All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.
Thus Yeats on the Easter Rising in his poem Easter 1916. Our world is undergoing lots of changes, maybe more than most of us will like. Just as Mark Twain quipped that to those who knew the Noble Savage, his nobility was far less evident than his savagery, it's predictable that until the poets and propagandists get hold of the memories, the misery and even terror in these changes will be more easily recognised than any fancied beauty.
In 1916 the Irish public was initially outraged at the rebels who had betrayed their country when so many of their countrymen, of both religious sects, were fighting in France. Of course the rebels claimed to be fighting for another country, and it wasn't Germany, whose rifles they used. Nor was it the Republic of Letters. The risible incongruity of men of letters staging an armed rebellion in a post office seems to have been lost on them.
The changes of our time have more to do with the death of nations than their birth. The evil monster of the EU swallows nations. The Orcs of political correctness and multiculturalism import and promote the vilest savages to assist them in debasing and destroying the institutions, religion, cultures and identities of the local people. Our ruling class of socialist traitors and bureaucratised crazies deliberately wastes the wealth of the people, warps their minds and morals with ignorant propaganda instead of education, perversion instead of religion, thought crime instead of justice. There are protests at the dumbing down of the public examinations, the substitution of fashionable climate change nonsense for science, the inversion of right and wrong in the legal system, the precedence of bureaucratic malfeasance over justice and the waste, incompetence and corruption in the expenditure of public money, that would be criminal if it wasn't done by our rulers.
So far, the general hope of redemption lies in a change of rulers, although there is also scepticism that the political opposition can be a major improvement. That's been the terrible beauty of democracy, the persistent illusion that change from one party to another will bring lasting improvement. That is wearing thin and our rulers know it, hence their accelerated efforts to claim every privilege and perquisite they can devise, and their recruitment of more thuggish police to guard them, and new laws limiting freedom, creating more opportunities for ministers to declare a state of emergency and making it a crime to photograph the police.
Clone-of-Blair is likely to come into office at a time when further unpleasant changes have occurred, such as more economic depression and rising inflation and continuing rapid decline in the exchange rate. He won't have an easy time, and will soon find charm, smiles and sound bites ineffective in solving the problems. People may see that the changes now coming to a head are greater than the usual short term cyclical variations. All the government's economists and spin doctors may not be able to put Humpty together again.
It's the material changes affecting their comfort that mainly upset people, and nowadays when the state plays Big Nanny even more than Big Daddy, they blame the government for any inconvenience. That's partly why our current Deluded Leader is so frantically spending money he doesn't have, blaming the Americans and the rest of the world for his own turpitude, ineptitude and folly and trying to look as if he is doing something helpful. Although some call him Moses, he has less chance of parting the waters of this financial tsunami, and walking dryshod to the Promised Land of revered retirement in the Worker's Paradise. Some jobsworth of an angel would nitpick about his failure to pass through the eye of a needle, and deny him admittance in any case, although he is a one-eyed jobsworth himself, and no angel.
Despite claiming the status of a world saviour, his attempt to gain recognition from the Obammessiah was less than a success. Forced to use the tradesman's entrance to the White House, granted only a short chat squeezed into the Obammessiah's normal schedule, and a brief showing to the press, where the Great One stiffly rebuffed his fawning, with the comment that he was sure Mr.Brown would not disagree with him to his face - virtually calling him a backstabber! That's an insulting contrast to the red carpet welcome given to the chiefs of the IRA when they visited a few days later. The fatted calf was killed for the killers of British soldiers, police and civilians. Those who caused little children to suffer are suffered to come unto Him. Trample the meek, it's the gunrunners, murderers, liars and thieves who are welcomed in the kingdom of this messiah. Brown's despicable grovelling to the drunken murderous oaf, to be knighted as 'Sir' Chappaquiddick Kennedy for his services to IRA fund raising and gunrunning is also disgusting, and indicative of his contempt for the country he is supposed to be leading.
Even the economic commentators are predicting a bad time ahead, and some, such as George Ure ,James Kunstler and Gerald Celente, suggest the changes will be rather more extensive than we will like. It may be that things are now departing which will be sorely missed, prosperity, longevity, order and civilisation among them. Throughout nearly all of human existence, paper wealth has had no meaning. Insofar as 'retirement' had any meaning, it meant reliance on the support of children and grandchildren. The value of financial investments is rapidly diminishing, and the whole idea of providing for the future, especially for retirement, by buying paper promises is likely to be exposed as a fraud. The inflation now being stoked by the governments of Britain and America to benefit crooked bankers is likely to eliminate whatever remains of the value of their currencies, and the value of savings in those currencies. Apparently the dollar has lost over 95% of its value since 1913, and the pound has fared no better. That's what usually happens to currencies, governments debase them beyond use, and that's what likely to happen to the pound and the dollar. No doubt rich crooks with political connections will profit from whatever arrangements replace them, at the expense of ordinary people. £sd used not to mean a hallucinogen. Livres, solidii and denarii were apparently traceable back to Carolingian coinage based on Roman units of considerable value, not small change. It may be that Lady Poverty will be a close and constant companion, although we bid her less welcome than did St. Francis.
Our highly interconnected globalised economy and society may prove very vulnerable to shocks, and to things like peak oil and imperial overstretch. Dmitry Orlov, in Closing the Collapse Gap makes a very interesting comparison between the Soviet collapse and the likely imminent collapse of America, and concludes that America will suffer far more. Another Russian, Igor Panarin, predicts that the USA is soon likely to split into several portions, although I do not see why the social and racial strains are expected to be resolved in such neat geographical divisions.
After the continuing crumpling of the financial system there are fears that the food supply may be decreased and disrupted, particularly if the current highly capital and oil intensive system of agribusiness ceases to operate reliably. Big cities will not be able to feed themselves on what food can be grown locally, especially if oil based transport becomes too scarce or expensive. In the 1930's Stalin ameliorated his immediate problems by sending armed hordes from the cities to loot the Ukraine, and murder all the small farmers who were reluctant to be forced into collective farms. It is conceivable that if food runs short in American cities in a few years time, the Obammessiah may unleash his hordes of criminal blacks and degenerate whites to rape and pillage their ways across rural America.
Eras do come to an end. This island has experienced many, so it would not be very surprising if we are now undergoing another such change. The signs suggest it may be so. This is no longer a civilisation or culture of development, enthusiasm, new cultural horizons. Rather it is a time of degeneracy, perversion and collapse. The changes in art and culture are not improvements, but tired imitations of chimpanzees tea parties.
There are long cycles, such as the approximately 2,200 year Zodiacal Ages , months in the Great Year of the precession of the equinoxes, Hamlet's Mill. Sometime in the next century or so the Age of Aquarius will start when the vernal equinox moves into Aquarius. That's a very long time in human experience, and there are many shorter cycles. Recently there has been some speculation that the winter solstice of 2012 may mark an important change, as it marks the end of the Maya calendar, and shows the way to the centre of the galaxy in the direction of a gap in the Milky Way; although apparently that orientation also lasts for a century or so. It's possible there may be some event around 2012 which will serve as a shorthand marker for a major change occurring over a longer time, such as the fall of Rome in 476A.D.
One can speculate as to what that might be, and perhaps the economic and political collapse of the USA could fit the bill, signaled by the government defaulting on its debt, or having to withdraw its forces from the 800-1000 bases it maintains in some 130 countries, because it can no longer afford to maintain them, or a humiliating setback in Afghanistan, which it would no longer be able to reverse. The rulers of America set it on a similar course to that of Hapsburg Spain, so it would not be surprising if it suffers a similar fate. China could be the rising power that eclipses America, as France did in the case of Spain.
Although such alteration may be inevitable, it may be that our rulers are deliberately provoking collapse, making things worse than they might be. Beyond the incompetence and stupidity and favouritism, evil may lurk. They are socialists after all. Are they deliberately losing control of borders, flooding the country with third world garbage, allowing precautions against disease to lapse, knowingly doing whatever will fail and cause waste and destruction? The Cloward-Piven strategy suggests that's exactly what they are doing.
In the normal course one would have to accept that as Tennyson said, The old order changeth, yielding place to new. It may not be possible to put Humpty together again, although government economists and spindoctors strive their mightiest. Eventually the ideals and the feuds of history lose their meaning for subsequent generations. The 17th century is ending in Northern Ireland. All that 18th century concern for the rights of property and rights of man, enshrined in a written constitution with a small government, is passing away in America.
As the generations pass and the cycles turn, we could agree with T.S Eliot's assessment, in Four Quartets:
We cannot revive old factions
We cannot restore old policies
Or follow an antique drum.
These men, and those who opposed them
And those whom they they opposed
Accept the constitution of silence
And are folded in a single party.
Although our world is ending, and much that was good is destroyed, the triumph of evil may be less complete than it now seems. The old religion of the northmen suggested that after the Ragnarok, a fresh new world would arise, peopled by those who had taken refuge deep within the Cosmic Tree.
Six hundred years ago, and more, a wise woman lived in the churchyard of St. Julian's in Norwich. She was an anchoress, a mystic famous then and since as Dame Julian of Norwich. She lived through the Black Death and the Peasant's Revolt, so she knew something of change. Her theology was notably optimistic, and a line of hers, All shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well, was taken up by the poet Eliot, in his great poem Four Quartets: Little Gidding:
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.
Tuesday, 10 March 2009
All changed
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I came upon your blog, by accident or design I can't tell, and I just wanted to say I really like your style. The bloggers whose political views I share are usually filled with four-letter words because that's the quickest way to vent anger (+ they can be very humorous too). I've done it myself. But.. I also like your approach: thoughtful, informed and somehow 'lyrical'. Many thanks. (Couldn't find your email or would have posted privately!)
ReplyDeleteIndeed.. always a thoughtful read for me and it provokes much thought. Thanks...as for my POV On what may happen in 2012 I fear it could be something to do with the shifting of the poles.
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