The red mist that never clears

First of all, yes, I enjoyed a super Christmas with 'SoD' and his 'bouncing Czech', thank you for asking, and, yes, I am now in strict training to ready myself for New Year's Eve which, more and more as I get older, takes on the characteristics of a marathon!  But now to more curious matters.

I have remarked before on the oddity of coincidence.  Just before Christmas I was involved in some knockabout stuff with the mouth-breathing 'Trot-lot' brigade who inhabit the comments box at David Osler's (interesting) site.  The subject was the putative idea of a State funeral for Lady Thatcher when she dies.  It reduced them all to paroxysms of fury.  I could understand it if we were arguing 25 years ago when the shot and shell of battle were still flying about but at this late date how could anyone look back and say that the Thatcher medicine was anything other than absolutely necessary for a desperately sick country and which, on the whole, was beneficial.  Before any Trot brave enough to enter these hallowed columns starts to froth at the mouth, I do not mean that everything was perfect - nothing ever is - however, it is obvious beyond any argument that for the mass of 'the people' (dread words!) prosperity increased and the country was fortified accordingly.

So why, I have been asking myself, do the 'Trot-lot' continue against all available evidence before their eyes to fester in a visceral hatred of 'that woman' which almost amounts to a phobia!  I realise that most of them were in their youth during those turbulent times and generally speaking the young always tend to rebelliousness but they are all middle-aged now and there can be no excuse for failing to acknowledge that is was "A Good Thing" for governments to stop making motor cars, running telephone services and producing iron and steel.  It was an even better thing to sell off council houses and make tenants home-owners.  And it was a truly great thing for a government to recognise and act upon the truth that money supply is the critical ingredient of inflation.  The fact that this tiny rump of political detritus clings so fiercely to their teen-age dreams is surely an indication of the essentially religious nature of their beliefs.  Nobody expects total rationality from the deeply religious who continue to carry their burden of beliefs despite all the contradictory evidence that swells the tide against which they are wading.

Then I came across a piece by Alex Massie at The Coffee House who had picked up (whilst wearing gloves, I hope) some droppings from Simon Winchester not, as one might suppose, from The Guardian but from The Times (which is behind a paywall so I will not link).  Winchester was writing on the subject of Kim Jong-il's long-overdue death and in the course of his essay he wrote this:

The State’s founder, Kim Il Sung, claimed that all he wanted for North Korea was to be socialist, and to be left alone. In that regard, the national philosophy of self-reliance known in North Korea as “Juche” is little different from India’s Gandhian version known as “swadeshi”. Just let us get on with it, they said, and without interference, please. 

India’s attempt to go it alone failed. So, it seems, has Burma’s. Perhaps inevitably, North Korea’s attempt appears to be tottering. But seeing how South Korea has turned out — its Koreanness utterly submerged in neon, hip-hop and every imaginable American influence, a romantic can allow himself a small measure of melancholy: North Korea, for all its faults, is undeniably still Korea, a place uniquely representative of an ancient and rather remarkable Asian culture. And that, in a world otherwise rendered so bland, is perhaps no bad thing.

Sometimes the crass stupidity of well-educated men leaves me open-mouthed with astonishment.  According to Winchester, then, South Korea which is prosperous and free (well, their members of Parliament are free to constantly indulge in fist fights with each other!) is to be despised because - SHLOCK-HORROR - their way of life has been Americanised.  But North Korea is to be provided with a pat on the back by the ineffably superior, British-born Simon Winchester, who chose to become an American citizen, because they have maintained their Korean culture.  I need hardly add that Mr. Winchester chooses to live in the USA!  The totalitarian brutalities of the Kim family's regimes in which millions perished needlessly are simply flicked away by Mr. Winchester's limp wrist under a generalised expression: "North Korea, for all its faults".  Someone pass a sickbag, quick!

Is Winchester, I wonder, in any way related to the late and utterly despicable, Hewlet Johnson - I refuse to give him his clerical title, suffice to say that he was known from before the war as 'the Red Dean'.  I ask, because again in yet another coincidence just before Christmas, Charles Moore in The Telegraph was reviewing a new biography of this old Marxist 'criminal' who spent his entire life as an advocate for Joseph Stalin.  Now, I use the word 'criminal' deliberately and after some thought because, whilst it is possible for some people to be fooled some of the time, to continue in an advocacy of a regime that had been proven to have indulged in mass murder places you on their platform.  When, in addition, you take their money, as Hewlet Johnson did, that should place you in the dock with them.  I see no difference between the high-ranking Church of England prelate and, say, Lavrenti Beria, Stalin's not-so-secret Torturer-in-Chief.  Johnson did not die until 1966 by which time there was more than sufficient proof of the fact that Stalin out-murdered Hitler by a (rough) factor of ten.  Never once did Johnson admit the possibility that Stalin had been other than a 'saint'!

So there you have it.  Three examples of wilful and deliberate avoidance of the facts.  We have all done it from time to time, but eventually, truth will out, and somethat shame-facedly we own up to having been wrong.  But for some people, for some reason, this never happens.  "What a piece of work is a man".

Comments

[Hank]

David

"So why, I have been asking myself, do the 'Trot-lot' continue against all available evidence before their eyes to fester in a visceral hatred of 'that woman' which almost amounts to a phobia!"

I think the answer is a rhtorical question I have seen in expressed in many ways. If Lady Thather's policies worked why do we need Socialism?

[David Duff]

Well, Hank, I suppose it can be a useful hobby for teenagers but the trouble is they don't always give it up when they grow up!

[Able]

In my humble opinion they hate Lady Thatcher precisely because of the positive effects of her policies (just as Mr Reagan is still vilified by leftists in America), as such she showed that the policies of the right.. were right.

As to how they can ignore the plainly evident facts - are you serious? When have socialist/marxist/progressive (or whatever they are calling themselves today) ever given two hoots about facts? They live perpetually in a world of ideologically pure dreams (fueled by rainbows and unicorn farts), inconvenient evidence and facts are ignored as they rewrite history to fit their wishes - in other words they are all narcissistic personalities.

[David Duff]

Able, welcome to D&N and for your excellent phrase "rainbows and unicorn farts" you are hereby doubly welcomed!

[JK]

Speaking of coincidence for some odd reason I didn't begin my day as is usual - that being beginning my daily blog-reads here in these esteemed pages of D&N rather I meandered. (I suppose it was only because I've just returned from travelling.)

Anyway, should the "Trot-lot" disremember why the lady is deserving, how's about a "Blast From the Past."

http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/1992/04/26/don-t-undo-my-work.html

[David Duff]

JK, you will cease this practice of "meandering" immediately - and that's an order! You will always, but always, begin your day here at D&N without which you will lack the guidance necessary to a long and healthy life!

And my Best Wishes to you and yours for 2012.