A reminder to my MP that his party boss Theresa May and her out-of-control foreign secretary Boris Johnson impatiently jumped the gun on Iraq and look like making the same mistake on Syria in an apparent attempt to provoke a wider war.
In yesterday’s New York Times, regular op-ed contributor David Brooks heaped effusive praise on last Saturday’s March for Our Lives. Brooks wrote:
I have to say, I loved the gun-control march I observed last Saturday in Washington. The crowd was good-hearted, gracious, diverse and welcoming… Everybody kept underlining their faith in our democratic system, that voting is the way to make change…Of course some of the student speakers were grandiose and pretentious. Most of us were like that when we were 18.
Do you support humanity and livability? Or the “right” of people to use private cars?
This question is aimed particularly at the left end of the political spectrum, to that part of the public who should know better.
My own little world
Is what I deserve
‘Cause I am the only child there is.
A king of it all
The belle of the ball
I promise I’ve always been like this.
Forever the first
My bubble can’t burst
It’s almost like only I exist.
Where everything’s mine
If I can keep my mouth shut tight, tight, tight.
— Guster, “Center of Attention”, Lost and Gone Forever Live, 2014
A few years ago, anarchist philosopher Crispin Sartwell argued that “the left/right or Democrat/Republican split—which turns American politics into a hyper-repetitive, mechanical set of partisan bromides about free markets versus government programs with egalitarian results—depends on a historical mistake.”1 While Sartwell was pretty much on point with this assessment, we haven’t yet been able to cast aside these self-imposed political blinders.
The more people I meet, the happier I become.
— Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot
It really is a shame, and it is tiring, but it is actually nothing new: there is now total disarray amongst those countless ‘progressive’ and ‘semi-left’ Western intellectuals, publications, movements and political parties.
Cowardice, bloated egos, lack of discipline and intellectual pettiness are often to blame, but that is not all.
