In this brief series I will review the values and the decay of the reality we inhabit.
It is in three parts
Shoplifters of the World - What is Wrong and How We Got Here
A Culture of Crime - Looting for Justice at Home and Abroad
Taking Liberties - From Democracy to Despotism
The argument is that our democracies have turned into their opposite, and that we inhabit a culture of crime. Crime itself is banalised, and where acknowledged, often decriminalised in fact or in effect.
From looting shops in broad daylight to plundering your economy to fight forever wars, our culture is corrupted by the normalisation of violent and non-violent crime.
I have an interview with a leading diplomatic realist scheduled for this week, whose work is likely to inform the future policy of the US and its empire.
This series will help to give you an insight into the problems arising from the divorce of diplomacy and politics from reality. One is the breakdown of law and order as a matter of policy, which is our subject here.
THE SECRET INGREDIENT
Something is wrong with our world. Something is wrong everywhere in it. It is as if, somehow, all of our lives have been transformed, making our experiences unrecognisable in the descriptions we hear and read and see about our reality. We are never asked, always told, and often told off for asking.
What is the reason for this malaise? Why does every product of our politics or culture traduce the branding, and why are we told that nothing can be done about any of it?
The wild eyed urchin Super Hans put it best,
“The secret ingredient…is crime”.
A CULTURE OF CRIME
The state we inhabit is typified by crime. By neglect or by design, the nations of the west are distinguished by crime waves, mass human trafficking and the gleeful destruction of our entire cultural heritage. It is arguable that neither of Isaiah Berlin’s arguments about liberty apply to our politics.
It is not liberal, because it is no longer pluralist. It is not a despotism of philosopher kings, because by their actions they have lost the right to rule. This is not an undiplomatic view. It is realistic.
Diplomatic realism is the attempt to reach agreement between distinct civilisations with conflicting interests.
Instead of this reality based analysis, American diplomats lecture other nations such as China on the “secret sauce” of the success of US. This bizarre take came on 21st March, 2021 - one week before the rigged trial of Derek Chauvin, who was falsely convicted to appease a rioting mob which had engulfed America in violence for over a year.
What makes us, the US Empire, civilisationally distinct is neither liberal nor democratic. Its secret sauce is the culture of crime.
THE MASSIFICATION OF CRIME
Crime is everywhere. It is so prevalent that where a solution has been attempted, it has ended with decriminalisation in name or in fact.
From the very top of our politics to the local supermarket you can’t escape the fact that reasonable expectations make you feel you’re the one who has gone mad. Like Buchner’s Lenz, even in the quiet valleys we hear its terrible cry, and it will not let us sleep.
The noise of crime is bruited about everywhere, but our politics is silent.
One day, and soon, you will go in the shops and find you are the only one bothering to pay.
Not that the news is much interested, either.
THE NAMES HAVE BEEN CHANGED TO PROTECT THE GUILTY
The life we inhabit doesn’t much resemble the hysterical trivialities of the news cycle, which, when reality gets a little too spicy, simply changes the names of things to protect the guilty. “Fiery but mostly peaceful protests”, as masses of people burned and looted in the background.
To alter the description of the act reduces recorded crime. Changing the name of things is the One Secret Trick of domestic liberal soft power to make things disappear. Wars become “liberal interventions”, riots “fiery but mostly peaceful”.
It seems by comparing Twitter videos with news headlines that a lot of urban violent crime is simply not reported at all. If you are watching this yourself, this is the kind of silence which is terrifying.
Theft has been called a response to the cost of living. Changes in the law, or in policing priorities, mean that police do not appear at thefts of phones, from shops and everywhere else. These are two ways to translate reality out of the record.
The problem with this trick is that it doesn’t work in reality. The bad things are still there, even if there is now no easy way to talk about them. Not only are people beginning to notice, it is impossible to ignore. Reality, that is.
SHOPLIFTERS OF THE WORLD
Joseph Nye, who coined the term “soft power” in 1980, said it was about a nation’s ability to influence others through its cultural ethos, without the use of hard power - force.
The cultural ethos of our nations, which we might term the Empire of the United States, is crime.
In deed, in theory and in fact our culture is completely criminal. Morrissey sang about this in In 1987, when his band The Smiths released a single.
It was called Shoplifters of the World, and it seemed to speak for the marginalised and the desperate.
Shoplifters of the world
Unite and take over
Well the shoplifters of the world have come out in force. At every level of society, crime and theft, and even violence, are being normalised to the point of banality. The connection between theft at your local supermarket and the highest level of politics was noted by Morrissey himself, in the second verse of his song.
But last night the plans for a future war
Was all I saw
On Channel Four
In 1987, the same year the song was released, a blueprint for an unprecedented attack on the infrastructure of Europe would be published. Called Ally versus Ally, it was about the Siberian gas pipeline being built by the Russians.
The book argued that US sanctions on Soviet Russia had backfired, and suggested that it may be necessary for the US to attack the infrastructure of its European allies in order to maintain strategic dominance in the region.
It was written by Antony Blinken, who is now the chief diplomat of the United States. On the 26th September, 2022, the Nordstream pipeline was blown up. No one has been held responsible.
How did we get here?
There is a reason why nothing matters any more, and why nothing changes as a result.
It is the same reason no one thinks anything can be done about it.
Liberal democracies are ruled by uniparties, all of whom have adopted a form of Blairism.
Tony Blair won three elections. His brand of politics, which he said would transform Britain, was described by himself in his major speeches as a robust defence of globalism and war.
That Tony Blair was a liar never stopped people voting for him. Paddy Ashdown said of him
“The trouble with Tony is that he believes what he is saying when he is saying it”.
Tony Blair gave liberal politicians the template to win. Let’s do this together, he said to them. All you have to do is believe in yourself.
And they did.
Tony Blair’s influence has only magnified after leaving office. He is now tasked with bringing peace to the Middle East, at the invitation of Benjamin Netanyahu.
Read that again.
LIBERAL INTERVENTIONS
What this means for our culture is that it is “what I believe” that matters. Blairism appeared in the historical moment granting victory to Liberalism.
It combined with the idea of the “end of history”, Fukuyama’s notion that elections and consumerism was the most stable form of government that would ever be.
This too was the unipolar moment, when Liberalism could stop making promises about life being better, and became the defence of empire and of war. Instead of a better world for your children, cheap consumer goods and cheap credit to buy them.
This bare life of “elections plus VCRs”, the democracy/consumer axis of Fukuyama’s end of history, is not combined with a clear-eyed Liberalism.
It is one based on fantasy. On the idea, like that of Blair, that if I only believe what I am saying myself then that is all that matters. Our culture is reduced to transactions and fantasies. It is trans-actual.
What does our Blairite political system boil down to then, if not Liberalism? When asked for the “essence of Blairism”, Blair said in 2007
"It is liberal interventionism."
He made the case for this in a speech in Chicago in 1999, which first laid out the Liberal case for war as an instrument of civilisation.
UNIVERSAL LAWBREAKING
Formerly one of the parallel cultures of our factional societies, crime is now so mainstream that its influence is so obvious at every level of society that it is no longer news.
Major US retailers complain of “organised retail crime”, with Britain’s high streets becoming “looting grounds”.
Vandalism, looting, transport sabotage, theft, car crime, arson, drug abuse, the human trafficking of millions of people and the wars which started it and even the organised rape of children have all been provided with progressive explanations.
The murder of the unborn was formerly the pinnacle of human rights, which has now been supplanted by a crime against reality. It might be a crime itself to say this in the UK, but the reason most men are attracted to women is because they aren’t men.
Everyone is breaking the law these days. It’s not only good business, but a matter of principle. There is no end to the Liberal Interventions, as in Ukraine, and it is right-on to support them. Yet when will the Liberals intervene where we need them - at home?
In part two I look closer at our culture of crime - locally, nationally and internationally - noting how the greater the crime, the less likely any punishment.
If you can’t (or won’t) subscribe, you can buy me a coffee.
"GIZ A FIVER FOR A CUP O TEA"
- Frank “I’m not like the other grifters” Wright.
The crime wave seems worse in the US cities because of the intervention of the DAs with the sub-$950 value thing. But it is slipping here too. And this is nothing new. Many people only phone the police for thefts to get a case number to make an insurance claim. We don't even expect them to bother about "petty" crimes.
That is what decline looks like.
This is all so true.