Skulduggery!

El Presidente spoke from deep in his orange wilderness.  The greatest person who has ever walked the Earth, the best invention since sliced bred, the enema of the people, His Excellency the King of Nastiness, Naivety and Numbskullery has let it be known that FIFA kows tow. The erstwhile recipient of the FIFA Peace Prize at a stroke put Belgium on the map. A country with a population of nearly 12 million people suddenly found that the rest of the world had a vast Belgian diaspora. Billions reached out for souvenir football jerseys and flags. And yet, and yet, I see that a scatter-gun policy with many inaccuracies can hit a reasonable target. Europeans finally paying a proper amount for their own defence for example. But, Dear Reader, such achievements are few and far between and almost not worth wading through the mud of despond to reach. They do not mitigate the cutting back of USAID,  the ICE raids and the slandering of friends and allies.

Dear Friends, I don’t know about you guys but I have lost track of the number of enablers who by their passivity, their fence sitting,  their cowardice, their selfishness are allowing institutional skullduggery.  People in power need to be people in power, not sycophants and boot lickers.

There is something cringingly embarrassing in watching intelligent human beings being duped and led by nonsense and lies, Dear Reader.  Surely by now the people of the world have learnt enough to recognize dangerous drivel when they see it. All we need is a soupcon of sense, a wilderness voice to saunter into our consciousness and inspire us to stop this garbage. How can we be chained to an idiot for four years, and then having four years of relative sanity, decide that the world needs four more amateur stumblings? “Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.” Surely  we have had enough time to realise that stupidity does not get better with age.  We never thought before that debacles would be achievements, that corruption would be the new next-best-thing, that self- aggrandizement would be recognized as a quality. We have become dazzled by celebrity and should have realized, after the first time that the emperor has no clothes.

Meanwhile in the real world. You know, Dear Reader, that place on Earth where people work to earn money, to pay taxes, to afford rent, to afford food, the real world, Dear Friends, discovers that what once they could afford they can no longer.  And while Chinese economic imperialists are cruelly and tragically exploiting the children of the PRC (Read “Cobalt Red’ by Siddarth Kara) in order to get our telephones to work, their football team is doing their best in the World Cup.  And while we no longer hear about the people of Gaza because the attention span of the world has flitted elsewhere. And yet we see Putin preening whilst we procrastinate with mealy mouthed platitudes and Ukraine continues its freedom fight, tragically outnumbering the many days of death and destruction In World War I. Old Arab saying.

“The dog barks. The caravan passes?’

 And sometimes we hear that people are starving in the Sudan and we want to help. And talking heads send out an appeal for money . And we listen and our heart is sorry and our head reaches for our cheque book. And then there comes scenes of the earthquake in Venezuela and a reporter on the ground standing near collapsed buildings and traumatized people and not a siren nor a high viz in sight, just a silence and a waiting and nothing coming. And then we hear that Iran is being bombed again and Iran is retaliating again.  And that, Dear Friends, is trouble in the playground because the children both claim to have won the war and a price is being paid and it is not by them.

And then there is the World Cup, Wimbledon tennis and smiles on faces and the tartan army and the Viking rowing, French artistry, the winning days of the underdog, the good sportsmanship of the loser, the joy of the winner. And through the cones on statues in Boston, big heartedness of generous Americans putting forth the generosity and kindness which remains their real DNA, the polite hosting of Canadians the country where ‘sorry’ is a greeting, the welcome of Mexico  for sombrero-clad gringos. Through all this one again realizes that the hoi polloi, the great unwashed, you and I for whom gold is garish, ball rooms are bowling alleys, limos are legs, we who take the bus and shower at night. We who hold the door open for others, we who buy a sandwich for a paraffin lamp who is down on his luck. We who lurk in the shadows of life, stand aside from show and glitter and ego, we who go about our business with quiet grit and steady plodding. We who cannot influence, cannot change bad things we at least can speak freely our thoughts, can discuss and debate and can act locally. We cannot do as Kipling suggests:

“Call my chiefs to council.

In the din of a troubled year,

For the sake of a sign ye would not see,

And a word ye would not hear.”

But there is no excuse for us, Dear Reader, not seeing and not hearing. The truth stares us in the face. It is not fake news if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck.  Then, Dear Friends, it is a f !@# img duck.

“For life to be large and full, it must contain the care of the past and of the future in every passing moment of the present.”  Joseph Conrad ‘Nostromo’.

But, Dear Friends, as usual I talk a line and do nothing.  Leo Tolstoy summed up how I feel about myself on occasions:-

‘I sit on a man’s back, choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am sorry for him and wish to lighten his load by all means possible……..except by getting off his back.’

And yet every day I see acts of kindness, generosity, and good humour. I see an ex-president of the United States who forgot to salute a marine when he ascended the steps of his helicopter and descended to offer an apology. I see him holding an umbrella to prevent an aide from getting wet. I see him personally greeting veterans who are on a visit to Washington.  I see class and good manners and somehow I don’t care then whether or not his policies were right or wrong. I am glad of his presence, uplifted by his being and reassured by his humanity. And a smile creeps over the Davidson mug and all is suddenly a hope.

Thanks for reading.