the brilliantly leaping gazelle

For a long time now, it has seemed to me as if what I thought of as universal principles that applied equally to everyone, have instead become increasingly conditional. And within those conditions, there exist hierarchies, determining to whom exactly such principles should apply.

This all sounds terribly confusing, yet to me it is anything but. So with a little help from ‘The Guardian’, I’ll try and convince you as to why this indeed so. Which is apt, given as how it is ‘The Guardian’ that helps determine the conditions and who the hierarchies are. Obviously not just them alone, but them as part of a broader media consensus that constantly references and validates itself. ’The Guardian’ is in my opinion the most egregious  offender, the moreso because it presumes to be pursuing a righteous and noble objective.

The problem with this occurs when the righteous and noble objective they’re pursing escapes them. A case in point is Farrago. Over the last couple of weeks, he has been subjected to the kind of personal attacks by ‘The Guardian’ which, if they were being orchestrated by another paper against another politician, ‘The Guardian’ would be all manner of indignant over.

They’d be aghast that someone was trying to smear a politician based upon what he is alleged to have said as a 13 year old schoolboy. They’d probably speculate that this was little more an a desperate attempt to discredit Farrago on account of his increasing popularity as reflected in one opinion poll after another.  And that because of this, an unelected media elite were doing everything they could to thwart this threat to their cosy world.

And, judging by the way they’ve treated Tangoed’s denials of various allegations, also question the memories of witnesses who claim the claims against a 13 year old Farrago are true. Both their reliability but also why now, and again, speculate upon the possibility of an unelected media being in cahoots his political rivals. More of an unspoken yet tacitly understood, everybody-wins-but him kind of way. Making this case would be easy. 

‘The Guardian’ first reported the allegations and initially, it was only them who thought it had any merit. The rest of the media treated it as the the twaddle it was. But then they decided to report on what ‘The Guardian’ was reporting. This insulated them, twice over. 

Firstly, ’The Independent’, ‘The Daily Mirror’ and the BBC were covering this nonsense for days. ‘Channel Four’, ‘The Huffington Post’ and ‘Sky News’ piled on. ‘The Times’, ‘The Daily Telegraph’ and even ‘The Daily Express were all running with it, not I’d guess because they thought there was genuine story there, but because everyone else was and they didn’t want to get left behind.  

Then politicians joined in. ‘He had questions to answer’ pronounced Stymied. Better yet, he should be asking himself why he thought a man of 61 needed to account for what he did or did not say when he was 13. Beanstalk offered a slightly more nuanced position, and no doubt the Cunning Stunt zip-lined or paddle bordered towards his anger.

Their insulated because they’re not making any claims about the claims themselves, they’re simply reporting on the fact that the claims have been made. See? And all Stymied was doing was suggesting that these claims needed answering.

Because thats all this is. One big stunt. A manufactured outrage upon which all the usual suspects can vent their various spleen’s over. They’re not really bothered either way what a boy of 13 may or may not have said. At 13 we all said things that would cause offence if repeated back nearly 50 years later, and if we didn’t then we weren’t doing a good job of being a child. But whatever, it doesn’t matter. What does matters is that there’s another stick to beat Farrago with, another non-issue to plague every press conference, every public appearance and everything he does right up until polling day in 2029.

Because here’s where the conditional principles and those hierarchies I mentioned earlier come in. The principle part- democracy is a good thing. – is great. The conditional part, less so. This favours the democracy we have staying exactly the way it is and this is where the hierarchies come in. Only when the right sort of people participate in democracy, and by the right sort I mean not too extreme, not too demanding and not too expecting their not too extreme demands to be met. Because the status-quo works fine for them. Why would they want to change it? 

But then Brexit happened, or to be more accurate, Brexit only happened because enough of the wrong people gave the wrong answer to a question that was asked for the wrong reason. Very quickly, the democracy everyone thought they lived under proved illusory and the same institutions one would’ve hoped might robustly defend the peoples will, actively worked against it. 

Remember how both main opposition political parties angrily demanded another vote, invoking all manner of spurious arguments which, had the vote gone their way, they would have denounced as pathetic attempts to subvert democracy? And how most of the press – notionally a bulwark against exactly this kind of thing – amplified these spurious arguments and spent years questioning, belittling and slandering the motives of the those who voted Leave? Again, had the vote gone their way, there’d be none of that, instead we’d have been lectured to about the importance of losers consent to ensure the smooth running of democracy. The civil wars, the violence and bloodshed that have bedevilled parts of Africa when this has not happened would serve as cautionary warnings. The judiciary – again, notionally a defender of democracy, supposedly available to all and theoretically politically impartial – was consistently used by the rich to prevent parliament from enacting the will of the people.

And yet they call Farrago an ‘extremist’?

I’m no great fan of Farrago and neither do I believe in conspiracy theories. But I do believe in self-interest. And to believe that if one persons advancement of their own self-interest happens to further someone else’s, then thats a happy accident. And if a lot of vested interests just so happen to have a lot of inter-related happy accidents, then that’s not a conspiracy.

 It’s how the powerful stay powerful.