Boom Boom Boom

So Biden has dropped out. In a whoosh everything has happened, rapid fire.

June 27th: Trump/Biden debate - which led to the clamour for Joe to go.

July 13th: Trump assassination attempt.

July 15th: Trump VP announced

July 21st: Biden out

It looks like Kamala Harris will take over. So now the last slot to be filled is the Democrat VP pick. Which should tell us a lot.

Obviously, with the Trump brouhaha, it seems Trump is nailed on for victory. That these stars are being aligned directly for that. The powerful people at the top have made peace with him, and now we're all going to get some type of closure. A release valve. Discontent pacified. A great smoothing-over. The cancellations of leftists adds weight to this notion. The people at the top now willing to pull their levers on behalf of the right. A visible shift. The talk of prison sentences for Trump gone. (And, of course, the simple fact that they could've gotten rid of Joe long ago, and stuck an A-list Democrat candidate in, but didn't.) So the Hollywood stars align.

It makes so much sense. I think it's totally wrong to be cancelling Home Depot workers because they've said something nasty about Trump on Facebook, but that aside, the general trend I can applaud. It's the sensible course to chart.

Having seen so many twists and plots, I always feel like I'm sat at the Red Wedding though. That I'm sat hearing Hulk Hogan tell me how great I am, with a big smile on my face, as daggers hide beneath cloaks. Ready, not only to do me in, but to mock my naïve stupidity as they do it. My mind can't help but go to the worst case scenario.

So, at the moment, I think the best, but fear the worst. Some of the instant cope I've seen from people on the right lends itself to the fear. People saying that Kamala will be easier to beat than Biden, which obviously isn't true. Biden was literally senile. Anyone, even Kamala Harris, will be an improvement. How can they not be?

Kamala Harris actually reminds me of Rebecca Long-Bailey. Likeable, but a bit light in the head. The Labour leadership contest seems such a long time ago now. As that was taking place, Covid was springing up from the ground, like a maleficent aether. On this very blog those two things overlap. The one seeming so very innocent compared to the other. I remember typing those Labour leadership blog posts at the time. I had the dread of the coming Covid nightmare all through January and February, but I was trying so hard not to be a conspiracy theorist. This time I'm also trying hard not to be a conspiracy theorist. Though with Covid there was instinctive dread in my stomach, here there's instinctive hope. My instinctive judgement - my reading of the tea leaves - says things will indeed be smoothed-over.

Is it any wonder my mind can't help but race towards Red Wedding scenarios though? We've seen so many events, moments, and shakedowns - and three months is a long time, so a lot can happen. Plus, the world - and human culture - is a complex thing. So organic events can overtake written scripts. When the right surrendered the moral high ground, by advocating the cancelling of people on the left, they made a big mistake in terms of culture war. They surrendered moral authority. You'd think people wouldn't be so stupid to do this when fighting a culture war. You almost assume it must be deliberate. However, people find it hard to read culture - it requires a bit of female-brain. Men tend to be analytic. They love rules and theories. "Machiavelli said this ..therefore we must take this course of action." Ideologies are always inferior to real life though. And they dull the senses. A person operating on instinctive real-world judgement instantly sees that harassing a middle-aged woman who works at Home Depot makes you look like an idiot, but if you're subsumed by a set of rules that says you must do it, the instinct takes a beat seat. And real life takes a back seat to memes and theories.

I'm getting a bit far from the original intent of the article, as I often do, so I'll leave it there.

Learning To Lie

It's super hot. Sleep is a virtual impossibility in this heat. I was in work today, so last night I had to force myself to sleep through it. From a possible eight hours I think I got about three. However, I'm off tomorrow, so I have the luxury of not caring tonight. So, with tired eyes, I'm posting..

I'm not sure what I have to say, but I feel I should post. Over the last few days or so I've been a little arsy and impetuous over on Twitter. Watching the right behave as badly as the left in response to the Trump brouhaha was annoying. Of course, I also promised to try to show goodwill towards the new Labour government as well, but seeing the media love-in over that has made that difficult too. I think I've exhausted my humpiness now though, so my pragmatic self can regain control of the wheel. I must admit it was nice to shoot from the hip a little. You feel so much more alive and youthful when you're acting on your actual emotions.

It stills amazes me how much I care about the truth. I always wonder where this feeling comes from. Is it something innate I was born with? Or is it a consequence of how I was raised? Was the importance of honesty just drilled into me? Did all those Christian school assemblies I scorned make a difference after all?

I really hate lies. Though, saying that, what actually triggered me was seeing lies being enforced. I watched one livestream where audience members in the live-chat were shut down pretty aggressively by the talking heads taking part. I just can't stomach it. The desire to dumb the inquisitive senses of others. That a course of action has been taken, and everyone else must pay lip service to it. The pecking order is never more visibly apparent than in moments like these. Suddenly the talking heads that feign friendship and common cause show their teeth.

Also, this idea that, because the lies are being told by people on your side, you'll be cool with it. Like this idea that it's now somehow okay to censor the left, "cos they're the enemy." It almost goes beyond right and wrong. The ego takes over. It's an insult to me personally. I don't want to be a snake.

I'm getting hyperbolic again now ..and I shouldn't. I know how the world works. I've learnt that we live in an imperfect world. I've even written pieces like this one: The Spring, showing how natural and inevitable (even necessary) systems of secrecy and lies are. Yet still, I hate it. I just want to live in a world where I can have honest, open conservations with other humans, without having to worry about hitting the tripwire.

Manier Things To Discuss

On election night there was a moment that summed up post-Brexit politics quite neatly for me. Alastair Campbell corrected the grammar of Nadine Dorries live on air. The classic, "It's not less, it's fewer."

https://x.com/lemonadelush/status/1808976529440878641

There were subsequent back and forth points made on Twitter about who was correct, as though Nadine was talking about numbers, she used less in the phrase "less than a handful" - and a handful isn't a discrete amount. Personally, I don't care. It's a silly language rule that I just completely ignore anyway. I'm not bothered about the brownie points.

(You can kind of see how silly it is by the fact that we don't hear similar debates when people use more. If someone says, "there are more people," no one interjects, "Akhschully, it's greater people." Which wouldn't work anyway. Many is pretty much the opposite of few - too few, too many - so we'd probably need to invent the word manier. "..Akhschully, it's manier people." Imagine how annoyed these language nerds would be if we just started inventing words though.)

Anyway, it was just the latest example of people on the anti-populist side of the divide making appeals to technicality. It's been a recurring theme, that I've mentioned on here before (The Remain Brain vs The Leave Perceiver - 2019, didn't realise it was so long ago!).

Seeing the media coverage, and the number of seats the Lib Dems won, got me thinking about this class of people once again. I'm not quite sure how to box them. Remainer is a bit specific, and doesn't fully capture it. I was thinking unserious people that take themselves seriously, but that's probably unfair - and incorrect too. What inspired that descriptor was another media snapshot. This time an exchange involving Steve Baker, Ed Balls and George Osborne.

https://x.com/GMB/status/1809114873894228261

Osborne and Balls were laughing and giggling, like it was all just a big game, as Steve Baker was making a serious point. To be fair, their party had won, and Baker had lost his seat, so naturally moods would be different. And yes, Osborne and Balls are of the same party. Technically Osborne is a Conservative, but these party structures and labels don't reflect actual political reality anymore. This is another theme I've touched upon before.

https://x.com/NeilSco17180435/status/1759197809515925952

I feel like this election finally crystallised many of these things. Which, I guess, means it's the end of one era and the beginning of something else..

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More, More, More

This is a bit off topic for this blog, but I can't help but make mention of the words less and more in regard their mechanics. That is, the way we make these words using the mouth.

More is a very natural word. We make the "M" sound by simply opening and closing the mouth. It's an easy consonant to make. I'm almost certain that this is why so many words denoting mother begin with M. More is the sound a child naturally makes when it wants more milk.

Likewise, less is similarly fitting. We make the "L" sound by lifting our tongue to the roof of our mouth. We have lots of lifting type words beginning with L - lift, lower, level, levitate, layer, lever, etc. The word less begins with us lowering our tongue from the roof of our mouth to make the L sound. Then ends with us bringing or teeth together to make the "S" hissing sound. Making our mouth smaller - almost closed. (If you make these words in your own mouth and note the position of the tongue and the lips this becomes easier to understand.) So, with less, we lower the tongue, then make the mouth small. So the physical action of the mouth mirrors the actual meaning of the word.

I should really do fewer for thoroughness. Here the "F" sound is made by biting the bottom lip (again, try it with your own mouth to see). I guess you could say that grabbing the bottom lip fits neatly with the idea of something being lower or less. With the "R" we then curl the tongue backwards, though often people don't pronounce the R. (With my terrible Teesside accent I pronounce it few-a.) So the R doesn't really add too much in regard mirrored mechanical meaning - though you could maybe make the claim that bringing the tongue inwards - the recoiling motion - naturally implies a lessening or retraction. (The "W" in the middle, though technically considered a consonant, is actually just a transition between two vowel sounds.)

Vowels are open mouth vocalisations. Essentially letters/sounds we can sing or sustain. Aaaaaah, Ooooo, etc. So the relative openness of the mouth could also be said to carry meaning. With "Aaaaaaah" we open the mouth wide - so it's fitting for big or wide things. With e or i sounds - "eehhh" - the mouth is smaller. So you could say the "eh" in less and fewer also fits with the concept of less-ness.

(Actually, phonetically we pronounce the word fewer very differently to how it's spelt. For a start, that initial "F" is immediately followed by a "Y" sound. Then, the first e is pronounced more like an Ooo. We write fewer, but we say F-you-er. Written language is messy.)

In regard the mechanics of the mouth the word less seems more apt and pleasing than the word fewer. Perhaps this is why people naturally reach for it. Maybe it just feels more intuitive.

My Advice For Reform

Firstly, congratulations to Labour. This isn't what I wanted, but we do live in a democracy, and they've won. So they do have a clear mandate from the people - at least a mandate to deliver the things they've pledged to deliver.

(In fact, on that topic, Starmer did make this statement the day before the election, which seems worth making note of:

("I've been really clear about not rejoining the EU, the single

market or the customs union..")

That seems pretty emphatic.)

So, I'm happy (or, at least, I'm going to try) to give them a period of grace and goodwill. Obviously, my fear is things will be bad. We now have a parliament entirely dominated by managerial technocrats - 412 Labour MPs, 72 Liberal Democrats, and 121 (for the most part) wet Tories. People like Jacob Rees-Mogg, Liz Truss, Steve Baker, and my local MP Simon Clarke all gone.

This was a terrifying prospect before the election, but now it's a reality I calmly accept.

I think it's important to act in hope after an election. Again, to offer some goodwill towards your victorious opponents, and to not prejudge their efforts in government. To give them some time to prove your fears wrong. To acknowledge if they get things right.

Perhaps it won't be so bad after all.

REFORM

Reform picked up five seats, which is a huge silver-lining. I think five is a very impressive total. Even after the exit poll predicted thirteen I wasn't confident they'd get more than one or two.

My immediate thoughts are two-fold:

Firstly, Reform need to make sure they diligently serve these five constituencies. They need to be present, do the boring things, and resist the temptation to simply use these seats as a platform for wider activism. If they get a reputation for not being local, loyal and serious it's curtains for any grander ambitions.

Secondly, I think they would be wise to be absolutely forensic with any statements made going forward. Cavalier mouthing off and high drama might undo them. As if they cause too much trouble in parliament, the committees and kangaroo courts will be back in no time. "Disrepute!" "lying to parliament!" "financial irregularities!" Don't think in this current era that only the public can remove people from parliament.

(This is quite a negative suggestion, and it goes against my earlier desire to offer goodwill to Labour & Co. However, I'm not saying this type of chicanery will definitely happen, I'm just pointing out that there's a very realistic possibility that it could.)