The New Adventures of Brexit Girl..

One of the latest semi-memeable talking points in rightwards circles is the idea that mixed race people with a white father and a black mother do better in life than those with it the other way round: a black father and a white mother. I don't know if statistics bear this out, but successful sports and music stars with the first combination are often given as an example, such as Jude Bellingham or PinkPantheress - whose father is a white, middle class statistics professor (so perhaps he should know).

Obviously, you can see why the idea has appeal with the right. Either through some genetic alchemy, or just cultural influence, the sensible white father is said to put the child on a better track. In contrast to the feckless black father, and equally feckless white mother for having children with a black man, who raise (or fail to raise) their feckless offspring. It's unsurprising we're here too. We've went from 'we don't want race-mixing' to 'what type of race-mixing do we want.' (Though, to be truthful, the genuine 'we don't want race-maxing' people were always a very tiny minority, even in online right circles. It was always edgy memes and more moderate realities underneath for the most part.) Still, the memes have moved on now to reflect a more nuanced reality. The reality that we're living in a melting pot, whether people like it or not. That's it's more a question of what the melting pot looks like. It's interesting to me, as it's one of these things that's racist, but also not racist at the same time. Again, there's a nuance. Like both sides are trying to take ownership of the Yookay cultural scene, or at least the good bits of it.

"Okay, some of the music is good, actually ..but that's the white dad influence."

It's like the talking points have finally caught up to modern Britain. For a long time it felt like we had 1970s talking points (from the left and the right) pasted over a very different 21st century Britain. Now, we're finally talking about now.

Anyway, watching all this made me realise I didn't quite have it fully right with the whole Brexit Girl character. There was an element missing. So she too is mixed-race now. White dad and black mum, naturally. (Yes, I know it's a bit cringe, but it made me happy knocking up my little comic strip yesterday. So that's the main thing.)

There's a continuity error in that last panel, where the background doesn't match, but I was running out of Google Gemini and ChatGPT image credits (and patience) by that point. I actually feel it's quite accurate, if not entertaining. I don't think Andy Burnham's Catholic roots have much bearing on his pro-EU stance, but I really do see it through that lens. In my head Ursula von der Leyen might as well be in a cardinal's outfit. Though I think she'd probably wear it better.

Of course, this whole Makerfield election is quite exciting for political junkies like me. At first I was annoyed by the shenanigans, but now it's just sheer entertainment. What a country.

A Little Bit of Fiction

In more fun news I've finally finished the latest draft of BOOK II of my two book Someone Else's Kingdom fantasy series.

At some point I may do a final edit and publish these books properly. For now they're available for free in PDF form.

BOOK I can be downloaded here: https://drive.google.com

BOOK II here: https://drive.google.com

I'm now just doing artwork for the book (with a lot of help from AI). If I can get the aesthetic for the characters and the scenes down in image form (and AI really does come along over the next few years) I hope to do an anime TV series. That might be a bit beyond me though 😄, so that really is just a hope. Either way, whatever artwork I end up with could help with covers if the books do appear on Amazon.

A Spectator Watching The Starmer Drama

I'm in spectator mode. Watching as I would watch a good TV show, where I'm not sure where the plot is going.

Normally I'm not too bad at reading the tea leaves, but at the moment I just don't have a clue what's going on. Consequently, I'm not sure what I want either. Will Starmer go? Will he stay? Will we be better off for him going? Will we get something worse? Will that something worse get us to a general election quicker, and therefore somewhere better in the long run?

I don't know.

I also struggle with the methods. I'm just not cut out for the whole sneaky politics thing. So, as much as I dislike the things Starmer stands for, I don't like the idea of ousting him. It doesn't sit well with me. I don't like the shenanigans. It's not cricket. We saw all this with Boris and Truss getting ousted. It was obvious the people doing the ousting there did it because they had a different political worldview and wanted their guy in. Instead of saying that and appealing to the public though we had, "..but Boris ate cake!" or, "The bond markets!!!" etc, etc.. 

In a word lies. Or rather false dealings. Maybe Boris did have some cake, but that's not why you want him gone. That's just a convenient wedge you can feign some outrage over.

I'm one of these people that believes, perhaps incredibly naively, that honesty is the best policy; and that, in the long run, it's for the better.

There are arguments in my favour too. After all, the very clever and cunning people were telling us just two years ago that Starmer would bring stability. That the 'zero seats' strategy would be fine and dandy as Starmer would fix the potholes, bring down immigration and do the sensible things that needed doing. Things the Tories couldn't do, as they didn't have the civil service onside. Now, as we sit here, that hasn't quite worked out. We have drama on a par with the Tory drama.

So I guess my instincts are to just let Starmer get on with it. Suffer the next few years. Keep fighting the good fight, and hope for a Reform government after the next general election.

However, once again, maybe I'm just naive. Maybe if you just sat back and let him govern we'd be far worse off. Plus, perhaps there are darker things on the horizon. The other story competing for space at the moment is hantavirus. (!!!) Whatever's going on with that, it's hard to imagine a response anywhere near the covid response. People are now immune to virus fear mongering, if you pardon the pun. Still, who knows what's going on?

Returning to reading the tea leaves, I should note that I've been wrong on this Keir Starmer issue. For a while now I've been saying (on Twitter) that Starmer won't go. That the method that removed Boris won't work with Labour. As things stand today that's looking quite incorrect. So I'm not someone who can bring any enlightenment. I am indeed a spectator.

Finally, I should note that the person I fear should Starmer go is Andy Burnham. He's one of those people that women and pensioners like. He comes across as sincere. By politician standards he's fairly good-looking. Of course, it'd be like putting Gary Neville in charge of the country (and not just because of the accent), but that's by the by really. The point is he could potentially win a greater vote share. Making it harder for Reform. He's also just as pro-EU as Starmer and would probably be a better salesman for it.

Iran: Talking About The Talking Heads

I've spent the morning getting blocked on Twitter. I've now managed to get blocked by an entire subsection of the British online right:

Academic Agent

Millennial Woes

Morgoth's Review

Scrump and Evelyn

The whole set. It's funny as I literally said barely a week ago that I need to start being a bit less antagonistic on Twitter (I know, I always say this). It's just so triggering though. I read the tweets and it's painful.

What's got me this time is the Iran issue again. As I said in my last post, I fully respect people that are against the war because of the human tragedy. However, these people, they're not just against the war, they're basically on Iran's side. So we see this constant refrain of, "Trump's Crazy!", "He's an idiot!", and by extension, "MAGA (i.e. regular Americans) are stupid dupes, being fooled by the Orange Man."

It's doubly triggering as it's the British talking heads. The intellectual smartarses, who think they're so much more worldly and educated than the "MAGA-tards" with their silly red hats and American flags. Even though these MAGA-tards were often awake to the problems facing America and the Free West long before any of these talking heads were. (The pandemic alone proved how late to the party these people were. We may remember the online right pouring over graphs and begging for the borders to be closed in the opening months.)

(A similar example is Aaron Bastani, who moved a little to the right as woke was "put away" (admittedly quicker and more astutely than most on the left), but who instead of acknowledging his shift just acts like he's always been right about everything. There's never any acknowledgement that, "Yes, these working class chavs and rednecks might actually have been right about a few things when I was wrong. So perhaps I may be wrong again.")

Returning To Iran

I'm being a little personal here, but I think it's justified as the commentary coming from these ivory towers has been so unbelievably low grade. There's zero acknowledgement that Iran poses any threat whatsoever. As if the Iranian regime is wholly innocent. So it really is just an endless cacophony of, "Trump Is Crazy!"

It's a bit like if someone is constantly flicking your ear or prodding you. You ask them to stop. They say, "Sure, I'll stop." Then they start flicking your ear again. Eventually after a while you lose your temper and punch the person in the face. Of course, the wider audience only sees the punch. "That Crazy Guy Just Punched Someone For No Reason!" They don't have any awareness of the constant prodding and poking and dishonesty that preceded it.

The terrorist attacks, the repressions, the false dealings, the acts of economic warfare, etc.

Again, I'm not sure if the escalation of the war by the US and Israel is justified morally. Who am I to weigh these lives? Is such bloodshed ever justified?

I can acknowledge the growing threat though. It's not hard to imagine where Iran would be in five, ten or fifteen years given the current trajectory. With the drones and missiles, and more importantly the surveillance infrastructure, the eye in the sky, to direct and detect such things.

I hate to make the comparison, but it's like World War II. Was fighting that war worth the sheer amount of bloodshed? Some people might argue that it wasn't. That we should've simply accepted Nazi Germany as a world power. Accepted their coming dominance of the Mediterranean and Atlantic Ocean. And then just hoped they would be somewhat benevolent towards us in their use of it once we'd been eclipsed.

Again, I don't really know what the answer is. I do know that I'm grateful not to be living in that potential world though.

I think a lot of the talking heads, who daily indulge their freedom to talk, take it for granted though.

Iran Contortions

This Iran war has caused me contortions. On the one hand, from a geopolitical point of view, I'm strongly one-sided (very much on Trump's side). However, on the moral side, I'm not so sure.

I'd liken it to dealing with a burglar.

If a burglar breaks into your home they're clearly a threat to you. If not a direct threat to you as a person, then certainly to your wealth and wider well-being. Likewise, it would be in your interest to hit the burglar over the head with a metal bar. These facts are all clear.

What's not so clear is the deeper morality. Is it right to physically harm someone if they're not necessarily going to physically harm you? Is it right to potentially take another person's life? Would you want to live with that on your conscience?

With war it's far worse, as it's not just criminals that die, innocent people get caught in the crossfire too. Though, in counterweight, innocent people could also face harm in your own country if you don't take action. So it's not easy in reality to know what's truly right.

These are bloody and horrific questions.

Returning to the geopolitics (and ignoring the morals and dead bodies) things are much more clear to me though. It's obvious (at least to me - I could be wrong) that Iran, China and parts of the western elite are all in bed together. They'd like to undermine/side-line/subsume the US, and they'd like to push the US out of the Middle Eastern waters long term (using Iran-backed terrorism). These people are effectively what we call "globalists" in common parlance. They're the people that want a one world government, ran along UN lines. A top down, bureaucratic affair.

Whereas Trump represents a more classically Anglo-American worldview. Sure, it's essentially another form of world hegemony and top-down power, but it's much more democratic and individual liberty orientated. More Common Law as opposed to Napoleonic Law. Though, as I noted in my last post, people on the other side tend to perceive this "freedom" as more akin to anarchy. Like a parent that feels discomfort when they let their unruly child out of their sight.

In fact, when the globalism-aligned Keir Starmer came to power in Britain the media line was, "The Grown-Ups Are Back In Charge." Very telling of how they view the world. Whereas someone like myself would tend to respond, "Hang on a minute, I thought we were all grown-ups here? Isn't this a democracy where everyone is equal?"

So I know what I am and I know what side I'm on in all this, and I don't like the idea of living under a totalitarian, soviet-style world order. Whether bombing is the answer, that's a harder question.

(Image courtesy of Google Gemini.

The prompt a few paragraphs of text from this post.

- Style: Alphonse Mucha. I'm impressed!)

The Alt-Wrong

One thing that's been disappointing, but altogether predictable, is how many on the "right" have just openly sided with Iran. I can respect people being anti-war, I'm half-there myself. Again, it's such an awful and barbarous thing. However, they're not just anti-war, they actually want Trump to lose and be humiliated. They likewise seem filled with glee when missiles hit Israel or other American allies in the region. (Yes, some of the glee on the American/Israel side is also sickening, but you can't have it both ways. You can't claim to be a morally superior pacifist and then smile when bombs hit civilians.)

I think there are three main reason why so many have sided with Iran. One possibility is that these people are just more Eurasian in their outlook than I am. That is, they're more socialist and less individualist - so feel less threatened by stable, but monolithic states like China. (The online right do tend to have a bit of a communitarian vibe in general.)

The second is partly the media. We've lived in a landscape where the media have been telling us how great China is for the last twenty years or so. We saw the high point of this at the outset of Covid, when the media begged us to "copy China." So people have been conditioned to see China as benevolent and to view the lack of democracy there as nothing to worry about. Consequently, I come across people online who scream that Trump is a "dictator," yet at the same time praise "President for Life" Xi. These people have been primed for a world where China is the number one power and primed not to fear it.

The third reason is that people in the west see the lies on the western side more so. The lies at home are less distant than the lies that are far away. So they feel more outraged and angry that their own governments are lying to them than they feel threatened by distant dictatorships.

All governments lie and fake and contort. Morally it's wrong. I certainly find it very hard to stomach. Yet at the same time it's almost hoping for the impossible in expecting them not to do it. Lying is such an effective strategy. It's hardwired into nature. There's a reason the chameleon changes its colour.

So there's a real art to getting past the lies and viewing the picture beneath. In a way that isn't just focused on your own lying politicians.

Still, when you realise or suspect your own government or media is misleading you, it's going to cause conflict. It's like a relationship where one person isn't being honest. It becomes difficult to understand the other person. Who they really are. What they really want. Deep down they might have good intentions, but at some point you just decide you want nothing to do with them.

So now Trump is just a liar, and they want nothing to do with him. The idea that he might be lying for them, as part of a conflict against another bunch of liars, is lost in the confusion and emotion. If he's lying for anyone he's lying for Israel (or in other versions Putin). Whereas the lies from Iran are far away and unseen. If they say they're not building nuclear weapons, then that must be the truth. They're given a benefit of trust that western politicians aren't.

(It reminds me of the Hitler line that he liked Britain and the British Empire and didn't want to undermine or go to war with it. That's great if you just take Hitler's word for it, but it's not so great if you think Hitler is a lying dictator, who, in actuality, has other plans.)

Lastly (and briefly)

Another disappointment for me is how so many people have just viewed this as another Iraq. I've already typed quite enough, so I won't elaborate too much. I dislike the thinking by rote though. There are obvious similarities: it's an American war; it's in the Middle East. But there are also huge differences. Iraq was a rogue, but stable state. It wasn't an existential threat to US hegemony. Back then there was a naive confidence that it was "the end of history," and that America, as the remaining world power, could just walk in and erect a liberal democracy. Here Iran is part of a growing, competing bloc. That naive confidence is gone. Trump just wants Iran defanged. The prospect of regime change is a wanted, but unlikely possibility. Boots on the ground won't be used to attempt it. (I don't think.)

Nevertheless, as I've said, and it's always worth reminding myself, I don't really know for sure. This is just my reading of the situation. I do know though that when I hear people say, "This is another Iraq," nothing much insightful will come from them.

Death By A Thousand Chitchat

A week or so ago I saw this tweet:

Yes, former Conservative Party leader William Hague stating, "Social media is becoming incompatible with a healthy democratic system."

Then, this morning, I caught the following Sargon video, where Carl runs through the latest goings-on in Germany (spoiler: they're being German).

To be fair, I haven't read the linked-to Times article that William Hague was promoting - it's behind a paywall, and I still haven't forgiven the Times for Rishi Sunak. So maybe I'm being unfair. However, the tone of the tweet just suggests a man overwhelmed by the modern world.

To be fair again, it's understandable. There's so much content and opinion online. It's like a constantly churning ocean, and it can be overwhelming. Still, it reminds me of the pope that had all the birds in his garden shot because he was annoyed by their birdsong - whichever pope that was.

(I've just looked it up, it was Pope Urban VIII, apparently. I'm never sure if these little stories are true or not - it could just be an urban myth, *cough* - but my Protestant prejudice wants it to be true, so we'll go with it.)

Given the way current elites are reacting to all the human chitchat, as per Sargon's video about the German crackdowns, it's believable. It shouldn't be lost on people that these things happen on Twitter too. So the Holy Roman Empire has form when it comes to noisy little birds. Let's not remind ourselves what happened when the little birds wanted to read the bible in their own cheeps.

Though, to be fair for yet a third time, the Protestants killed a lot of people too. (I've been reading about Reformation-era Britain recently, and wow, a lot of people lost their heads, on both sides of the divide. It puts my modern day complaints about online censorship into perspective.)

Back to William Hague though. Again, it's hard not to have at least some sympathy. Once was a time when he voiced his opinion and the backlash came from a few newspaper articles. Written by journalists from a similar social sphere to himself. He'd maybe then get some further backlash when canvassing near election time. Now there are hundreds, if not thousands of people voicing their criticisms all day, every day. With added dislocation coming from the fact that public fashion now shifts so quickly as a consequence.

The Internet vs The Continent

I think this feeling is even more pronounced on the continent. We've noted before how the Eurasian landmass countries tend to be a bit more top down and collectivist by nature. We, the Anglo-Viking types, tend to view individual freedom as good. They often view it more akin to piracy.

There isn't fundamentally a right or wrong. After all, there's a fine line between pirate and privateer. Plus, even the wholly well-intentioned use of freedom can come with dangers. If you let your child walk home from school alone there's the danger something bad could happen. So it's natural those at the top of society - that view themselves as the social parent - will lean towards order and restriction.

"Right, the teacher is speaking now, everyone needs to be quiet! No more chitchat."

It's also worth noting how much the advent of the internet has benefitted the privateer. The internet has massively increased Britain's soft power - and when I say Britain I don't mean the British state. I mean us, the mouthy British population. We're a highly verbal culture. We're the chit-chatters par excellence. A lot of the social trends start here (or in the US, our even louder daughter). We also have the huge advantage that English is the world language. So it all happens in our natural tongue. Whereas there's a layer of translation for everybody else.

It's no wonder that other countries, who prefer to sip their coffee at a slower pace, feel bombarded by our constant memes and opinions. It probably is overwhelming for them psychologically. Especially when they're used to a different way of doing politics.

Elon Musk is a champion of free speech over here, but he's a pirate/privateer over there. Where the eyes discern little difference between the one p-word and the other.

What's normal for us maybe isn't so normal for a country like China - that has always been bureaucratic and top-down, throughout its history.

I don't really know what the answer is. I just know what I am. I'm English, and I don't really like being told what I can and can't say or read. Maybe I should be mindful that the rest of the world doesn't always feel this way though.

Restoring me, to my rightful place

In my last post on here I was criticising Reform. Constructive criticism - hopefully - but criticism nonetheless. Now, all of a sudden, I'm back defending them. Herded by circumstance back into the fold. The reason: we have a new party in town. The long-awaited Rupert Lowe party. Its name, Restore Britain.

Naturally; instinctively; impulsively; true-to-form; I've fired off a few tweets at people.

Yet then comes the inevitable realisation:

"I'm once again getting my knickers in a twist, aren't I?"

Is this the very purpose of Restore Britain? Is it literally there to corral all the racists and oddballs into one playpen. In turn herding more moderate people like myself into the loving embrace of the real darlings.

Contrariwise, however, there's always the darker fear that Restore are there to undercut, supplant, sabotage Reform. In which case my tweets are a needed insurance.

Then, likewise, there's the more straightforward, though somewhat less plausible possibility, that all these people are just entirely sincere in their views and want an alternative political vehicle. Maybe they're all just racists and oddballs, all the way to the top? Hmm..

Either way, the key takeaway, though I've said this before, is that I need to be a bit nicer to people on Twitter. If it's all fun and games I need to play with a nod and a wink. Not with Cromwellian fury.