terra nostra

the only recent election that history will demonstrate to have mattered took place last November, and the world is the loser to that second (in recent memory) rape of democracy by a caucus of cock-strutters who have set the global political clock back by centuries.

'dialogue' as it might be understood by a playwright or screenwriter - ie an exchange of words between two or more individuals that contributes to the illumination of character or event or contributes to the unfolding of the action - is not on the agenda with these people - despite its constantly appearing - as a word - on any agenda to do with the furtherance of their single-minded objectives. their ears are deaf, their minds closed, to anything other than what they want to hear - the universal, voiceless affirmation of their power and wealth, and the universal, voiceless submission to whatever means are necessary to sustain it.

such autocratic contempt for the electorate and the electoral process is, essentially, unopposable. existentially, however, it is not, and, such is the sorry state of affairs we find ourselves in, since all reasonable means of opposition to the will of these madmen is effectively vetoed by their illegally mandated deafness, the unreasonable options are the only ones worth adopting, if only experimentally.

as far as this little election of ours goes, its irrelevance couldn't be demonstrated clearer than in the funny-bunny antics of Michael Howard - man of the peepel - basing the entirety of the Conservatives campaign on persuading the FFF (the frightfully fearful and actually fascists except we don't use that word) to vote their way. hate foreigners? vote Conservative. we'll keep them out and send all the wogs back where they came from, then Britain will be Great again and everyone will be rich. simple. sorted. it's the lobotomised behaviour of an opposition party traumatised by its own realisation that it's moved from top dog to jailhouse bitch in less than a decade.

so they're dead.

the lib dems are on their way, but I anticipate some frantic back-pedalling next time round when they realise that they've got to change their (very sensible, quite attractive, but fundamentally unelectable) manifesto to include some serious tax-cutting and military supporting and US-arse-licking promises in order to function as an effective opposition (which, with luck, they will have become by the end of next month - tee hee).

meanwhile, in this one-party state we've presently become, the only question to be asked is: does the UK belong to Dubya or to Europe? the answer's blindingly obvious: we belong, most demonstrably, and in the most brutal sexual sense, to the America of George Dubya, but we actually belong, in the most pragmatic and historical and semantic sense, to the Europe we have used the Napoleonic blockades and the Channel as an excuse not to belong to for more than two hundred years. somehow, the argument for marrying into Europe needs to be tarted up so that it can match the sort of passion involved in the resistance to US-domination.

tough call.

meanwhile, I'm most effectively managing to stick to my resolution not to take any notice at all of what is going on in this election campaign. I shall vote, on May 5th - of course - because to not use my vote is tantamount to pissing on the graves of those many many men and women who fought - literally - to obtain it for me, in the belief that I, in common with every citizen, should be entitled to an equal say in the running of my country as the aristocracy and the landed gentry. I have no illusions whatever, though, about what the outcome is going to be, nor that the so-called 'protest votes' of those disaffected Labour supporters like me and my ilk will have the slightest effect in 'sending a message to Tony'. Tony and his ilk are way above listening to messages they don't want to hear. he's been taking his lessons as well as his cues from his master (see above) for far too long. we, too, are ineluctably bound for another five years of the same old same old.

so (with a certain sense of relief, I have to admit) I've been turning the page and/or switching channels (or simply leaving the room) whenever the subject is raised in the media, and I'm absolutely certain that, in my absence, nothing has been or will be said on the subject worth listening to.

which brings me back to my point about the irrational alternatives - specifically, to the existential ones.

I recall first encountering the notion of disempowering someone through ignoring them in the novel Terra Nostra by Carlos Fuentes (in my opinion one of the greatest novels of all time) in which the mad, ascetic King Felipe II of Spain meditates on accidentally overhearing a servant's momentary muttering of rebellion:

"El Señor did not dwell upon this enigma beyond a well-remembered maxim of his father the Prince: Give the most beggarly of the beggars of this land of paupers the least sign of recognition, and he will immediately comport himself like a vain and pretentious nobleman; do not dignify them, my son, not even with a glance; they are entirely without importance."
(translated from the Spanish by Margaret Sayers Peden)

all men are monarchs now, and in the case of these most contemptible liars and thieves and clowns who have the shameless audacity and risible conceit to declare themselves our current 'leaders' I suggest this mantra: they are entirely without importance - I do not dignify them with my recognition.