the brilliantly leaping gazelle

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I’ve long been convinced that British popular culture has for some years now, been a poor imitation of the American one. An textbook example of this idea was always hamburgers. They had McDonalds and we got Wimpy. Even its name warned of disappointment. Because nothing screamed ‘fast food’ more than waitress service. Now I have an updated example of the same sadsackery, only this one comes with added ‘virtue’.

America now seems to be infected with Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS),  which effectively views every action committed by President Trump as evidence of something so unspeakably awful that it must be spoken about all the time. Or protested about. But no matter how pathetic I think TDS is, he is at least the President. He has proper power. He can shape millions of lives. He leads a unified government, meaning that every branch of it – him, the Congress and the Senate – are all Republican. He is also the commander-in-chief of the worlds greatest military. He controls a vast nuclear arsenal. He can end billions of peoples lives at the touch of a button.

The most Farrago can do at the touch of a button is change the TV channel on his remote. The leader of a party with a the smallest number of MP’s in Parliament – 5 out of 650 – he somehow manages – in some peoples minds – to be the modern embodiment of Hitler,

So naturally, we have have to make do with Farragos’ Fake Scandals (FFS), which aren’t even proper scandals. The similarities with TDS don’t end there. Both are social contagions and both rely upon worryingly similar methods of transmission. Either passed on via individuals through friendship groups or other social networks, or for much greater propagation via constant repetition on the mass media. And similarly, both TDS and FFS are punishments for perceived ‘crimes’ against democracy.

Perceived of by those who believe in democracy, only it has to be the right kind of democracy. The one in which the right sort of people deliver the right sort of result. And when the wrong result is delivered by the wrong sort of people getting involved in matters best left to others, then the wrong sort of people suddenly became the wrong sort of right; ‘right-wing bigots’ or far right-wing extremists’.

Therefore, according to their twisted, wholly self-serving and corrupted version of democracy, Farrago who galvanised so many into being so wrong, deserves everything he gets. No allegation, no speculative conjecture, no hint of a hint of any impropriety is not so inconsequential as not to be worthy of feverish discussion and opined over. 

And nothing is more inconsequential than allegations that when he was 13 – 13 – he made some distasteful comments. At 13 his voice hadn’t yet broken! He was barely a teenager. He was just starting puberty. Yet these allegations are ‘deeply shocking’? Indeed they are. I am shocked that anyone that anyone thought that these were shocking, still less that they thought they mattered. 

And that’s my first problem with this. Do people seriously imagine that something boy of 13 is alleged to have said is in any way indicative of the man that boy has become 48 years later. It is alarming that people think it does and beyond ironic that these are the same people who quite happily blame Russian interference for influencing the Brexit vote, completely unaware that they are just as skilfully being manipulated as they believe others were. The motivation of grooming isn’t always sexual.

My second problem is what it says about the media we have and not just that because this isn’t the first time  ‘The Guardian’ have tried before to smear him based on decades old here-say about his schooldays. But also because of the calculated cynicism it reveals. ‘The Guardian’ knows full well it’s readers will lap this up because it vindicates their fantasy of Farrago as being a throwback to a world they’d wish never happened. It also allows others to weigh on it, to report on what ‘The Guardian’ is reporting. Very now, very meta.  And because of that, it allows Stymied to demand that Farrago to answer those reports.

Which is exactly the point of FFS. Throw enough mud, often enough and unexpectedly enough – who could’ve predicted that things he allegedly said 48 years ago would become a FFS – then some is bound to stick. And hopefully, the more that he’s discredited, the greater the likelihood is that potential supporters of his won’t want to be associated with that kind of mud.   

Its also unsurprisingly hypocritical of ‘The Guardian’. Less than a fortnight ago, it gave their newest electoral hope a platform to rail against what he imagines to be his unfair treatment by the press. ‘The right can mock my teeth all it wants – it shows the Greens have struck a nerve.’ He may not have written the headline and probably not the sub-header that followed,’As a politician, I expect opposition and debate. But when it centres on personal insults, not policies, something else is going on.’ 

But he did write ‘What’s now clear to me, both from the sheer number of attacks and their increasingly wild nature, is that they are a product of a political and media establishment rattled by a party that’s growing fast and willing to say the unsayable: that our country has been hijacked by those interested only in serving the super-wealthy.’ 

If he really thinks that it is ‘the super-wealthy’ who have ‘hijacked’ our country or that he’s the one saying the unsayable then he’s so green I should rename him Jack Beanstalk. The ‘political and media established’ aren’t in the least bit rattled by him. If anything, the mere fact of ‘The Guardian’ giving him the opportunity to make this claim fatally undermines it. 

The fact that FFS is now a staple of British politics proves that it isn’t Jack Beanstalk who scares them. It’s Farrago and what he represents. An ability to divine, articulate and champion the views of a substantial part of the electorate who feel cheated by this version of democracy, The ones who voted for Brexit. The ones who are living with the reality of what that means. 

It also amuses me that ‘The Guardian’ which can usually be relied upon to be vocal supporters of an indigenous peoples in their struggles with a political system it believes marginalises them, takes an opposite stance both here and in America.

Although a really cynical interpretation of FFS is that it suits all concerned to let it continue. Farrago can use it to claim he is spearheading a revolt against the status quo, and his supporters can feel vindicated that the more FFS there are, the more worried ‘they’ are by them. Conversely, ‘The Guardian’ has a business model that depends on a endless stream of FFS and TDS stories, so the more they do, the more their readers keep funding them. They too feel vindicated, albeit in an absence parody of virtue. 

On and on it goes, the political equivalent of an infinite loop.