Rhetorical questions round a rectangular dining table
Vol 4. Please could you stop the noise? Why don’t I “do” anything any more? And why are we going to war with Russia?
Before we commence on this wonderous journey through the innermost ramblings of my mind, here are exhibits 1, 2 and indeed 3 of those annoying and rhetorical questions that often vex me as I stare wistfully into the ether and drink yet another piping hot cup of tea:
I don’t “do” anything any more and this has long irritated me. And by “do” I mean actively participate, be passionate about or be informed and enthused by something, anything, from a sport to politics, to stamp collecting or some perverted sexual fetish that I trust you will keep to yourself. So you have a good basic knowledge of the subject, pastime or topic, but you simply don’t “do” them anymore. I’ll give you some examples and I may disappear on a tangent or three but stick with it. I am, after all, a professional, and I’ll get this article to hang together somehow so please relax. Kick off your shoes, and with wild abandon if you dare, help yourself to the biscuits, please don’t forget to dig deep when the collection plate comes your way and we’ll start with the exceedingly obvious question of why?
The answer of course is fairly straight forward, but then again, is it? The answer is a symptom of my retreat from that strange world we all collectively call “real” and my overwhelming desire to squirrel myself away from such a ludicrously unreal world. It’s of my increasing anxiety and need to “steel” myself for any meaningful interaction in that strange outside world, an apparently “real” one too, but even before that futuristic year of 2020 and the calamity that has plagued us all since, it’s never felt particularly real to me. Dark and depressive moods lead to further isolation, lead to loss of appetite for any and everything — I thoroughly understand the spiral. I’m also completely aware of the surface remedy too: stop denying yourself a pleasure, stop being cognitively dysfunctional, and relax. Just relax.
If you share any of those weirdly wired human emotions you’ll appreciate the feeling of limbo or purgatory that this spiral can spin you through. We can, and might, talk about coping strategies or mechanisms, a more spiritual path perhaps and a zen “living in the moment” appreciation of life, or the casting away of life’s baggage, dispensing of guilt and regret and just like John Lennon, “starting over”. Imagine that? And I have and I’ve succeeded in every area, but only a tiny bit! I have a coping strategy, I can live in the moment when I wish to and I can throw my baggage onto the luggage carousel of life along with those dastardly enemies of envy, regret, loss and guilt. But then I retreat a little further, can’t face even the easiest of social encounters and then I deduce to my dismay that we’re going to war with Russia on the whim of a prissy looking supply teacher clutching her clipboard and who reports to a wraith like figure who appears to be constantly jolted awake by a cattle prod and scared of the shadow he doesn’t cast as well as the reflection he can’t see in his own mirror, and then I have to wonder if I do in fact still “do” politics after all?
So it’s all rather pleasing to hear those war drums being pounded both here in the UK and across the pond in the USA. That’s exactly what the world needs right now, and a world we must remember is real and not imagined. Our world, real or otherwise, is in dire need of a damn good war and whether you wear a red or blue rosette it doesn’t matter and you don’t have to worry that pretty little head of yours! The Government, in our real world, is in control. Okay there are a number of more, how shall we say, pressing, issues with which to concern ourselves with but war is good for money, sorry, morale, and we always win the wars we start, pardon me, regretfully have to participate in, so beat those drums louder! War? What is it good for? Aside from lining the coffers of the military industrial complex and providing the blood for the thirsty ghouls in our Governments, not a lot really. So we’re going to deliberately stamp on the tail of the tiger and ignite a war, a probable NUCLEAR WAR, and a mutually assured destructive war with Russia?
Fantastic! At least the fireworks display will be unforgettable in those final four minutes as we all decide what to do with our lives.
But I’m still trying to convince myself that I don’t “do” politics or geo politics anymore, and perhaps that’s why I’m so opinionated on such matters?
You see, if you “do” something and are passionate about it, let’s say voting for example, if you cross both that threshold and ballot paper with your participation, you’re out. You’ve played the game. Congratulations! Don’t forget to leave the pencil in the voting booth and please wipe your feet on the way out. Thanks for playing. Whereas I’m still very much in the game and I may well indeed cast a shadow, but I’m certainly not casting a vote for the actors and actresses who so often forget their lines and look as wooden as the mightiest of oaks amongst the vaudevillian shit show put before us. So I’m in a game that I want no part of? Well this raises more questions than it answers, but we’re on firm ground here, you’re expecting such bumps in life’s road and I’m a professional. But I don’t “do” politics even though I’m passionate about it. I’m never going to vote but I’m equally never going to back down from my political opinions. But I’m never going to be “in” or indeed “out” and so I’m stuck in limbo again, the purgatory of unknowing in a very certain, and very factual, even ridiculously “fact checked” real world. Apparently.
The war drums continue to beat their irregular tunes as usual and with a cast of equally irregular characters. Chest puffers full of righteous indignation and open alliances with arms and military contractors spout forth the rhetoric of the right thinking righteous: defending borders, the integrity of a sovereign Nation, and military assistance to fight off the latest bogyman their partners in the Media have been worrying the public about non-stop for years. It’s Russia today and well, it was Russia yesterday too but they had a different name back then, the CCCP or USSR, but it’s the same bogyman and the same need for war and the same old tunes being played on some rather old and dubious equipment. The actors entrusted with our Matrix Overlords words of impending doom are a concoction from the worst of all B-movies. Exhibit A here in the UK we have the Blue team in the form of a dream team consisting of a prudish Headmistress who looks far too pleased with herself in her role as Foreign Secretary (always carries a folder or a clipboard, presumably to exude authority) and we have a Prime Minister who’s every look and every glance screams “This is my birth right! This is NOT how being Prime Minster was supposed to be for me!”.
We’re on the brink of a real world war and these two are calling the shots?
In America we have another Blue team, the Democrat (stop laughing!) dream team of an old warmonger suffering from debilitating dementia aided and abetted by a bizarre lady with the fake cackling laugh as she desperately searches for the lines written for her. Probably by the shadowy characters, old war hawks and Imperialists that are so desperately keen to send someone else’s children to fight in a pointless war, or, lest we forget, all of us to a permanently cold Nuclear winter. As with Iraq and Syria and any number of conflicts or Orwellian inspired “Theatre’s of War” you care to name, the Reds or the Blues, be they Clinton, Obama or Bush or Cameron or Blair, the colour of the rosette matters not a jot. That much has been obvious to me for over 2 decades but as the crazies demand war it’s more and more obvious that the Reds in the UK (my socially democrat, power to the people, Reds) are more bluer than ever and the Blues in the States are as red as a rhino in a lap dancing club. One “on message” message from all concerned, war is inevitable, damn the consequences and just look at all that filthy lucre!
It was ever thus, and perhaps there’s an argument to be made that it has been this way since long before even my birth and when bullet’s were “magic” and a President of a country can be assassinated from a violent explosion from the side and front in a horrific crossfire and yet explained away as fact as a shot from the rear and an impossible shot that defied physics but clearly not magic. “Politically homeless” is an odious phrase but I’ve worn this label for over two decades now and there is not a single hope of changing. Why are we going to war again? With Russia? You are aware that they have nuclear weapons, real ones, and not the distraction we had of them in 2002? You’re more than happy with a sleeping President, a cackling empty vessel, a prissy and sour faced School Ma’am and a ghost of a creature pining for his birth right to follow in the footsteps of Winston Churchill? You believe these people? These congenital and continually lying people? You’re going to listen to the people who took you to war the last time? And the time before that?
So I’m clearly not into politics. Who finds the time for such vexatious vaudevillian vermin? Not me Jack. I turned instead to that old staple of mine to distract me from the voices of impending doom: football. During the weekend that has just passed I watched 4 games of English football, otherwise known as Association Football or Soccer in the USA and I watched 3 games of American Football and otherwise known as football in the USA or gridiron if you’re an old curmudgeon like me. 7 games of football across a weekend would’ve been fantastic going even for the 20 year younger me, but watch them I did and thoroughly enjoy them I did too. But, as soon as they were individually over (one game aside) they were forgotten like sexed up dossiers or a weapon inspector meeting a hugely unexplainable death. I just don’t “do” football any more, or nowhere near the obsessional levels attained in the past. Maybe the loss of interest in both of these sports (Politics is not a sport but alas people today have been hoodwinked into believing it is) is linked in someway? Who knows?
The two are certainly loosely linked as I passionately follow both but find myself at a further and further distance from each despite caring about them both. So am I moving further away from two passions as a self defence mechanism or because of my own self interest in my own sanity? Apathy? Middle aged grumpiness? I could classify it easily as just becoming more dispassionate and more analytical and perhaps trying to enjoy a passion but from a different angle? American Football can be discounted as I simply don’t recognise the game any more and my own particular team has become almost unrecognisable with their now politically correct name. The name may change but those so keen on that change have maybe forgotten the flag wavers who were so behind the change are so often those who cheer on a foreign war, and always on a foreign soil. We can discuss the historic racism and racial overtones of “Redskins” but we must also juxtapose this by looking at just my 50 years on planet earth and remember the countries the UK and USA have bombed with their warfare during my lifetime. A vast majority of these countries share a skin colour and whilst it isn’t red, it isn’t white either, but this overt racism is never raised. Perhaps we should be thankful that skin coloured racism cannot be linked to our world ending conflagration with our Russian cousins, but surely we should all be questioning why we’re on the precipice of a Nuclear War?
I guess I should be thankful too that I just don’t “do” politics anymore.
I’m trying with football (English variety) but I have an “all in” personality type and I can’t be that way as I rail against a modern game that has sterilised it’s way to an Americanised inertia of stop/start, instant replay, TV Referees and colourful lines being squiggled incessantly over the actual televisual action. So I write about the spectacle itself, my railing against it as well as my wholehearted appreciation of the sporting canvas and their human artists. Contrary to popular belief and my many ramblings on the subject here, I’m as big a fan of the art of football as you will ever find. But the rub is I’m not a fan of the game as it is today. Nor am I the archetypal model of a modern day football fan. For them it appears to consume them (if Social Media can be seen as any sort of guide) and they speak of nothing else. Nothing. The energy sapping VAR (Video Assistant Referee) and all it’s colourful accoutrements are debated on the fairness to their team, not the art of the spontaneous sport itself or the detrimental effects such unwanted intrusion brings. If you read my writings on football alone you will see the antipathy towards this intrusion but you’ll also read of the passion I have for the human beings perfecting their art. In essence, I doubt by any modern day metric I’d be classified as a football fan and that is obviously ludicrous. Then again, by today’s political polling numbers I’d be viewed as a right leaning conservative rather than the kind of lefty freedom loving liberal who just wants to sit on a beach and let life gently roll peacefully by with the waves of the sea.
Perhaps I should simply count myself lucky that I no longer “do” football or politics and stop questioning why? But I always have questions and that’s perhaps my biggest stumbling block. For I always have questions and there are so many other passions and interests that I simply don’t “do” anymore and naturally I question myself constantly as to why. There are some big obsessions involved here too. I also have an alter ego to placate and constantly reassure him that he’s definitely retired. But why? Self defence again? Perhaps I “do” both football and politics in the same manner now and shot through a prism of defiant disinterest? Or maybe I’ve seen this game played out before and the dice are always loaded, the tables are tilted and the game is always rigged?
Believe it, or believe it not dear reader, but the above video was to be the original “jumping off” point for this article but I seem to have become embroiled in a quagmire of my own making. But that’s both okay and to be expected as I do this all the time. The “buzz” and the lyrical “voices in my head” never cease and never cease to amaze me either. The original idea you see was started in the shower as I sang this song in a country and western style that amused me greatly before I found the magnificent and so moving version above, and those bloody voices in my head were chattering away, and then some other voices were saying “enjoy yourself you old fool!” and “just write about a band you obsess over and how these lyrics just electrify that old you, current you, and even the real world you”. So I ignored those voices and wrote about my fading love affairs with the dirty game of politics and the once beautiful game of football.
Released 25 years ago as a rage of sorts against a mechanical buzz and the interference of an incessant electronic blip and beep of a newly created real world, Paranoid Android takes aim in all directions as it opens on a plea for rest from the noise of life before closing on a spitting statement that God sure does “love his children”. Yeah? In between we have the parallels to today’s war hawks and hawkish actors, Leaders and Kings and for whom your opinions, my opinions, “are of no consequence, at all” and the oh so prescient “Ambition makes you look pretty ugly. Kicking and squealing Gucci little piggy”.
I may well be a paranoid android but why are we listening to the very lowest amongst us whilst the stakes are at their very highest?
