The Spectacle Of Politics
Morning Comrades.
As I am sure most of you have, at the very least, heard that over the weekend, politics in England, especially in regards to the ruling conservative party, imploded on itself and this had me rolling around a number of thoughts and feelings over the weekend that I will get into today. Primarily, to take a step back from it all and see our reality for it is and hopefully offer some perspective in regards to what it is we are facing.
As always though, some new tunes for you and this week.
This is a good one and decidedly heavier than usual, which is nice. A couple of new tracks including that banger from Orbital and Sleaford Mods, some super off-beat deep dive tunes that popped out of nowhere, floaty post-rock all the way to newer work from Kae Tempest and some alternative country. It’s one to save, like, share and ride with this week, enjoy!
…and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. - Abraham Lincoln
The Spectacle Of Politics
Like most people I was filled with glee when Liz Truss, the most recent Prime Minister of the UK resigned last week after 44 days in office and then I got mad at myself for it.
Within 44 days of Truss being in office she caused an outrageous amount of harm to the majority of the people, but specifically to most if not all working people in the UK, her team of criminals managed to almost break the economy by their most lavish criminal concept of economics - to be absolutely clear, even their public dogma of economic ideology is so absurd and brazen that anyone can only see it as the biggest robbery of the century - precisely why the IMF stepped in and said, no.
Obviously, Truss and her team of posh gangsters are only the end result of a long line of criminals pillaging the working class and certainly don’t represent a solitary “mistake”, or mis-step out of the ordinary. Far from it and after a few moments of glee I realized that irrespective of her wrongdoings, she wouldn’t face any consequences for her criminal acts at all, on the contrary, she will be rewarded by a life long pension of around 140K per year, heaps of non-governmental work and will continue to live a life of luxury, mostly at tax-payers expense.
A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves.
― Edward R. Murrow
You usually hear that the way to fix any and all governments is to take the money out of politics and to a certain degree that is correct, but ultimately and utterly naive to the point where I would argue that those saying it, in actuality, want said money for themselves. As long as we exist under Capitalism, there will be money in our democracies, solely due to the fact that Money only allows us to have the illusion of democracy and thus continues to wield power over us, their productive forces and source of wealth.
No, what we need is consequences for politicians- and those that pay them- that act against the health and wealth of the people they represent.
We come back to the idea of why states, why governments and so on - and this isn’t a debate to have in a vacuum, again, utterly naive and best reserved for science fiction, but here and now. To believe that we here can eradicate the very nature of states and countries is foolish so for the time being we have to discuss any change within those realms of material and political reality. It is equally foolish to maintain the idea of reform of the existing system when the entire system is build upon the idea of protecting the means of maintaining and growing the wealth of the ruling class. No matter all the great speeches and ideas presented any politician with access to power here in the west, that fact has always remained that our democracies exist solely for the above purpose and maintains to give us the illusion of choice and power.
Nevertheless and we have talked about this often on here, the idea of a representative democracy, in principle, is good and capable of allocating resources and managing power for the sake of providing warmth, care, health and shelter for those that relinquish power for equality. That’s the ideal and quite frankly the exact opposite of what any of us experience under these so-called democracies.
With that, how do stop this top to bottom class war through fascism from not only being a deadly burden upon all of us but also one that is on a fast track to ecological genocide and now, if the Military Industrial Complex gets its way, nuclear armageddon on top of it all.
Consequences. You work against the benefits of the 99% and there will be consequences. Again, reform here is naive, when you think of consequences within the framework of existing legality. That entire branch of power is on said class war and most certainly not on our side. So how then?
Since mankind's dawn, a handful of oppressors have accepted the responsibility over our lives that we should have accepted for ourselves. By doing so, they took our power. By doing nothing, we gave it away. We've seen where their way leads, through camps and wars, towards the slaughterhouse.
― Alan Moore
I am not even entirely sure I can put that down in words before getting into more trouble than I am already am but nevertheless this is precisely what we have to ask ourselves. If the entire, man-made construct of how we distribute resources and power, that come entirely from us, the working class, is geared and fashioned to operate only against our interests why do we maintain it? Out of fear of punishment, violence or worse? Possibly, and I’ll be the first to attest that state violence against yourself is anything but pleasant, but we do know, that, they can’t lock us all up, right? That they are the absolute minority in this play called life, that their power is mostly illusionary and that we can create a just, sustainable and fair society at any given point should we want to, right?
This is why got mad, mostly at myself over the weekend for participating in the gleeful spectacle that politics is, and it is just that, a play put on by the ruling class for us peasants, to keep us entertained and distracted from the war being waged on us. It makes no difference if Truss is out or who is in next, the ruling class, the capitalists remain in charge. Truss will face no consequences for the wrong doing, the same way that neither Blair or Bush Jr will for killing millions in the Middle East for the war on terror and so on, christ on a crutch, if I wanted to get into it, the list of politicians past and present who are guilty of crimes against humanity would take up my entire evening.
There is no point in rooting or fighting the different factions within the play the ruling class has created for us called democracy. There is however, the ultimate point to build genuine societies that serve everyone, democratically, from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs.
Food for thought.
Thank you for your time, attention and support.
Yours,
V
I will tell you what I will do and what I will not do. I will not serve that in which I no longer believe, whether it calls itself my home, my fatherland, or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defense the only arms I allow myself to use -- silence, exile, and cunning.
― James Joyce