How England Sees Itself

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
it would only take a slight bit of effort from a lot of people to really put pressure on this government, is the sad thing, and yet loads of people don't do anything.

If everyone who'd ever complained about anything the Tories are attacking (which is basically every aspect of fairness and equality of opportunity in Britain) just did a little bit, then I think the government could eventually be brought down/at least forced to reverse some of its more horrifying policies. If there could be a million people out on the streets of London alone on November 30th, as there were (obv figures vary) for the Iraq protest, then....who knows?
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Problem is that the impression I get from looking at various comments boards is that there are as many people complaining about the complainers as there are people complaining in the first place. With a lot of these people I don't even get the impression that they support the status quo so much as they like being snide about others who are different from them but it amounts to the same thing.
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
true. but the irony of course is that many of those people have just as much to lose (financially and otherwise), but are too ignorant and in thrall to authority to realise it. They'd rather be snide against others than act in their own best interests, and that is deeply self-hating and sad.

in fact, those people annoy me more than cameron does. one thing you can't allege is that he is acting against his own interests.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
I was actually gonna end that last post with something about turkeys voting for Christmas but I didn't bother.
This has been more apparent in American over the last few years with blue collar voters being more likely to vote for an apparent blue collar candidate (Bush) over one from the perceived liberal elite even though his policies are directly against their best interests. I guess part of me has to admire the principled resistance that even the very poor seemingly have to raising taxes for the super rich - it's certainly far from opportunism.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
It's nuts, isn't it? Obviously the very wealthy in both the US and UK will vote for the (more) right-wing party, it's straightforward self-interest. People who earn very little or live on benefits are going to vote the opposite way, again out of self-interest. But what's bizarre is the huge number of people in the middle who've been hoodwinked into thinking the Reps/Tories are acting in their best interests, when there's abundant evidence to the contrary. The way GWB was marketed to the electorate as a "regular guy" as opposed to a hereditary multi-millionaire must rank as one of the great PR coups of all time - at least we were spared the spectacle of Cameron putting on a mockney accent and strutting around in a flat cap...

And even if a right-wing party introduces some tax credit or other that applies to your income bracket and makes you marginally better off by a few quid each month, is that really worth it if their other policies lead to, say, a big rise in unemployment in your neighbourhood and consequently a rise in crime and antisocial behaviour? The way inflation's going, any small increase in your disposable income from a minor tax break is going to be neutralised in a couple of years anyway.
 
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baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
And that's before we even get into the reasoning that empathy for others (rather than pure self-interest) is one of the finer qualities of the human race, and also arguably a very natural one that has been suppressed, rather than it being a 'difficult' quality.
 

craner

Beast of Burden
But conservatives don't argue that, they simply locate its source elsewhere, i.e. the family and community, rather than state and masses.
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
i guess this is true, but their logic is fantastically flawed, as (i) caring for/understanding one's own family is not stretching empathy very far, and may arguably be entirely separate from empathy (dont' know what science has to say about this, though? May look it up); and (ii) they're intent on destroying in community (which at least Thatcher was honest about; this new generation have jettisoned even that honesty).
 

craner

Beast of Burden
But Thatcherism in its rampant form (i.e. "they're intent on destroying [...] community") is not really conservative and only one (insurgent) tendency in the Tories. The Q is, how strong and influential is the Thatcherite tendency in the Tory party, and therefore theCoalition balance of power? What you characterise is actually an English Tea Party tendency on the Tory back benches, which does exist and is quite self-confident and vocal.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
And that's before we even get into the reasoning that empathy for others (rather than pure self-interest) is one of the finer qualities of the human race, and also arguably a very natural one that has been suppressed, rather than it being a 'difficult' quality.

Of course. But in the spirit of Adam Curtis, even if we assume voters are all soulless Nashian automata with no motive for doing anything except their own self-interest, it's obvious to anyone who actually thinks about the impact of government policies more than a few months down the line that a policy that's good for some group that doesn't include you might indirectly benefit you too.

For instance, if you're a middle-aged Dail Mail-reading dick you might not be too bothered, in the first instance, about the scrapping of the EMA; I mean, there's a recession on don't you know and we're all in this together, in my day we didn't expect to get paid to go to school, blah blah blah. But would you rather the 16-20 year-olds in your area actually had something they had to get up for and that kept them busy during the day, and that might (MIGHT) help them get a job eventually, or would you rather they were hanging around the streets at all hours, bored out of their minds and hacked off at their paltry prospects? Even assuming you don't personally give a shit about their prospects, it's clearly in YOUR interest as well as theirs for them to be in some sort of education or training.
 
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IdleRich

IdleRich
"And that's before we even get into the reasoning that empathy for others (rather than pure self-interest) is one of the finer qualities of the human race, and also arguably a very natural one that has been suppressed, rather than it being a 'difficult' quality."
But I was talking about poorer people who constantly vote (indirectly) for tax cuts for the rich - I don't know what is going on there, it's definitely not self-interest. It's got to be either
a) Empathy for the super-rich
b) Lack of understanding of what they're voting for
c) That they don't care about economics as much as they care for family values, anti-abortion or something else
d) A mixture of the above.
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
sure, totally. i was just saying that looking at all the vulnerable people's lives the coalition policies have already wrecked (and we haven't even got to a winter with fuel subsidies slashed for pensioners yet), should inspire empathy and rage in anyone with t he capacity to feel. So whatever the relation of the policies to their own lives, people should also feel simple empathy for those more vulnerable than themselves. Where that quality becomes eroded en masse, is where people start to be dehumanised and the real shit begins.

regarding the a/b/c/d, i'd say there is also a healthy dose of (as someone said above, can't remember who) luxuriating in the snide dismissal of people who are bothering to stand up to the coalition in whatever way, to bolster their own (damaged) self-esteem. And that this need to criticise, and also to enjoy the supposed safety of belonging to some kind of majority attacking a vulnerable group , is stronger than any rational assessment of what is going on. Cos then you don't need to question anything, or think about painful realities, until it's too late.
 
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craner

Beast of Burden
I do think that some of you are prone to underestimating the fact that there are other reasons for voting conservative than economics, sadism and sadomasochism.
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
theoretically yes, but i think most of those reasons are bound up with fear/self-loathing of some kind or other. because, as we know from history, most people won't react whatever happens in their society, no matter how appalling the abuse that is going on. and i think that is not because they are wretched amoral people, but because they are eventually ruled by fear.

and the best way not to look at your own fear, or to acknowledge your moral failings, is to attack others and to project these failings onto them; hence the absurdly overly-moral tone of a lot of conservative attacks upon the vulnerable.

we live in societies where people are systematically taught to be afraid (of losing one's home, one's job, of saying what you really believe because of fear of being ostracised, of the physical threat of the state in explicitly political situations, and finally of confronting the often difficult feelings/fears/self-judgments that exist inside one's own head) and I think that his needs to be acknowledged in any analysis of why people act as they do (especially when such actions appear inhumane and/or self-defeating).
 

craner

Beast of Burden
Well of course fear has to be aknowledged in people's actions and judgements, but as an explanation of why people vote and think in a different way than you do, I suggest it falls short.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Not that it worked at the time, but:

new_labour_new_danger_1.gif
 

craner

Beast of Burden
That image was sensationally ahead-of-its-time when you consider the BLIAR placards that began to appear from 2003 onwards.
 
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