In all the major western countries there is a divided population, populism has raised its ugly head as far the establishment is concerned and they can’t put the genie back in the bottle where they would like it to stay.
The seeds of discontent go back a long way but until recently
the eruptions were contained or just fizzled out and we went back to the
acceptance of what we had was what we would put up with. Trying to pin down the
what that caused this upsurge in populism is not easy; a Pandora's Box has been
opened and we are none the wiser,
As far as Britain is concerned you could go back to Blair and
the open borders and immigration he instigated on a scale never seen before. It
has never been checked despite assurances it would be. Various reasons have
been put up for that, none of which
stand the test of time. Certain countries have managed to halt or severely
restrict immigration, Trump even managed to stem some of the surge from the
south that the USA has had for years, so you have to ask why not here and in
Europe generally. The answer we now know: it was never intended to halt
immigration.
Only now have certain countries like France begun to admit that a certain group are getting beyond control and the numbers are reaching the tipping point when they will be too big to say no to; the way forward if nothing is done will bring the nation down in the long run.
The frustration of the populace is compounded by the words and actions of those in power. Merkel says ‘multiculturalism has failed’ and then welcomes in over a million migrants; our own government says we will cut immigration to the tens of thousands and does nothing; and so on around Europe. Only the likes of Poland and Hungary go against the tide and are then put on the naughty step for daring to go against an EU edict and are inevitably called ‘racist’.
What really put the divide in the public domain was the double header of Brexit and Trump. For the progressive left it was as though Satan himself had been elected, and with Brexit, the little people should not be allowed to have that much of a say in things. There was a very, very good piece on the front page of the Times on the 5th of November by the Washington correspondent describing the election over there. I can only reprint a couple of paragraphs but you will get the drift. Amazingly there was another piece which echoed some of the sentiment on the inside pages the same day.
Gerard Baker said this….
“The Democrats failed to retake the Senate as they assumed
they would, and they actually lost seats in the House of Representatives as the
great American people in their wisdom, declined to anoint one party to seize
control of the government. Even if Biden wins the White House almost nothing
will get done without the consent of Mitch McConnell’s Senate Republicans.”
This next bit relates to us with Brexit……
“The American people have spent the last four years being told by their elites (and the rest of the world) that they have committed something close to a historic crime by voting for Donald Trump.
"That they needed to repudiate the man and expiate their sin and never again to think outside the lines laid down for them.”
There is a lot more in a similar vein. What we have seen is a
political elite aligned to the centre left with virtually nothing outside of that
narrow band to vote for. The Brexit vote was a chance for the disenfranchised
to vote for something without the pull of the big parties; though the latter tried
their best to intimidate and cajole for us to remain in the EU amazingly it didn’t
work, so despite pledges to respect the vote they all embarked along with a
complicit media and big business on an attempt to overturn the vote by other
means. The little man has spoken but we will ensure he does not have his way,
oh no siree.
So over four years were wasted at great cost in a one way agenda to remain in the Union. Has it all failed, will we leave on the first of January? Well, there's not long to find out, and also find out what we have sacrificed to attain freedom, if freedom it is.
https://quillette.com/2018/08/03/britains-populist-revolt/
Trump did exactly the same. The faces of the pundits, news
media and commentators world wide showed just how far the march through the
institutions had gone: no one apart from those that voted for him wanted him in
power and from day one spurious efforts to impeach were put in progress. None
of this on either side of the pond was anything to do with the country's welfare
or the people, it was about retaining power, power that the same elites believed
should be theirs alone. ;rom day one the disdain for Trump was obvious, he
wasn’t even allowed the courtesy of all previous Presidents of being called Mr
President, the battle lines were drawn.
This has nothing to do with how good or not Trump is or has
been. As here, there has not been much to beat for a long time in the
competence and achievement stakes, it is simply a stance-taking, left or right,
with the right becoming ever more a mirage - we have forgotten what real
Conservatives looked like - so to a certain extent it makes no difference who
you vote for: the people may have become polarised but the parties all share the
same ground.
Satire is good, no politician should get a free ride, but this was just plain nasty, another unheard of leftie comedienne who is not funny, there seems to be an endless stream of them, mainly congratulating themselves on like-minded panel programs.
Attempts here and abroad to break the monopoly of the ‘heritage’ parties have all met with either a strong rebuff or worse. Anything that could be called vaguely to the right is labelled racist by opponents and the press; despite the word being so overused to be baseless it sticks so 'right wing, Nazi, Hitler' are trotted out even when Trump became President and before he actually went to work.
Yet the Democrats/Labour have nothing to offer but handouts, identity politics, and suppression of debate, the working class to be despised and ignored, and the Conservatives having become suited socialists also give away hard-earned taxes with a relish never before seen.
The level to which modern politics has sunk, cannot completely verify this tweet, but it was deleted post haste and never denied as one would expect.
In France the Front National has been up against the same
wall for years, even a sanitised front that garnered more votes than was
comfortable for the incumbents was thwarted by all the major players combining
in the last round ensuring the Front had no power. In Germany, in Holland and elsewhere
the same has happened; here Nigel Farage should have won Thanet, the
Conservatives not only threw the kitchen sink in to stop him with unprecedented
advertising and effort but they illegally overspent which in a democracy should
have meant disqualification of the ‘winner’ but nothing happened - an
investigation went on and on and disappeared down the memory hole (oh, and
whatever was done about the three missing ballot boxes? Same as with the
overspending: nothing.)
This is manifestly corrupt but with a compliant MSN and
seemingly impotent legislating bodies or worse it is nigh impossible to break
the cabal in power or even the ones out of power, so we end up with the Catch-22 situation: whichever way we turn we get the same result.
Along with that result is a political class that is not fit
for purpose, placemen and women appointed by their peers on quotas and nepotism
and graft. Is anyone ever appointed these days on their record in business or
genuine merit. All come from the political university output of political BSc
graduates who have never had a job in the outside world.
The infiltration of the institutions has been going on for years. When you see front line teachers believing young junior school children should be be informed about trans gender issues you have a problem, and the same goes for a myriad of issues like the latest from Scotland (and being mooted to become law here) that dinner table conversations can be charged as hate crimes. The attempts to erase our history by left wing activists continues unabated, and we have a police force that does more than appear to have taken a stand with the same people; how else do you account for the two different approaches to demonstrations? Muslims are escorted to the French embassy to make their point, ER are allowed in full view of the same police to put a boat in Piccadilly Circus causing mayhem and are guarded by the same force and ditto with a demo in Cambridge, no attempt is made to stop various statues being defaced or toppled, but several peaceful anti-lockdown demos have the full riot squad turned out and used on them. This can only come from the top but who gives these orders? As with everything else we are fobbed off, the truth does not emerge.
After the public were refused entry to Whitehall by large numbers of police on Remembrance Sunday, ER were allowed to deface the Cenotaph for their political ends and the police just looked on!
BLM are a political Marxist operation wanting to shut down the capitalist West, yet everyone jumps on board with no scrutiny and even throws money their way. Even when the truth of that one came out they still would not change their tune and still they back them, why? Is it like the Coronavirus, where mistakes have been made and no one wants to be seen as having been a touch stupid, so bugger the country carry on and shut everything down again?
Trump blames China for the flu and everyone else blames
Trump, yet this virus, the Spanish flu and Sars all came from China, they do
have a record so why the denial by Western countries and the media?
Politics has never been ‘clean’ but we had a press and media that for many years kept things in check. Not any more: the delight which they have shown in jumping the shark over the defeat of Trump, if that is the final outcome, is nothing short of a disgrace whatever individuals think of him, but we have got used to the bias shown by news outlets over time, yet it still grates when their obvious pleasure at a result is shown now in such an unbridled fashion.
If Brexit fails to deliver what 17.4 million voted for expect
the same gloating from the same media and everyone else who said the little
people were thick and uninformed.
Those commentators that go against the narrative are in very
small numbers, hence the surprise at the Times front page.
And still they come up with pieces like this in the feminazis wet dream newspaper the Guardian, here eulogising over Comrade Kamala even before the caretaker President has taken office…
A woman who made it to the top from when under Willie Brown, literally, and has never looked back.
In fairness you could do the same investigation into most Western politicians today. Hardly any come out smelling of roses but you get
what you vote for and these days it often comes down to the least bad option. What a way to run countries! The integrity that politicians and commentators
need is no longer there and has gone missing for several decades.
The absurdity of politics has a good example (h/t to
JD): one of Biden’s senior advisors has suggested 75 is long enough to live - that puts Joe on the spot, does he take one for the country or as usual it will
not apply to the elites?
https://unherd.com/thepost/joe-bidens-coronavirus-advisor-thinks-life-should-end-at-75/
One thing I do know, I didn’t vote in the last election and will not again unless a viable (unlikely) alternative appears. As George Carlin said “The planet is fine. The people are f*cked.”
Sometimes we delude ourselves that we are still a nation with world wide clout. In reality we arem just another Western country that thinks it is a big player on the world stage. One hundred years ago we were the biggest of all on that same stage, but two world wars have impoverished us; our once-mighty navy now can’t even patrol our own coastline.
A nation that led the world with nuclear power now has to
have the Chinese build power stations for us. It seems that everything that
made this country great has gone, yet we survive but in a different way. Evolving is not a problem, the problem is evolving alongside other nations: doing exactly the same thing is not a recipe for long term success.
France is going down even faster than us, Germany is struggling
with its power house manufacturing base tackling ever rising energy costs,
Italy has bumbled on in its own sweet way for longer than anyone can remember
etc etc. But the virus has lit a match under all of them: debt mountains are
still growing, zero or negative interest rates are used to help governments
borrow but undermine the thrifty who are no longer important, and unemployment
has only just started to rise; the old and the sick are being thrown under the
bus and no one knows why or pretends not to know.
And still illegal immigrants pile in everywhere adding to the
welfare costs of nations that are becoming (or have become) strapped for cash, and also constantly swelling the numbers that are a terrorist threat, and increasingly
impossible to monitor.
The country is making catastrophic decisions with ever-dwindling capital reserves: the following of the climate change cult in some strange belief it will actually benefit us is merely a distraction to the woes set in progress by the various governments all going down this route. Huge sums are being spent on projects that simply don’t stack up. When the lights start going out who will take the blame? No one now in government, you may be sure.
France with 75% of its energy needs supplied by nuclear is closing one nuclear plant and no one has been given a clear explanation as to why, it alone supplies reliably more power than all of France’s solar panels combined which gives as good an example as any as to why wind and solar can only ever be supplementary never the base of supply, yet again all are going down this route to stop start energy supply. The cost is staggering, the outcome unknown.
How much longer can the West limp on, the elites blindfolded or following agendas of their own, not caring but almost encouraging this state of affairs. Your guess is as good as mine, but it cannot go on this way indefinitely, the elastic will break.
It is interesting reading how the fall of the Roman Empire
came about, little changes:
- Invasions by Barbarian tribe = no difficulty seeing the parallel there.
- Economic problems, reliant on slave labour = ditto
- The rise of the Eastern Empire = China
- Overexpansion = as the EU would have it.
- Government corruption and political instability = all around us.
- Mass migration = yes
- Weakening of the military = it has certainly been weakened
- Severe Financial crisis and overspending = surely not
The livelihood of the Roman people was reduced and with that the population started to decline. In this situation, the only thing that the Roman Empire did was to increase taxes and then to offset the decline in population to bring in labour from abroad - the commonalities are obvious.
These reasons were taken from several pieces on why the Roman Empire fell. All have a parallel with the West today. I won't be around in fifty years but I would wager it will be a very different West from today and not for the better. Overly pessimistic? I wouldn’t bet on it.
6 comments:
There is so much to unpack here with regards to your comments on President Trump, so I will stick to a few small ones:
1. He did not 'stem the flow of immigrants'. He has stopped quite a few by changing the rules on asylum, but the coyotes are still bringing in the same numbers as before. His deportation rate is lower than that under president Obama. It almost seems as though the GOP doesn't want to attack the businesses that use all of that illegal labour, like meat packing plants.
2. He has been called 'Mr. President' the whole time. His 'mistreatment' is nothing compared to barrage of sewage emanating from Fox news, which criticized his brown suit, his choice of Grey Poupon mustard, his not wearing a tie at his desk (like Reagan) and so on.
3. The 'spurious' efforts of impeachment resulted in unprecedented numbers of legitimate felony convictions of many of those closest to him.
4. Trump's tactic of enraging his base against the use of masks has made things far worse than they should be. Our local hospitals are now full, and it is only getting worse.
"The 'spurious' efforts of impeachment resulted in unprecedented numbers of legitimate felony convictions of many of those closest to him."
If you put the same amount of investigative effort and prosecutorial pressure on the entourages and allies of every senior politician in the USA (and probably the world) you'd find at least as much wrong-doing, and in some cases considerably more. Politics is a corrupt business. No US president has been the subject of more intensive and politically motivated prosecutorial efforts than Trump, and after all that effort all they came up with was a few bag carriers who were sleazy. And not an ounce of anything on Trump.
I doubt Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and Barack Obama would come up as clean if they were subject to a similar investigation into everything they have ever said and/or done.
I don't wish to be as bleak as George Carlin, but there must be a reason why he didn't simply support the Democrats, the good people.
@Sobers - Except that the GOP spent over $100 million investigating the Clintons, and were not able to lay a legal glove on them. Either the GOP is collectively stupid, or they are wrong.
I hold to the contention that the GOP have become completely resistant to reality, which certainly explains the policies (or lack thereof) in Education, Science, the Economy and so much more, including the current mess of an election.
Paddington, I would dispute that Trump had the courtesy of the prefix President used by all and sundry, here from the start Trump was what you got from the sneering MSM media for some time in a way no other President has been addressed, and he largely still is.
The use of masks has been as contentious as much as it has been useful, you could fill a book with legitimate opinions either way on the subject, most masks have so little protection for the wearer or others as to be useless, if they were the cure all they are made out to be then all would be required to wear the N95 masks but they are not and people in masks from the beginning believe that social distancing at whatever level can be ignored, you only have to go to a supermarket to see the difference now and pre mask, and we have the ridiculous increasing sight of more people wearing visors which are not masks, yet that is allowed as are scarfs etc which are useless.
Only the individual can conclude if all the measures taken for this virus are worth it, the 'if it saves one life' brigade would never leave the house in that scenario, I was around during the HK flu pandemic in 68-69 , you would if transported back not know there was a pandemic, everything carried on as normal , the death rate was much higher than this one and still I never knew anyone who had it, this virus rates 23rd out of the last 24 for fatalities, you can draw your own conclusions from that fact alone.
My wife is in healthcare. In the past few weeks, she has gone from 10% of her patients with COVID to 50%.
Our local hospitals are filled to overflowing, with 30% in the ICU and elsewhere with serious cases of COVID.
If you insist that it is no big deal, you are deluding yourself. Here in the US deaths have gone from 1,000 per day a couple of weeks ago to 1,600 per day.
Post a Comment