seen as the domain of the upper classes happening mid-week, retired Major's with experience in shooting, wine tasting and ordering people about given full or partial control of the governing bodies of recreation, employment, government cabinets - much like now with politicians, where you can come out of uni. with a degree in economics, get a job as Minister for Sport (?) await the next cabinet shuffle and become the Minister for Education.....(?) - You want to see what happens if I, a production manager and struggling writer working in touring theatre, try to get a job as a head chef somewhere.....? "So, Peter, what experience do you have of cooking.....?")
The degree of separation between the haves and have-nots has always been great, but the satisfaction levels in the lower orders was fast declining as they kept buying and dancing in ever faster circles; methods of keeping them down on the farm were becoming more difficult to invent.......... Welcome the National Lottery! The maxim of divide and rule made flesh. People don't want to get rich after they're dead, no bloody good then, is it? No, they want to get rich now, "I said NOW!" and planning for generations to come was seen as passé (Sir Bob taught us that) so you may was well spend the pension fund and be done with it. You think 'Big Brother' is bad......? Just wait 'til we get 400 channels for 36 hours a day, then you'll have room to complain. And nothing you or I do will stop it, will halt it. I mean, cripes, we can't even get these so-called clever men to listen to real experts and go beyond admitting that human activity might.....that's a "might"...have had some effect on global warming and the possible destruction of our planet, so a certainty of understanding by simple folk like us of what will happen to future generations won't alter things....but then, these 400 channels.....its what we want, what we demand (more outlets for our writing, our programmes, our celebrity challenge). But more importantly and certainly its what the rulers want, the leaders that gather in Texas every two years to discuss strategies for domination (check it out, not a joke). They want and NEED a soporific and pliable population bloated on crass space-fillers and with everything else 'just out of reach'; a soporific and pliable public that's either so intent on finding enough grains of rice on the floor in order to live they've no time to glance to the horizon or else scrambling after the jackpot and prepared to sell all to gain it; Mao was right, the strength of the state is in conformity and the governments of this world have taken up both Mao's and Goering's mantra and preached it as their own; given the right signals the mob can be persuaded to do anything, and you should never underestimate the power of very stupid people in large groups.
Its heresy, but one of the reasons that our careless, oafish, brutal society that is so full of this "freedom" (or, as our politicicians keep referring to it, "choice") is on the march is because the folk who have any amount of nous limit their families and then work at bringing them up to a level that has society and sociological mores at its heart; they have the "freedom" to make that choice. Unfortunately this makes them weak because they use reason and discussion to solve problems, and you look a bit stupid when you're stating the case for a detailed examination of the thinking process behind antisocial behaviour and how best to tackle it whilst having your teeth thrust up your aresole! These others, the "thrusters of teeth", those other people basking in "choice", the fast approaching majority? Well, they "choose" to breed like rabbits and care less and less about the welfare of the brood because there's always more where they came from. They've been bought up in the corruption of the lie of freedom that says "Don't do as you would be done by, you're free to do just as you want"; it's a certain fact they'll be the majority very soon, their continuous "freedom" to enjoy state-funded fecundity will see to that and they'll be easily manipulated, easily stirred to riot and malpractice, easily blamed....the very fodder of Mr Goering in fact. But then, it doesn't take millions to rule, just one nutter in a group of "sensitives" and you've got grief-and-claret a-plenty. Walk the city-centres of a Friday and Saturday night, it just takes one........... Those children, those little 7 and 8 and 10 year-olds that were raped, in Manchester was it, by a 14 year old? They were out playing in a park..................at 21.00 hours.......?! Big Brother is their idol, Pot Noodle their gourmet sustenance, The Daily Star and The Sun their manifesto, soaps their social ethics committee and the Jade Goody's, Pete Doherty's and Tara Palmer-Tomkinsons of this world their role models. They inhabit a world where the king's new clothes are today's fashion and where children send 'round robins' of Email death-threats and every Internet connection is met with a barrage of pop-ups and advertising for fluff and porn.......because they're "free" to do so.
The corrupted freedom we have now is one that says, anything goes....an' I'll kick y' fuckin' teeth down y' throat if y' disagree!So many shit items are feted as the new something or other by psueds in DJ's with agendas as poisonous and as selfish as the power brokers; they do it for sex, for money, for fame, for notoriety, for entertainment; mostly ours. Those people who become suicide bombers can't be explained with rational thought and conceptions, they are above and beyond that. They're fed a disjointed logic, a logic that says killing disenfranchised people (just like them) with no voice or control of future events except a vote once every five years if they're lucky (just like them) will alter the way government works. (It does occur to me what would happen if these bombing factions got their way, held power and were able to do as they wished as leaders......!) In our turn, we are also preached false doctrines, ones that tell us if you lose the vote then you've still won the election (politicians) the one that tells us to be responsible for our own actions and resign if we become tarnished, "Now excuse me whilst I collect my 65-zillion pound bonus for driving the railway network/post office (insert the name of your own public service here) into spiralling debt and confusion.....oh, and a few lost lives on the way...." (public servants, and I use the word "servant" in its loosest possible sense here) the one that tells us honesty and the family comes first, "Now excuse me whilst I go and knock up my secretary" (politicians again) the list goes on and so does the hypocrisy within, and subjugation of, the masses.
Nothing we do, or say will have any impact or change the situation because we too are denied the opportunity to express our wish for change by successive governments who use "the fudge" as a political tool, the official secrets act as a get-out-of-jail-free card and tell the ignorant proletariat we, "Just don't understand how complex the situation is and that what we're doing, we're doing for your own good.........." Beware a politician who uses that as the reason for change, they'll slip in so many codicils to the bill you'll find it hard to take a dump without a licence. See, I told you it was befuddled and hazy.....'sound and fury'......... I'll close now, if you've got this far you deserve a coffee. I do read your 'Independent' column and enjoy it (there's a recommendation) but as you can see, sometimes it makes me cross..... I'll post this note on my Blogsite in the next couple of days, so that should guarantee me world-wide anonymity. Take care of y'self.
Doris
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