It’s almost a commonplace that was we grow older and are usually less adaptable to change, we become more reactionary. Perhaps. There is some truth in the view that when young folk ‘settle down’, have to start paying real taxes, face monthly bills and have children, they often abandon their ideals, or at least water down, and that explanation makes sense.
To be blunt when the oddly artificial world of our salad days is left behind and we face the daily chore of going to work — though it is not necessarily from Monday to Friday or from 7/8/9am to 5pm — and what it entails, life can lose some of that marvellous sparkle it had when we were teenagers (in between the bouts of woe and doom, of course) and everything was possible. But that early change in life is not a mirror image of what happens to many later on when their teeth become loose and their hearing begins to go.
Later on, as we hit 50 or 55 and find ourselves slowly being edged to the periphery of existence and consequence, our once central role in matters and affairs of the world (or village) being taken over by younger versions of ourselves, we might well begin to see the world in a different light. Ten years on, perhaps after we retire and lose the ‘structure’ employment gave us and feel somewhat cast adrift, a certain disenchantment might well creep in, though most of use are apt to blame everything and everyone about us rather than accept it is the prism through which we view the world which might be the cause.
Yes, I am speaking personally, but I’ve talked about the ‘effects’ of retirement with others who have also professionally called it a day, and it seems that what I experienced and am still experiencing is common: somehow you seem to be something of a spare part, hoping you might be needed, but realising you could well not be that lucky; and we who have called it a day and have discussed it all, also agree that until you retire, you won’t know what the hell I am talking about. But that isn’t what this entry is about.
Obviously, we all react to growing older in different ways, but there will certainly be things we have in common. And, I suggest, for many one of the things we have in common is a sinking feeling that ‘it’s all going to the dogs’, a conviction which is closely tied in with viewing the past through distinctly rose-tinted specs.
I mention that because, being conscious that I, too, am equally as liable to suffer from that possible tendency, I want to try to ensure I don’t adopt it. I don’t like it and I can’t respect it. I want to try — and trying is all I can do — to retain as long as I can a balanced, proportionate outlook on life, the world and current affairs. I want to try to evaluate developments in the world with as neutral an eye as. Yet now I have made that point and considering developments here, there and everywhere, I am bound to confess that I do not things are looking too bright.
. . .
I don’t doubt that over the past 71 years of my life — 72 years on November 21 — when men and women heard the news on the radio and TV and read their newspapers, there seemed much to feel bleak about. Just five years after World War II ended, ‘the West’ faced another war, in Korea (no doubt billed to a gullible public on both sides as ‘a battle between freedom and tyranny’. Decide for yourselves who were battling for freedom in the face of encroaching tyranny.)
Later, for the Brits, came the insurgencies in what were then still its ‘colonies’, in Kenya and Malaya and elsewhere. France almost had a civil war over Algeria, and the ‘certainties’ of post-war 1950s America were wholly disrupted in the 1960s by the — then young — ‘boomer’ generation and the national divisions caused by the Vietnam War. And on it went.
Many were persuaded we were only that far from all-out nuclear war and some bright spark dreamed up the notion of the Doomsday Clock, though arguably in such terms the world is now a far more dangerous place and running even further out of time: in the 1960s and 1970s only France, Britain, the US and the then USSR had nuclear weapons. Now India, Pakistan, China and Israel also have them. As for that insufferably melodramatic Doomsday Clock’ the cause of the demise of humankind has since shifted via AIDS to global warming.
If you want melodrama — and it seems a huge number of us do — fuck off and watch your favourite soap. To paraphrase P. T. Barnum or H. L. Mencken (or whoever else claims to have originated the quote I am about to paraphrase) ‘No one ever went broke scaring the living shit out of Joe Public’ (and certainly no newspaper. Note to younger readers: when you have time, look up what newspapers were).
. . .
Bearing all that in mind, are the dangers we now face from a far stronger, richer and more determined China led by a man who is to all extents and purposes a dictator; and the dangers we face from Russia, not as strong and rich as
China, but also under the leadership of a cynical and determined — and very bright — quasi-dictator, as well as dangers posed by an increasingly nationalistic India any worse than those faced by our parent’s generation all those years ago? Are they?
Well, I’m inclined to suggest that no, they are not. But I must add that there is more than a certain nonsense in believing ‘dangers’ and ‘the dangers we face’ can somehow be graded and qualified. I know the foreign offices of governments and their backroom spooks have to do just that — grade and qualify ‘dangers’ — for practical reasons of formulating policy; but seen in a certain way, it doesn’t really make much sense: a danger is a danger. And we know from how World War I came about and was well underway in a matter of months that nothing much is neatly predictable.
As I write there seem to be two distinct dangers facing the world. One is in eastern Europe where Putin has amassed around 100,000 troops on the border between Russia and Ukraine, which might or might not be used to
invade Ukraine. A little further north the Belarusian dictator Lukashenko has — this sounds ridiculous, though is anything but — amassed several thousand migrants’ which he wants to pour into Poland.
I heard on the news earlier on that ads were put in the media of various countries where many folk are looking for a better – ‘stress-freer’? — life selling flights and visas to Belarus with a view to entering the EU. There was an enthusiastic response, it seems, though the reality was that once they arrived in Minsk, they are loaded into lorries and driven to the Polish border where they are now stuck in sub-zero temperatures. Sounds like an urban myth to me, though is was ‘on the radio’. And stranger things have happened at see.
In the Far East, China’s dictator — no one has yet used the word, but it is the only realistic one to use as far as I am concerned — Xi Jinping has made if very clear that an invasion of Taiwan will take place sooner rather than later. The big question to be asked about both these situations is: how will the West react? Will it get involved? Or will it cave in?
Before I write anything more, I must candidly admit that I have no idea which reaction would be appropriate or wise. Really I don’t. It is Hobson’s Choice, and I’m not going to claim the role of Joe Wiseacre and lay down the law of what ‘Western governments’ should do.
Putin will be encouraged that when, again to be blunt, he invaded and annexed The Crimea, part of Ukraine, the West did fuck all and he was allowed to get way with it. If we are dealing in Brownie points, one Brownie point to Vladimir and none to the West.
Putin might now be calculating that if he invades Ukraine and annexes part of the country’s east, the West will again do nothing. (His excuse might be that the east of Ukraine, which has had a small-scale war for several years now, has many ethnic Russians and they need the protection of Mother Russia.)
Certainly, we will condemn such an ‘international outrage’ in the strongest possible terms, if not even stronger (
subs please check if that is possible), and we will ‘impose sanctions’ and place punitive tariffs on the import of vodka and all those delightful little dolls which fit inside each other after you unscrew the head of the bigger one (for details contact the FSB). But Russia will know we are cack-handed wankers. We need their gas more than we need to stick to our increasingly tawdry principles. Welcome to the ‘global world’.
China has long insisted the Taiwan is not a sovereign state as Taiwan itself insists, but is still one of its provinces (a point lawyers could argue about for weeks on end, of course). China recently got away with imposing its totalitarian will on Hong Kong (where you can now be locked up for a very long time for in any way being critical of China) and Xi Jingping believes he can do the same with Taiwan. He’s probably right.
On paper the US has insisted it will somehow protect Taiwan’s sovereignty — but it has been careful not to specify quite how. More to the point, though Taiwan would most certainly defend itself and it has quite strong armed forces, it is doubtful to that it could do so for long. However, what is crucial is how the US would — will — react. And how other nations in the locality who will also be pretty pissed off with China’s increasingly bullying behaviour will react.
. . .
These two dangers are compounded by unrelated but still pertinent developments in the UK, the US and Europe. In the UK our prime minister is a useless twat who even himself admits he’s not ‘a details man’. He is also losing his support in Parliament and could well be gone by the middle of next year, for a number of reasons, though none
of which are relevant to the above. The Opposition Labour party — I use the word ‘Opposition’ purely in its technical sense in as far it is about as effective as an Opposition was a chocolate teapot — is equally as useless and the point is that at present the UK has exceptionally weak leadership and political clout.
The same problem faces the US. After the four years of chaotic, insane and damaging leadership by Donald Trump, Joe Biden is proving to be distinctly underwhelming. Germany at present has no government and various parties are horse-trading to form a governing coalition.
France is on the brink of a presidential election, one which might well see a far-right figure gain the presidency (though, to be frank, that is less likely than not given that such a development will be fought tooth and nail, though that would not rule out civil strife in France — well, Paris — which might prove equally as unhelpful).
On balance, of course, the picture is no bleaker than it has at any point in the past 50, 100 or 1,000 years. The difference and possibly a pertinent factor is the ‘global nature’ of world economies. Disruption elsewhere might well have led to shortages ‘at home’, but the sophistication of many of our economic practices — I’m thinking of the ‘just in time’ supply of parts — means some aspects of our economies could then — can then — grind to a halt far sooner than later.
An added complication is the ongoing covid-19 pandemic, which is also ‘global’ (NB I keep sticking that word in quotes because it has become something of a buzzword and I hate buzzwords and being seen to use them.) Sooner or later we will pay the bills accrued in one way or another dealing with it. Just how is that going to pan out?
Let me reiterate my initial point: the above has been written but a lad who won’t even see 70 again so please bear that in mind. Such folk — old crocks such as me — are apt to look on the dark side of life as a matter of course. But in the above I have tried to be less ‘ageist’ and more neutral. Things ain’t looking grand. The question is: is that just how I see them or are, finally, things really not looking too grand?
Answers please on a postcard. And if you can’t be bothered, just fuck off and watch your favourite soaps instead. At least they have no consequences.
