Friday, November 04, 2016

Where's Bobby Ewing when you need him?

The Western World is crumbling. Democratic institutions are under assault from far-right politicians in both the US and the UK. The Washington Post reports how the Republican Party is now actively undermining the state in order to keep Hilary Clinton from the White House, and will continue to obstruct government should she be elected in much the same way it's blocked Obama for much of his eight years in office.
Meanwhile, in the UK, right-wing newspapers ferment hatred and violence in their apopoletic response to yesterday's High Court ruling that merely confirmed that parliament - which is supposed to be the nation's sovereign body after all - will need to approve the triggering of the Brexit process. The Daily Mail has reverted to type, delivering headlines that are more in keeping with its 1930s period when it was opening courting Adolf Hitler. The Sun has the nerve to blame "loaded foreign elites" for this latest development.
The Sun's line in particular reveals just how far we've descended into farce and chaos. The obvious riposte to its line is to point the finger at its owner, himself an Australian-born, US-resident billionaire who has openly meddled in British politics since the 1980s. We're told Brexit was an anti-establishment revolution, yet it's clear the referendum merely pitted one half of the establishment against the other.
Yet those who voted for Brexit can't - or won't - see this. It appears that once you've stuck your head in the sand over one thing (climate change anyone?), you don't remove it for anyone. I've been reading Robert Harris' brilliant trilogy of novels about Cicero and the last days of the Roman Republic. Our own democracy now stands on the brink of collapse.
Sounds overly dramatic? If so, why is Jacob Rees Mogg - a name that reeks of the establishment - allowed to write a piece in today's Telegraph that states as its headline, "We will achieve Brexit, even if it takes an election, a purge of the Europhiles or 1,000 new peers to get there." Talk about disrespecting the British institutions you claim to cherish.
In the US it's even worse - Trump was claiming the election was a fix and the polls inaccurate while he was losing, then points people towards them when he's winning. It's what he's done for years. His levels of hypocrisy know no bounds, continually rounding on Clinton's email server while no one points out he's due to stand trial not once but twice in the months following the election result. I could go on, but if you're not already aware of the double-standards being applied here, you never will be.
It's tempting to say the war is lost, that we will slide back into something akin to tyranny, but there's a silent majority of people out there well aware of what is going on. It's time we all woke up to the facts, and acted to preserve this privileged life we lead, before it's too late.

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