As The Time of Trump Draws Near The End
When it gets right down to it, I'm a sore loser. It didn't seem to matter no matter how much I offered up my opinions and pontificating over here. It was just howling into the wind. The world was stupid enough to be persuaded by the Murdoch papers and TV to vote Tony Abbott and Boris Johnson and Donald Trump into power, solely to give tax cuts for the rich and hold off doing anything about Global Warming, what is the damn point of writing a word more about any of this? Have we not crashed into the Twilight of Civilisation?
Not only did progressives not win, they could not stave off the onslaught of Stupid that ensued those losses. The English speaking world led by the USA, UK and Australia collectively lost its common sense and went with the worst kind of idiotic rhetoric as substitute for substantive policy. How is one to discuss what ensued those losses with any kind of sense?
So I stopped writing here. Why expend the energy? I can't beat Rupert Murdoch and his mighty minions of mendacity. Besides which, was it really my job to care? After all I have no kids. There is no generation I have to worry about. My friends with kids worry about the future, sure. I have had the odd luxury of not having to worry about that. In one sense, the stupidity that transpired because of those losses affected me less than it did my friends and their families.
Yet it has been a terrible. 7 years of Liberal Party rule in Australia, 6 years of Brexit politics in the UK, and 5 years of Donald Trump politics has put a huge dent in the credibility of the English speaking world. Nations that would look to the democratic leadership of Washington DC and London got an eyeful of miserable, partisan, anti-intellectual, pseudo-scientific brouhaha that passed for politics in these three countries - all of which share the intoxicating poison of stupidity that is the Murdoch press.
And so in the days following the Putsch upon Capitol Hill by pro-Trump idiots, we are left in the odd position of waiting to see if this horrible period in history will come to a close, at least in America. Will the Republicans finally wake up in the Senate as to just how untenable Trumpism has been for the GOP? Or will they aid and abet the worst President of all time, one last time? Brexit finally limped over the line in late December so as bad as the outcome is, that little drama has come to the end of its run. All that is left is living with the consequences. As for Australia, there is a good deal of time left before the next election. I don't know if the ALP will ever gets act together in time to oust Scomo and his squad of awful human beings. Also offers me little confidence. It appears that Bill Shorten's loss in 2019 was a spectacularly bad election to lose for the ALP, let alone Australia - but that is all a rant for another day.
If anything, the 2010s were a disappointing decade. It didn't really even have any form. People just scrapped for a living thanks to the GFC, and then it was done.
The Dying of People
In the intervening years I did not write here, I found some of my friends began dropping like flies. Death is always somewhat surprising, even though you come to realise that you have walked into the age group where death is not so surprising. Plenty of people have died at ages younger than what I am today. I feel a far cry from the person that started blogging back in 2003. And people really do die. I'm deeply saddened by the passing of Geoff Murphy, Brian Burgess, and Michael Jacob. They're all of a certain generation, and they all passed away during the years I did not write here.
I lost a friend to liver cancer; and I've lost one to COVID-19. If you spend your 30 year adult life drinking a lot, dying of liver cancer is unsurprising. If you are a touring musician in the USA, and Donald Trump is your president, then it is unsurprising that you contract COVID-19 and die. Some famous people have died form COVID-19. Countless animals perished in the mega fires of 2019. Death is all around us. death brought about by stupidity of others, is surprisingly common.
Death is a thing, in case you were lulled into not thinking about it as a factor in one's decision making.
Ambivalence Grows
The other thing I want to report from my self-imposed exile from writing on this blog, is that I've become even more ambivalent about how I feel about many things. One becomes less certain as one piles the age on to one's being. One becomes more discerning, but one also becomes less decisive.
It's also a little disturbing when you read back stuff written by people who died at an age younger than you are right now. This is one of those things that happen. You get perspective on your own life and existence in a way that you just can't buy into the framework of thought and ideology that is invested in a book. I used to think Soseki Natsume was a giant of literature. He died at age 49 and suddenly when you re-read his work as somebody older, you get this weird cognitive dissonance that maybe you really could rhetorically beat up on the literary giant if he only were around today - hey, I even have a cat these days Mr Natsume!
Same with Jack Kerouac who died at 47. F Scott Fitzgerald at 44. Jane Austen, 41. Raymond Radiguet, 20. Or the notion that for all his entire, massive, output, everything Frank Zappa ever did was as a person younger than you are today. Ditto Glenn Gould who died at 50. It's all a little unsettling - and this adds to this ambivalence. Everything looks like it has 10 sides to the argument, and it's exhausting.
So What Are You Gonna Do, Art Neuro?
I'm going to pop in more often this year. Stay tuned.
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