The last refuge of a scoundrel

[Cain]

Today, ladies and gentlemen, I want to talk a little about patriotism.

In this modern day and age, for some strange reason, patriotism has become a very important issue indeed.  We are, after all, supposedly engaged in a war of values against a merciless and cunning, yet at the same time, dogmatic and stupid enemy, who will stop at nothing to impose their values on everyone else.  Whether I'm referring to the modern day rulers of the countries we inhabit, or the Jihadists I leave as an exercise for the reader to answer.

In such a situation, a war of values is very important.  Unless you wish to live in a democracy or something.  In recent years, it has been interesting to note the threat used against dissenters is "either you share our values or else...".  Now, I was under the impression that within a democracy, the point is you can have whatever values you want, even if they run contrary to democracy itself, but apparently I was wrong.  I still believe however, that a democracy asserted via threats and blackmail only ends up undermining itself and becoming, instead of a democracy, another form of autocratic rule, even if it keeps the functions of free elections and rule of law.

Now, keeping this in mind, it puts the New Labour project under Commissar-uh, Prime Minister Gordon Brown, of promoting a 'British identity' into a very suspect light.  I would say in fact it was symptomatic of their desire for control over the population, and their awful belief that the purpose of the citizen is to serve the state, not the other way around.  By taking it upon themselves to enforce a view of 'Britishness', top-down as it were, instead of letting such a feeling organically occur, from the bottom up and with the consent of the individuals involved, they are trying to recreate the identity of the nation.

This ridiculousness has become almost painful to watch within the last week in particular, with two particular suggestions from the Krem-uh, Downing Street.  The first is that our soldiers and troops are being told to wear their uniforms in public, so we, the cowed and weak masses, can gratefully fawn over the torturers and killer-uh, Our Brave Lads, who went off to fight the Islamic Horde and in no way were complicit in any crimes that our press frequently accuse the USA of.

Secondly, we have the foolishness of the "oath of allegiance".  It has been suggested by the very politically connected and influential Lord Goldsmith that all school leavers have to swear an oath of loyalty to the Queen and monarchy.  Ignoring for the moment that somehow aping the United States of America will make people here more British....really?  I think this tells us everything we know about the party who "have no objections to people getting filthy rich".  Swearing allegiance to the Queen reinforces the fact there is a social hierarchy in this country and you, the serf, the subject, are at the bottom of it.  Again, we are back at the idea of the subject serving the country, and that this state of affairs can only be maintained by blackmail and sabotage.

One of the greatest things about the UK that I, as a long term outsider, have noticed, is the way the British in general reject overt displays of nationalism and mock those who partake in them.  Putting aside football matches, at least.  Saluting the Union Jack, singing the praises of the stratified social system, serving the state religion...none of these things have anything to do with the current British character, and Eris forbid they ever do.  What is British is irreverence to authority figures, eccentricity on a level only other nations could dream to reach, disgustingly unhealthy food and football riots.

Nonsense like making people swear allegiance to a sponging foreigner who practises waving her hand all day, and her idiotic brood, are laughable and will likely only promote more hostility to the monarchy (which I cannot really complain about), but there is also something rather sinister in this sudden prominence of debates on "Britishness" and emphasis on pathetic nationalism.  It comes at a time where more and more those who do not "fit in" are being told to conform or leave, regardless of if they were born here or not, and often based on their skin colour and religion.  It comes at a time where military-linked think tanks are bemoaning a lack of a firm national character to act as a mirror image to the Jihadists.  It comes at a time where attacking "multiculturalism" and pluralism in general is very much in vogue.

I'm reminded that the system often creates its own enemies.  The more tightly you define something, by definition the more exclusive it becomes.  And when that tight definition of identity pushes out the Muslims, the Jews, the secularists, the republicans, the white working class...well, you're manufacturing the perfect recipe for civil unrest and disturbance.  Normally, this wouldn't disturb me, because I like and thrive among that sort of confusion and chaos...but I have to wonder, whose purposes does such chaos serve?  I am many things, but I refuse to be a useful tool for someone else's designs.

There seem to be two contradictory forces at work within British society right now, the dynamic of which is a cancer eating away at the heart of the country.  The first is obvious, and that is unitary centralization.  One State, under One Tightly Defined Concept (to be named later), Forever and Ever, Praise Tony.  The other is more sinister, the exclusiveness, the drive to division and separation.  Beware the Other.  The Other takes many forms...he is the Muslim who seeks to establish a Caliphate on the burnt shores of this pleasant and green land...he is the Working Class Man who looks to his own self interest instead of seeing the self-evident wisdom of his masters in Whitehall...she is the antiwar protester supposedly spitting on the troops...they are the insane proponents of 'foreign' ideas like human rights and justice.  There are plenty members of the Other's to completely Balkanize society, which is exactly what will happen if the state tries to hard to enforce its current course of centralization.

And I cant help but think this plays into the hands of the elite of society.  "Leave the fanatical sub-human Muslims and puerile working classes and the antiwar idiots and everyone else to fight it out among themselves, while we can exist in our own little British versions of Green Zones."  I may be wrong, but its a hypothesis I am willing to put out there.  It may not even be a conscious drive by our own political and economic movers and shakers, but a far deeper, symptomatic drive buried within our own brand of late-stage disaster 'capitalism'.  I don't know, and I freely admit it.

All I know is this: imposition of order = escalation of disorder.  The drive for purity, be it of thought, action, political system or identity always, sooner or later, involves the "elimination" of dirt.  But what happens when the dirt organizes itself and attacks the cleaning implements?

[Verbal Mike]

[Jenne]

Yeah, that's pretty fucked up.  The American Patriotic Virus is so ingrained into our society, it's very rarely questioned outright.  Makes me sad to see it in other places like GB.

[Payne]

I recognise so much of what you're saying, but as the same distored view of these things that the media presents to us daily. And I'm not talking the Daily Mail or the Sun, as I'm sure you are aware.

The medias motives in so many of these issues seem to be unified and complicant with the top dawgs, and it seems that they don't have a problem hiding information the government doesn't want you to know.

The only thing I found interesting that semed to deviate "Off Message" from the Governent is the Archbishop of Canterbury saying recently that Sharia Law could and should be incorporated into the British legal system. (Allegedly)

Even if his words were taken out of context, the unified wave of revulsion that came from every quarter was amazing, especially because they were only reacting to what it SEEMED he was saying.

Whut?! You want to give England to the Arabs?! DIE FOR YOUR HERESY!
                        \
                     

I think I started wandering off-topic before I even started replying here.

Well done though, informative and thought provoking as ever.

[Requia ☣]

1) Nationalism, they just call it patriotism to make it more palatable.

2) You forgot the bits about england making 'anti-social behavior' illegal and giving the cops arrest quotas.

[Golden Applesauce]

I see this more as a feedback loop then a strictly one-way feeding of bullshit from the 'elites' to the public.

My model for how all this nonsense gets going:

The public decides that a given meme (say, Britishness) is good to have.  The 'elites' can't let themselves fall short of the public's expectations.  If the public thinks Britishness is good, then the 'elites' better be even more British than the average person - he wouldn't be very elite otherwise, now would he?   At the same time, the people who are against that particular meme are ignored.  Especially in a democracy or republic, the threat of being ignored by the public is a very strong motivator for politicians.  In a free market society, the same applies to businesses like the media.

To use a US example, everybody important (media, politicians, etc) has to Support Our Troops.  Even the antiwar rhetoric is phrased in terms of Supporting Our Troops - we have to keep them out of harms way, for example.  No one has the cojones to stand up and say "Our military is fucking up Iraq!" - it's all about politicians mismanaging our Really Cool Army.  This even applies to you, Cain.  You're not saying that Britishness is bad; in fact, you love your British heritage!  You're arguing that Britishness means "rejecting overt displays of nationalism ... irreverence to authority, and eccentricity on a level other nations could only dream to reach..."

Of course, this feeds back onto itself.  When everyone takes as a given in a discussion that Supporting Our Troops or Britishness is good, people forget that it was ever an issue.  They don't need to think about it anymore; it's already been decided.  And then they propagate the meme through their actions.  A new observer, previously un-"infected" stumbles onto the scene and quickly picks up on the fact that the meme is good.  If it wasn't, somebody would be disagreeing with it, right?

Since everyone else is doing it,  .

[Jenne]

This Arab conflict in the UK reminds me of the 80's in the US re: "The Imminent Japanese Takeover" that everyone was running scared from.  The media REALLY had everyone riled up over that.

Now it's the "Imminent Chinese Takever"...or "Imminent Smudgy People from Down South Takeover."

Old paranoia, same as the new paranoia.

[Jasper]

I'm beginning to see a lot of signs that indicate that there will be a lot of social disillusionment with authority in the coming decades.  Especially with religious and nationalistic authority.

[Cain]

I recognise so much of what you're saying, but as the same distored view of these things that the media presents to us daily. And I'm not talking the Daily Mail or the Sun, as I'm sure you are aware.

The medias motives in so many of these issues seem to be unified and complicant with the top dawgs, and it seems that they don't have a problem hiding information the government doesn't want you to know.

The only thing I found interesting that semed to deviate "Off Message" from the Governent is the Archbishop of Canterbury saying recently that Sharia Law could and should be incorporated into the British legal system. (Allegedly)

Even if his words were taken out of context, the unified wave of revulsion that came from every quarter was amazing, especially because they were only reacting to what it SEEMED he was saying.

Whut?! You want to give England to the Arabs?! DIE FOR YOUR HERESY!
                        \
                     

I think I started wandering off-topic before I even started replying here.

Well done though, informative and thought provoking as ever.

Thats part of the Balkanization message, I believe.  Its removing the Muslims from the courts, in the same way similar rules for Orthodox Jews have removed them from the courts.  Naturally, he wants to do it to increase the legal standing of the CoE and its power, but each way, its a process made to divide the country, to split it up into neat little self-sufficient working parts.

As for the media, I tend to hover on that point where the media can be actually challenged and confronted - the sort of blurred edge between journalists and bloggers.  Reporting without feedback is useless, I find.

[Cain]

1) Nationalism, they just call it patriotism to make it more palatable.

2) You forgot the bits about england making 'anti-social behavior' illegal and giving the cops arrest quotas.

Well, I decided to ignore that special brand of lunacy (the ASBOs) because that is a whole seperate can of worms.  Suffice to say, our government has a perculiar brand of authoritarianism running through it, a sort of post-legal authoritarianism, where designated boundaries of lack of law are allowed, in order to deal with "troublemakers".  Our terrorism policy is the same.

[Cain]

I see this more as a feedback loop then a strictly one-way feeding of bullshit from the 'elites' to the public.

My model for how all this nonsense gets going:

The public decides that a given meme (say, Britishness) is good to have.  The 'elites' can't let themselves fall short of the public's expectations.  If the public thinks Britishness is good, then the 'elites' better be even more British than the average person - he wouldn't be very elite otherwise, now would he?   At the same time, the people who are against that particular meme are ignored.  Especially in a democracy or republic, the threat of being ignored by the public is a very strong motivator for politicians.  In a free market society, the same applies to businesses like the media.

To use a US example, everybody important (media, politicians, etc) has to Support Our Troops.  Even the antiwar rhetoric is phrased in terms of Supporting Our Troops - we have to keep them out of harms way, for example.  No one has the cojones to stand up and say "Our military is fucking up Iraq!" - it's all about politicians mismanaging our Really Cool Army.  This even applies to you, Cain.  You're not saying that Britishness is bad; in fact, you love your British heritage!  You're arguing that Britishness means "rejecting overt displays of nationalism ... irreverence to authority, and eccentricity on a level other nations could only dream to reach..."

Of course, this feeds back onto itself.  When everyone takes as a given in a discussion that Supporting Our Troops or Britishness is good, people forget that it was ever an issue.  They don't need to think about it anymore; it's already been decided.  And then they propagate the meme through their actions.  A new observer, previously un-"infected" stumbles onto the scene and quickly picks up on the fact that the meme is good.  If it wasn't, somebody would be disagreeing with it, right?

Since everyone else is doing it,  .

1.  I'm not British.  More importantly, my British ancestry were considered the scum of the earth by the English establishment, and treated accordingly.  That is to say, exile or deportation.

2.  I was trying to build a counter-image.  Because the government is pushing this, the grass root Tories are pushing a more defined version of this, the BNP are pushing this...and if it has to take root, I'd rather an accurate and somewhat less useful model of British nationality were to arise.  In a perfect world, nationalism would be looked upon as another quirk or delusion, like white pride, or reading The Sun newspaper.  Civic patriotism I can just about stand....and even then, it would have to be instituted by a government without a track record of duplicity, freaky power control issues and pandering to the most base elements of the media.  Preferably, people would be taught about it, and left to come to their own conclusions.

[Cain]

I'm beginning to see a lot of signs that indicate that there will be a lot of social disillusionment with authority in the coming decades.  Especially with religious and nationalistic authority.

The state is often opposed to religions and nationalistic authority, because it detracts from its own.

And that, to me, is the problem.  Most of the resistance to state power is either of the religious whackjob flavour, or the ethno-supremacist flavour.  The Christian Identity Movement under Clinton, or the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, for example.  Only in a few countries, like Iran, or Kosovo, is one of these movements allied with state power.

[Cain]

Oh, and just to make things more fun:

http://www.justice.gov.uk/news/sp050308b.htm

In a democracy, rights tend to be 'vertical' - guaranteed to the individual by the state to constrain the otherwise overweening power of the state. Responsibilities, on the other hand, are more 'horizontal' - they are the duties we owe to each other, to our 'neighbour' in the New Testament sense. But they have a degree of verticality about them too, because we owe duties to the community as a whole.

"Should we be aiming for a more explicit statement of the contract that covers both the service offered by the public sector (what is in and what is not) and what is expected from citizens (beyond paying taxes and obeying the law)"

Now, I know the government has only a tenuous connection with the history of British political thought at the best of times, but the idea of our system is that there are NO requirements beyond taxes and obeying the law.   

[LMNO]

"Arrest Quotas"?


I suppose once you have enough laws on the books, everyone is guilty of [/i]something[/i]...

[Payne]

I recall seeing or reading somewhere that Labour have introduced over 3000 new offences since May '97.