I think it was last Monday ... I heard clips on two News Channels, one from North America, the other from here in Blighty ... in each of which a different, but equally yellow-haired, politician was complaining angrily about "Witch Hunts".
Is this apparent telepathy the sort of thing that Common Ordinary Folk have in mind, the dear poppets, when they talk about "the Special Relationship"?
Dear Father. Witch Hunt is an example of the political class judging itself innocent while simultaneously judging the public as guilty of a desire to know what the politicians are doing.
ReplyDeleteBertolt Brecht's sarcastic obersvation has been adopted by politicians in once white countries:
Die Lösung The Solution
Nach dem Aufstand des 17. Juni
Ließ der Sekretär des Schriftstellerverbands
In der Stalinallee Flugblätter verteilen
Auf denen zu lesen war, daß das Volk
Das Vertrauen der Regierung verscherzt habe
Und es nur durch verdoppelte Arbeit
zurückerobern könne. Wäre es da
Nicht doch einfacher, die Regierung
Löste das Volk auf und
Wählte ein anderes?[4]
After the uprising of the 17th of June
The Secretary of the Writers' Union
Had leaflets distributed on the Stalinallee
Which stated that the people
Had squandered the confidence of the government
And could only win it back
By redoubled work [quotas]. Would it not in that case
Be simpler for the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another?
DeleteBrecht's poem is the absolute classic political comment on the elites who always know what's best for the proles. I recommend a trip to Berlin just to walk down Stalinallee (now Karl Marx Allee). It has information boards at intervals to explain the architecture. One board marks the spot where Uncle Joe's statue stood until it vanished one night.
This may be referring to the practice under the current administration in the US of weaponizing the legal system to go after one's political opponents, or those suspected of supporting them, or those who espouse doubleplusungood beliefs such as the sanctity of human life or marriage being only possible between a biological man and a biological woman. This use of the legal system was formerly only found in countries sneeringly referred to as "banana republics".
ReplyDelete