It's that time again when dictionary compilers make their judgement on what has been the defining word of the year. Obviously the significance of words varies, country by country and it is interesting to compare choices made. Oxford Dictionaries has put together this neat video (as usual, for those who do not see the embedded video here is the link). In the UK we seem to have adopted:
Post Truth
Meanwhile on the other side of the pond Merriam-Webster chooses:
Surreal
For me this is surreal:
Yes I can see that Surreal is a reasonable choice given the way it went with just under half of those who voted choosing nihilism. I am though rather disappointed as elevating Trump to stand beside such pillars of art and culture as Bunuel and Dali is not acceptable. That said, there have been disturbing parallels between Bunuel's masterpiece, The Exterminating Angel and the Trump vision of America, at least as seen from this side of the pond. "Terror is our only defence against anguish". Xenophobia as a means to achieve greatness is as surreal as it gets so, on reflection I think that Merriam-Webster got it right. It didn't work in the thirties so why should it work in 2016.
And now for BelperStuff's words of 2016
TRUMP
Before 2016 this was a word that signified a sort of benevolent fart ........... benevolent insomuch as:
Nellie the elephant packed her trunk and said goodbye to the circus,
Off she went with a trumpety-trump, Trump, Trump, Trump.
Post 2016 it is a noxious smell that has the potential to linger for a minimum of 4 years.
An example of a typical Gove
GOVE
A Gove is a person of limited intelligence who cruelly believes that he is gifted with great wisdom. Further variations include the term Govian Universe which is an exact fit for the alternative, post truth world that is reported upon by the Daily Mail. Despite repeated attempts by astrophysicists to verify its existence the only theory that has credence is that the Govian Universe is in fact a pub in Kensington where gin sozzled Daily Mail hacks try to outdo each other with ever more fanciful tales.
A further derivative is, "to do a Gove" which is a term used to describe a chaotic reorganisation of an education system but can be used in a more general sense when commenting on the reorganisation of a complete society; as in "to do a Gove with the economy" which is now shortened to the single word, "Brexit".
Farachute
This is the medical term for the organ used by Nigel Farage to utter. pearls of Trump-like wisdom.
Inequality
The only measure that really matters. The unequal share of the riches of this planet that leads to impoverishment of both the environment and the peoples who inhabit that environment. No attempt at a joke here.
Words to look out for in 2017
Smugetry
This is the pleasure experienced by a bigot when they think that they have found proof that their bigoted view of the world is in fact correct. You will see a lot of this in 2017 as post-truth believers search diligently for any evidence that tells them that their faith in Govian reality and or the fragrance of a Trump has not been misplaced. It also contains hints of schadenfreude because smugetry is at its most enjoyable when accompanied by the feeling of superiority over those who will suffer because they are not as all-seeing as you ............. the Smuget.
Farage gleefully blaming Merkel for the Berlin Christmas market atrocity is an example of a grade A smuget wallowing in Smugetry. His further comments about the Schengen agreement allowing the Christmas market murderer to reach Milan before being stopped is a further example of a smuget smugly making capital out of a tragedy.
Mayday
This word was formerly known as the 1st day of May or a cry for help from distressed vessels but in 2017 the two meanings are historically linked when Mayday is used to signify the day we all drew in our breath in utter astonishment at the sparsity of ideas contained in the May government's strategy for Brexit.
Impeachment
Trump declares that this is in fact a thriving community in Mississippi and a Fox News journalist is sent there post haste to do a voxpop of randomly selected citizens driving rusting pickup trucks.
Fissiparous (English usage)
If society seems to be broken in 2016 you ain't seen nothing yet. As the cracks become wider the true nature of our plight becomes all too apparent. In 2017 the word fissiparous (Oxford Dictionary definition as in "the fissiparous tendencies inate in tribalism") is on everyone's lips as populist movements fragment when promise after promise gets broken. The inherent problem of nebulous politics such as Brexit is that at some point those you bamboozled expect to see tangible results and when you fail to deliver society becomes fissiparous.
Writing a blog like this you must always ask yourself the question, have I something that is worth saying or am I just adding my paltry two penn'orth in the delusion that what I say and think actually matters. With that in mind I strive for originality and one device that I turn to is to make reference to a quote from someone better qualified than myself or to make an amusing link to a song which bears a similar message. With the title of this post, quoting Macbeth, I am obviously going for gold and trust that you are already ahead of me in imagining that Shakespeare wrote this pithy line with Trump in mind. The sound and fury bit is plucked from the Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow speech spoken by Macbeth himself:
How did he speak with his two daughters about the election results, about the post-election reports of racial incidents? “What I say to them is that people are complicated,” Obama told me. “Societies and cultures are really complicated. . . . This is not mathematics; this is biology and chemistry. These are living organisms, and it’s messy. And your job as a citizen and as a decent human being is to constantly affirm and lift up and fight for treating people with kindness and respect and understanding. And you should anticipate that at any given moment there’s going to be flare-ups of bigotry that you may have to confront, or may be inside you and you have to vanquish. And it doesn’t stop. . . . You don’t get into a fetal position about it. You don’t start worrying about apocalypse. You say, O.K., where are the places where I can push to keep it moving forward.”
The Independent article was in turn a nugget taken out of a far more impressive piece in the New Yorker Magazine: Obama reckons with a Trump presidency by the editor, David Remnick. Check out the link; it is a well written read.
I know that Obama's words may not on the surface seem to chime with Macbeth but the similarity for me is in the quiet acceptance that all is underpinned by time. Perhaps the most impressive is the acknowledgement that you have to contend with your own bigotry as well as that of others. As I said, read the full New Yorker article and perhaps you too will see the common sanguinity of Obama and Macbeth.
Hyper Normalisation
In that New Yorker article Obama also spoke about the acceptance of untruths during campaigning and how just a few short years ago such distortions would not have been accepted. He also speaks of the role of social media and how an truth (his example was of global warming) has no more prominence than an untruth. There is no quick fix for this but somehow we have to work out how to separate fiction from fact.
It was then quite apt that I chanced upon a film by Adam Curtis, HyperNormalisation on the BBC iPlayer. Here is the link: HyperNormalisation, a film to be found on the BBC website. I apologise to those who are unable to view media content on the BBC but I urge you to seek out this film as it plots the early years of several government's misinforming their citizens and their complicity in manufacturing fiction as fact following the withdrawal of US troops from the Lebanon in the face of the new weapon, suicide bombing. It is a point of view that is well worth considering and it does echo Obama in that New Yorker piece. (going back to the climate debate):
That marked a decisive change from previous political eras, he maintained. “Ideally, in a democracy, everybody would agree that climate change is the consequence of man-made behavior, because that’s what ninety-nine per cent of scientists tell us,” he said. “And then we would have a debate about how to fix it. That’s how, in the seventies, eighties, and nineties, you had Republicans supporting the Clean Air Act and you had a market-based fix for acid rain rather than a command-and-control approach. So you’d argue about means, but there was a baseline of facts that we could all work off of. And now we just don’t have that.”
The HyperNormalisation film claims that a regard for evidence and truth was ditched in the area of foreign policy following the bombing of the US barracks in Beirut in 1983. Many now believe that there are governments that have extended such disinformation into other areas of governance, most notably in their handling of refugees, migrant workers, treatment of the impoverished and their complicity in the rise of unrestricted capitalism. The use of outright lies in both the Brexit and US presidential elections indicate that this trend is accelerating.
Unfortunately there are many who vote after hearing the tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
For those of you suffering from a sleepless night ............. you know .......... when that nightmare keeps returning and continues to colour your mood through the waking day .............. I offer you this as a healing balm. Nuit Blanche by Eberhard Weber:
I apologise to those who just don't like this sort of stuff.
Who better to comment than the Marx Brothers
Wise words from a wise man
The pain is now transatlantic and amplified by thoughts that other people in other lands may prove to be susceptible to this distortion of truth that masquerades as political wisdom. We fear the domino effect. At the very least the fallout will effect every continent, the double hit of Brexit and Trumpism leading to the downward spiral of protectionism both in the importation of goods and people. It is the callous exploitation of our basest fears that wrankles the most. The EU Leave campaign scapegoating the foreigner, the self same trick then rolled out in the US to get a self confessed misogynist liar to the White House. We stand on the brink of indecency as the far right take note that if you keep scratching at the sore of xenophobia you will gain electoral success.
................ and then this prescient wisdom from Karl
Those opposed to this abhorrent crew and their message of racism and hatred have to find a way of moving the debate into the realm of fact ............ not fiction. The scapegoating of immigration must be challenged and any temptation by a left leaning political party to adopt a watered down yet still repressive control of immigration in the hope that by so doing they gain an advantage at the ballot box has to be resisted. Only the truth will suffice. If you want to dig deeper into this then I can suggest nothing better than this article from the Global Civil Society 2004 Yearbook. This references, amongst many other sources and ideas, this quote from Marx, "if free movement of capital is allowed, so free movement of labour should be".
A conversation with my wife as we drove home from a Labour branch meeting the other evening really set me thinking. She reminded me of the meeting we attended at the Labour Conference in Liverpool this year, to be specific, the meeting of Christians on the Left where the references in the bible to acceptance and love of the foreigner chimed perfectly with my own belief in open borders. I contrasted the open hearted and unconditional love I witnessed at that meeting with an interview on the BBC last night with a representative of the Evangelical Movement in America who without any qualms was able to defend the fact that 4 out of 5 white evangelicals voted for Trump. (see this article in Christianity Today). They are self styled as "born again" but I fear that many in the world will suffer because of the inherent born again racism of christian fundamentalists in the US. We have to find a way to counter these extremists who cleave to those who preach hate such as Trump. We just have to find a way of reaching their minds. If only we could call a meeting between the US Evangelicals and the Liverpool Christians on the Left, Now that would be a debate worth watching.
Finally
We also have to be prepared for the unthinkable. The running mate of Trump, Mike Pence, will now become the Vice-President in two months time. Mike Pence is a creationist see this youtube video of Pence speaking against the theory of evolution. He is but one step upon the grassy knoll of becoming the President (not something I would wish for I hasten to add). The fear is that even as a Vice-President he will be given a range of responsibilities by a President who will not want to be bothered by details. That he might be given the freedom to enforce a change in school curriculums that will embed the idea in young impressionable minds across the entire US that our world is a mere 4,000 or perhaps 7,000 years old is chilling. Who knows what Trump promised to Pence to get him to agree to be his running mate ................ and who know what the pair of them have had to promise to deliver to enlist the support of a variety of organisations, not least the global warming denying element of capitalism that wants to stifle any debate about the environment ( but that's a topic for another blogpost).
The wonderful wall, the 11 million expulsions, borders closed to muslims and the imposition of 45% trade tariffs and what else? Exclusion, expulsion, embargoes and protectionism have proved to be persuasive arguments in both the EU Referendum and US Presidential campaign ................ a far cry from the Christians on the Left and Marxist philosophy that mankind should be borderless. Remember, if you want to avoid that sleepless night:
Four months on from the EU referendum and still no sight of a plan. The warnings of dire consequences following a Leave vote are materialising even before the process of negotiating an exit gets underway next March. I am losing track of the state of the pound but it is getting dangerously close to losing 20% of its value which in turn means higher prices in the shops (Unilever looking to raise prices for its products by 10%) and inflation is tipped to go from the post referendum level of 0.6% to over 2.5% sometime next year. Meanwhile the UK FTSE index goes from strength to strength so the folks with capital make money whilst those of more modest means have to pay the price. We witnessed similar distortions following the "credit crunch" with subsequent household earnings of the better off going up whilst the less well off have suffered severe cuts to their income.
Seismic economic and now with Brexit, political changes do seem to offer significant opportunities for the wealthy to become wealthier whilst the ranks of the impoverished increase in numbers following each shock to society.
I cannot escape the feeling that the desire for revolution now resides within the very soul of capitalism because ............ well along with chaos comes the chance to make a lot of money. For years the establishment have warned against the revolutionary forces of the left, how they were committed to the overthrow of the state and the destruction of civilised life as we know it therefore a vote for conservative policies was the safest and surest way to preserve that which was worth preserving. Those of us who have ever been involved with the so-called revolutionary left were never fooled by this
rhetoric because we remember looking around at our beret wearing comrades, miserably fixated on making a half pint last through an International Socialists (IS - later to become the SWP) meeting in a dingy pub back room. It was painfully obvious that these good folk would never become the standard bearers of a new world order.
It was the late sixties, the bloom of flower power inevitably withered at the end of one brief summer, Students in revolt in Berlin and Paris; a raging battle between the police and anti-Vietnam war demonstrators in Grosvenor Square in London. A prominent Tory MP touring the country preaching his bile of hate against non-whites settling in our community whilst Russian tanks rolled into Czechoslovakia, crushing the tender shoots of the Prague Spring. History was in the making all around us but we IS members could only contribute to the cause by standing on street corners on a Saturday morning selling copies of Black Dwarf which contained the thoughts of Tariq Ali; but it was doubtful if those that were sold were ever read.
Disillusioned, I started to listen to other voices, broadening my reading then chanced upon a talk being given by J.K.Galbraith who had been part of the President Kennedy administration. Galbraith was a gangling height of a man who draped his angular body around the lectern, his essentially monotone voice gaining much needed modulation from an infrequently raised long and bony finger ........... but the delivery was of no matter because he held his audience with his words. I can still hear that voice in my head, "Revolution brings the most harm to those it purports to set free". I of course paraphrase but he went on to say that the best hope for society was an evolutionary democracy that held the wellbeing of its citizens as a core objective. Strangely enough, a few weeks later I heard Harold Wilson making those exact same points in a televised speech. I was already an affiliated member of the Labour Party through my union, the TGWU, but it was Galbraith and then Wilson who severed my "fashionable" involvement with the revolutionary left.
If you've managed to read this far you are probably wondering what all this has to do with Brexit and what on earth is the relevance of a Nantucket Sleigh Ride. Yes I'll get to the point. We now seem to be living through times of revolution and chaos felt most acutely in Britain but also in the US (think Trump), the middle east never more dysfunctional and we hold our collective breath in fear of the next African famine or scourge of disease. In both the US and the UK self serving politicians with the fervent backing of their own biased media have scapegoated immigrants for all the perceived shortcomings of society. The result in the UK is plain to see as our politicians fail to come up with an answer to a problem which is of their own making. The Nantucket Sleigh Ride analogy refers to the harpooning of a whale by men precariously hunting their prey from a small rowing boat. The harpooned whale would take off with fright, towing the row-boat behind them at considerable speed until all the strength of the great beast was exhausted. Being towed by the whale was dubbed the Nantucket Sleigh Ride.
I don't think I have to spell this out but .......... the UK politicians who campaigned for us to leave the EU have harpooned the whale of Brexit.
They are now being towed at great speed, clinging on to the gunwhales with white knuckles, praying that the blind panic of Brexit will soon run its course and that by then a plan will have emerged, how to deal with the bloodied carcass of our economy.
At least the Labour Party emerged from months of navel gazing to mount a serious challenge to the government last week. It is not unreasonable to ask Teresa May and her Tory team how they propose to tame the beast that is Brexit but the response that they do not want to show what cards they possess before they begin negotiations is vacuous. There is no trump card, no winning suit. Everybody involved with the negotiations, from May/Boris/Fox/Davies to Angela Merkel's dog knows that we are a busted flush.
Meanwhile the fat cats who fund the Tories make money out of the chaos as the rest of us pay the price of their selfishness .............. for as Galbraith said:
A Neighbourhood Plan for Belper/Transition Belper team with the help of some other great volunteers undertook a dawn to dusk traffic survey by the Belper market Place on Thursday 6th October and a brief initial look at the data has been posted to the http://np4b.blogspot.co.uk/ or you can use the Neighbourhood Plan tab situated above left to this post. Of immediate interest is this graph using just a part of their data:
I was disappointed that we could not gain access to the Momentum event as I was keen to understand what this alternative vision for the left was all about. So far all I have managed to see are the negatives but as is the way of all things, there must be positives; nothing's all bad.
I am posting the link to John Harris's Thursday article in the Guardian not because I necessarily believe his assertion that we were witnessing the birth of a new Labour Party .......... that is far too glib and an assertion based upon very scant evidence but he did point out the positive side of the Momentum alternative conference. There was really no joy in witnessing the sadness of the 38% who attended the conference proper in the ACC on Albert Dock and if there was fresh and relevant debate going on just half a mile away in the city then I am sad that I missed it. For many at the main conference there really was a feeling of being the unwanted embarrassment, like ballroom dancers at a disco (yes I did see Ed Balls arriving at conference on Sunday) and they would have benefited from participation in a genuine debate.
It was striking how conversations with the 38% turned towards the activism of local politics and the problems of delivering social care, housing and transport in specific towns or regions. It was almost as if those who did not vote for Jeremy had realised that they were now excluded from the national debate but that they still had some relevance at borough, city or county level. In that they are probably correct because there are an awful lot of activists numbered in that 38%. It is such a shame that they now feel excluded from the national debate because I witnessed many discussions about how the party was evolving with many making similar comments to those described by John Harris in the Black E.
Time will tell but I think it is far too early for John Harris to claim that a new Labour Party is emerging. Sadly there is still some way to go but I do genuinely take heart that issues of party identity were discussed at the Momentum alternative conference. What concerns me is that there is a large section of the party that feels disenfranchised from the debate.
In Liverpool I balanced the navel gazing within the conference with the views of ordinary voters. Liverpool is a Labour city and as such a good barometer of the current health of the party. I spoke with bar staff, hotel staff, passengers on trains, policemen, taxi and bus drivers ............ well just about anyone who I shared a couple or more minutes with outside the conference hall, conversation being easy because they were keen to talk with someone wearing a conference pass around their neck. I have to say that not one of those people were happy with the Labour Party in its present state or confident that there will be any improvement in the short term. When I asked if they would still be voting Labour many said that there is no real alternative but rather than a positive vote for Labour it would be a negative vote to ensure that the Tories or worse do not get in.
Policy rather than personality
I welcome any optimism towards Labour's future but I feel that John Harris may be a little bit premature with his article. By the end of conference I started to detect a level of disquiet amongst a few of the 62% at the fudging of Labour's position on Trident. Similarly I detected some soul searching of the 38% with the policy commitments for uncapped immigration and taking back into public control and properly funding social services such as care for the elderly. These policies resonate with many of the 38% and may be a means by which the party can move forward. There is genuine hope that if the party can move on to debating policy rather than personality we will start to be of relevance to our voters.
