Elections, Brexit, and Social Media versus the Screaming Rags

As we sink deeper into this Brexit mire, led by privately educated morons and idiots the like of which The Commons has not seen post Cromwell, we have to be alert to the dangers.

Despite the onset of social media and the side-stepping of the drain stream media that this has created for huge numbers of us, the fact remains that screaming headlines in the daily rags still generate massively significant voter backlash.

People wonder why Corbyn won’t come entirely clean on his stance re Brexit. Is it really any wonder when you consider that, the second he does, the stinking mire created by tories and their “liberal” buddies will cease to be a tory problem?

It will become, instantly, overnight, a Corbyn/Labour problem.

If he so much as hints at re-running the referendum, he will be vilified as the arch “anti-democrat”. If he hints at wanting to stay in, he will be, pure and simple, an immigrant lover.

Whatever he pronounces re Brexit, the rags will scream negatives about it. Whatever he does, the screaming headlines will be all about Corbyn/Labour making everything worse. And, in a very very short period of time, the rag reading populace will entirely forget the tory/liberal origins of the mire. Just as they have the origins of the banking, the NHS, the homelessness crisis, and other grotesque mires.

Should he be courageous and say what he thinks regardless of the misrepresentation, hysteria, and backlash? Yeah, right.

He's doing what we should all be doing. Quietly getting on with our researches and preparations and keeping our powder dry for the next round of voter swing.

The rags want to make the next election all about “immigration”. Pure and simple. That’s how they handled the referendum and that’s how they’ll handle the election. This always keeps Labour on the back foot as they struggle to win over the fear-and-hatred driven voting mass. At one and the same time anti-Semitic and lovers of hordes of inward bound immigrants, Labour is still the number one “enemy within”. It is obvious and crystal clear that the screaming rags don’t want rag readers to know anything about Labour’s other, carefully worked out and costed (for the first time ever in British politics) policies for the simple reason that those policies are reasonable and researchable and don't generate fear and hatred.

Those of us with functioning critical faculties won't have missed the blatant fact that, unless there’s a fear and hatred angle, Corbyn simply doesn’t get reported.

With all this in mind, why should Labour push for “no confidence”, or even an early election? Overnight, the Reesmugs and the BoorishJohnsons and all the other idiots on the sinking ship of Brexit and toryism will suddenly become the voices of reason, the heroic “opposition” to whatever Labour comes up with. There is a strong argument for leaving the tory oligarchy to stew in its own shit for as long as possible.

When the stew is finally cooked, then, hopefully, even the rag readers will finally realise and accept precisely whose fault the whole bizarre mess is/was. Only then will they, fully and finally, wake up to the fact that the decade long blizzard of “austerity” that they have been put through was exclusively generated by the tory oligarchy. And that serving the interests of privilege and the rich is,

has been,

and will always be

the complete and entire purpose of tory government.

There should be no tory party. In an educated society, it’s victorian stance of “empire” and “privilege” and “charity” should, like the dinosaurs, be extinct. The Many far outnumber the Few.

And yet, perhaps the single most depressing aspect of our modern “democracy” is that so many of the Many continue to support this ravenous dinosaur - so entirely against their own best interests. The rags and the education system keep churning out the psychological framework within which all this tory oligarchism, all this ridiculous and obscene be-wigged and be-crowned pageantry and suppression, continues to make sense.

I and my generation have a lot to answer for as we allowed the evil winds of arrogance and ignorance to rise again. And we allowed them to race through the fragile ramparts of the egalitarian and sharing society that the war generation had struggled so hard to build.

That generation had fought not just the War. They’d also fought the tory oligarchy’s attempts to return everything back to the pre-war cap-doffing state of play – a state of play which had to be abandoned during the war simply because it didn’t work. “The war effort” required a much more rational and equitable distribution of resources and responsibilities if the war was ever to be won. Churchill’s government even worked with the trade unions for heaven’s sake! Ernest Bevin, the Transport & General leader, and others like him, had been absolutely instrumental in creating a civilian infrastructure that assured, more than ever before, that resources and services reached the people actually doing the work. At the war's end, when Churchill tried so desperately to reinstate “empire” (in spite of a hand-on-heart written commitment to Roosevelt) and the UK internal status quo, he lost the election to a Labour government which set about trying to embed and enhance those hard won wartime social gains.

What had I and the intelligent elements of my entire generation been doing when the destruction of all these gains was being planned and getting underway? Why hadn’t we recognised and been doing more to protect those unique and hard won enhancements? What had we been engaged in apart from personal careerism and libertarian self-indulgence?

The warnings were clear with the onset of “reagonomics” and “thatcherism”. Suddenly Milton Friedman was among us and it felt like we were in the middle of Chilean-style economic coup. In the blink of an eye the country was awash with vile shitheads. Deregulated banksters and speculators began to pour out of the woodwork to dance on the remains of the welfare state and celebrate the abandonment of “society”. A headlong and divisive race began - to the bottom (for the many) and to the top (for the scummy few). And the whole sickening mess was supported by ignorant petty opinionistas trotting out the usual tripe about “freedom to get rich” and “trickle down” and “only the lazy suffer” and, of course, “oh look, there’s a 'celebrity' having a bowel movement”.

Our job, those of us active on social media and not influenced by the rags, have a duty to keep posting and re-posting the non-mainstream views and insights. We won’t be getting it right every time, but we shouldn’t let this tie us up.

Keep the information flowing - in as just and equitable manner as possible, but keep it flowing. Neither the tory oligarchy nor their screaming rags trouble themselves over “truth”. They don’t tie themselves up in agonised knots over questions of accuracy or ethics. Those of us who consider ourselves intelligent have an obligation to illustrate and propagate truth as much as we possibly can, but there is no time for agonising over the occasional lapse. If a posting is wrong, admit it and move on. But keep the information flowing.

We can't expect Corbyn/McDonell to pick up all the pieces intact. Nobody’s perfect. They already have the ravenous corporate Media lined up against them, slagging them off for every step they have temerity to take. But this will be as nothing compared to the shitstorm the screaming rags will generate once the election is called.

As the election (and/or another referendum) looms, as we consider what may be our last shot at responsible government before we’re completely buried by morons and idiots bought and sold by corporate psychopaths, the role of “tounibtr” (those of us not influenced by the rags) will be to keep posting and reposting the good stories. No time for petty pedantics.

If it ain’t right, don’t like or share, but, in election time especially, don’t waste time correcting fellow tounibtrs.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not advocating the posting of mis or dis information. As much as ever possible we should be dealing in the truth. But I am saying save your strength and energy. Let the tory oligarchy spend time and money unravelling any confusions. If it’s so wrong, let the screaming rags correct it. In the meantime, if it seems right, check your sources, and like and share like rabbits.

And it may be worth considering this. If a potential Labour voter is influenced by a posting that turns out to be wrong, do we still want his or her vote? Of course we do. We lose voters by the thousand from screaming headlines that turn out to be wilfully and calculatedly wrong when checked against the facts post election, but by then the damage is already done and past remedying.

#tounibtr