Election Time

First broadcast on Ex-Pat Radio, Krakow, October 2007

So, that’s another election over! Funny how quick they seem to come around, isn’t it! They certainly do in Poland! Fortunately, this one wasn’t a cliffhanger; Civic Platform winning by a clear ten per cent. No Florida-style shambles last Sunday! You remember Unimpresident Bush’s’s first victory in Florida 2000? The hanging chads, the recounts, the legal shennanigans? The whole fiasco laid the system bare and showed it for what it is: the machinery of elections and governments – illogical, unfair - strutting naked before us like the emperor with no clothes. But this time, many of us saw King George’s nakedness from the off and have been crying out for justice ever since. And all because of a few hanging chads: absolute power hanging by a thread. And when power means the power to save or destroy the global environment or murder possibly millions of innocent people in illegal wars, we may safely call that power ‘absolute’. Am I just another Brit knocking America? No, I am knocking the current US administration. Because from day one this Republican government was built upon lie and denial. And there is only one thing that can be said for it. It does not bow to popular opinion. It remains true to itself. It continues to run on lies and denial.

Now, watch my lips. Even ol’ Bill Clinton knew that ‘It’s the economy, stupid!’. ‘Pity George Doubleyer wasn’t listening (perhaps he was playing golf at the time, or busy ruining another of his daddy’s oil businesses). Whatever. Let’s start with the American economy. It’s not a pretty sight. Zero Bush fiddles on Capitol Hill while the economy burns, destroying hundreds of thousands of sub-prime families in a matter of weeks. Sure, the Federal Reserve Bank quickly bailed out the poor lenders, but who was there to rescue the people? Once given a poor credit status on some dismal database, their only sin was to aspire to own their own home, one of the many ‘American dreams’. In their insatiable desire to bleed the people for every cent possible, the moneymen offered vulnerable people the chance to improve their lot in life by buying their own homes. But when the party ended and the markets demanded their pound of flesh, who suffered? The greedy, irresponsible lenders? No, the Fed looks after its own (give or take the odd engineered crash, of course). The American people lost. As usual, the little people, who, unlike Mary Astor and all the other pigs with snouts in the trough, are decent and stupid enough to pay taxes. At least most of the sub-prime real estate had already been destroyed in New Orleans, by Hurricane Katrina and damp squib Bush. Thank God for global warming, hey, guys!

Global warming, global warming, global warming … . Have you ever noticed when you say the same word over and over again, how it begins to lose its meaning? No? You should try it! It’s very easy. Even ol’ Doubleyer can do it. For example, close your eyes and repeat this simple phrase: evil, lying bastards, evil, lying bastards, evil, lying bastards. Actually, it’s amazing just how many politicians can do this little trick. Take Blair or Brown, for example. They’re almost as good as Bush (or Rupert Murdoch, for that matter).

Ah, Rupert Murdoch! What a fine purveyor of truth and incisive political analysis! (Just to recap, Rupert Murdoch, the Australian media magnate, is one of the most powerful men on the planet. He owns hundreds of newspapers, tv channels, satellite channels, and God knows what else besides. As such, he is a part of your life. He is inside your head, shaping your so-called thoughts, whether you like it or not. And why is he inside your head? Because, as the smug car stickers say: ‘free trade works’!).

Remember when Hamlet was in the library and Claudius asks him what he was reading? ‘Words, words, words’, said our hero, dismissively. That’s how I feel on the rare occasions I listen to politicians or dare myself to read something from the Politburo - sorry, daily press. Oh, sure, there is original, honest thought out there. But you have to search for it. You won’t find it in the tabloids, in the quality papers and certainly not on the 6 o-clock news, with its preference for drama and nervous excitement over truth and objectivity. You have to disentangle yourself from the matrix of spin, deception and downright lying that is The Sun, The Telegraph and Fox News. Thank God for the internet! For all its faults and inaccuracies, it is (for now) a largely unpoliced, independent avenue of free speech and honest inquiry.

However, like Hamlet’s mind, I seem to have strayed a little. I was busy attacking the current US administration over its environmental record. But that’s like attacking former Beach Boy Brian Wilson over his ‘Smile’ record. A great work, delivered over thirty years late by a half-crazed genius. America has a crucial role to play in environmental management, but not quite yet, it seems. Instead, Bush and the oil lobby continue to play in the sandpits of Saudi and Iraq while the rest of the world – China and India included – face up to reality and the real world order. ‘It’s the environment, stupid!’

Out of curiosity, I once read the opening sentence of a book on economics. It read: ‘Any economy that is not growing year on year is an efficient and failing economy’. I thought about this and saw that it was a lie. When the global economy is based on the extraction and inefficient use of raw materials (e.g. oil, coal, gas, wood), without adequate reinvestment or replacement (e.g. by reforestation), it is mathematically impossible for economies (measured in standard terms) to continue to grow, year on year, ad infinitum. Something’s gotta give and, of course, it’s the environment, stupid.

This is the where it gets a bit hazy. If we as individual citizens can work it out, then why can’t the politicans? Why can’t the so-called leaders of the industrialised world see the train crash approaching? The truth is that they see it very well, but that they don’t care. Influenced by big business, oil and the military-industrial complex they, like the sub-prime mortgage lenders, are desperately bleeding the planet and its peoples for everything they can before the game is finally up and we finally turn on the emperor, for shame. Clear-thinking, rational people across the world are now, for example, wondering just how the hell Bush and his dwindling bunch of neo-con cronies can even consider invading Iran, given the shoot-em-up carnage that is Iraq, and the body bags shipped back to yet more families whose trust has been betrayed and whose hearts will never heal. And all because the oil firms, the Halliburtons and all those other selfish, short-term idiots know that the game is nearly up. A few more years is all they have left to rape the planet and its peoples. They’re starting their cars and slamming dollar bills into briefcases as we speak.

My point is this: take control of your own thoughts. If you find truth and decency in politics and big business, rejoice in it, encourage it. But do not expect it: do not expect those with great power to live, much less improve, your life for you. They are looking after themselves. They do not care for you or your problems.

And that is actually a wonderful, wonderful thing. Now, at the beginning of the 21st century, we are being given an opportunity to stand on our own feet, to think for ourselves, to make our own decisions and to develop as individuals as never before. Most of what counts for thought is actually the passive acceptance of someone else’s thoughts and will. We need to make more of our own thoughts. And it’s really such a simple process. When a thought appears in your head, ask yourself sometimes whether you actually believe in the thought: is it your own, original thought or, for that moment, is your mind merely a stopping-off point, a relay station, for someone else’s ideas. In the battle for the control of your own mind, I wish you good luck, because I know that you will win that battle. Starting from now.