Last week I wrote about a correspondence I’ve been having with someone who follows Common Weal and this website but who thinks we were to dismissive of Elon Musk in a recent newsletter we put out. He sent me an email and we have had a lengthy exchange since.
I do this quite a lot, both in my personal life and in a professional capacity. I’m a political strategist so it is no good knowing what political insiders think if I don’t know what people who vote (and who don’t but should) think. As matters are becoming more polarised, I am doing it more and more and I think it is becoming more and more important.
After I wrote about it my correspondent emailed and we chatted about it more. I didn’t guess everything right about him, or capture all his views and thoughts – though he was happy I’d got the jist of it. So I just asked him if he’d like to write something in his own words. I did this because I encourage everyone, all of us, to pause for a second when we hear things we don’t like to hear and consider for a second why someone says it or thinks it. We don’t have to agree, and sometimes people are just bad people.
But sometimes it is very helpful for people like me to hear what politics like mine sometimes sounds like to someone outside my bubble. What follows is my correspondent, writing about himself, why he is where he is, what took him there and what he thinks he’ll do next. I hope you find value in this.
The Dragon and its Slayers
Imagine you were born into a cult, and couldn’t get out of it. Our traveller was born into such a cult, of a religious nature: unrealistic beliefs, authoritarian in the imposition of such beliefs, heretics were socially and corporately cancelled, it spread its tentacles into local governance and community, and it was highly misogynistic. Not the best start, and though it was far from our traveller’s entire life experience, he stepped out of it at the tender age of seventeen to seek his fortune in the city.
A brief dalliance with government administration (our traveller was ‘too cavalier’ for such a role) was followed by a stint in fairly menial jobs, often more than one at a time, and ‘living for the weekend’. The stint lasted for some ten years, a kind of idyllic ‘gap decade’ where his politics remained liberal/lefty: ‘make love, not war’, ‘love always wins’, and ‘pass that doobie up, man’.
A minor tragedy that affected our traveller’s life as he approached thirty led to a change of mindset. ‘Time to get going’. Four years to gain a degree, a handful of post graduate qualifications, and a protestant work ethic (how ironic) led to advancement, promotions, and a comfortable salary in mid-life. Not a spectacular salary, but modest enough to avoid the worst of scrutiny high flyers tend to attract. He had travelled through the valley of life, and found himself surprisingly likely to reach retirement age, a concept not considered seriously in the past, and he hoped for uninteresting times.
Our traveller had a busy emotional time in the late noughties; after the disappointment of September 2014, the old master had handed the Scottish crown to a bright young thing that promised the earth, passionately, and often. Our traveller felt the pang of two disappointments within years: the queen had abandoned the one task she was coronated for, and was engulfed with enthusiasm for a ‘new religion’, that of gender ideology. In 2018, our traveller had a dreadful Damascene moment when he considered the new ideology. Unrealistic beliefs, authoritarian in the imposition of such beliefs, heretics are socially and corporately cancelled, it has spread its tentacles into international governance and community, and it is highly, spectacularly misogynistic. Oh-oh. It if it looks like a cult, walks like a cult, and waddles like a cult: it’s a cult.
A single vote on its own seems like a pathetic weapon, but in the thousands and millions, they have an effect
The irony of the situation was not lost on our traveller. Born into a cult in early life, and observing a highly intrusive one develop insiduously in the autumn of his years. Despair could have set in, but he ploughed on, and voted with his feet, so to speak. The closest he got to despair was driving in the highlands of Scotland on a bleak and cloudy day. He considered the atmosphere, and his surroundings. There was malaise in the air; a queasy, malignant force that his fellow traveller had experienced when approaching the House of Usher before its fall. It was more than the gloomy weather. He couldn’t put his finger on the source of it exactly, and he certainly didn’t know what to do about it. He felt eerily alone.
The traveller’s politics have not changed over the years. He still regards himself as vaguely liberal/left, and is aware of the tremendous injustices of the ever growing global wealth imbalance. A single vote on its own seems like a pathetic weapon, but in the thousands and millions, they have an effect. That is something for the traveller to cling to, that things may change.
An already walnut-hard cynicism had developed into diamond grade in the noughties. The main party leader faces had, as in Animal Farm but in reverse, turned into shiny clean pig faces, and difficult to distinguish them from one another. There was one piggy face who was different from the others, but had declared open self interest for himself and his kind only, but who had also vowed to slay the cult dragon. A new boy on the block, whose human face had quickly changed, but into a full grown boar, had promised to ‘shake things up’, and also to slay that cult dragon. But my, what big teeth he has.
Meanwhile, two oligarchical stars in the West had caught the traveller’s attention. One, an unelected master of the universe, had promised to slay the cult dragon, and was setting about getting it done. He had identified one of the sources of the cult, and one big beast is about to attack another. The traveller had noted accusations of fascist tendencies, self interest, conflict of interest, and general madness. But he has vowed to slay the dragon, and it’s tempting for our traveller to cheer him on, even if only quietly. Secretly. He can’t be that bad, can he?
And where is our traveller now? He looks ahead to 2026, when he has a choice about that little pencilled cross mark on paper again. His choices:
1. Vote for a shiny faced pig.
2. Vote for the scruffy selfish old pig, who has vowed to slay the dragon.
3. Vote for the wild boar, who looks a tad dangerous, but has vowed to slay the dragon.
4. Stand for parliament.
5. Ignore the whole thing.
6. Spoil the paper (dirty shiny faced pigs!).
7. Self immolate outside the polling station.
Which path will the traveller take? No-one really knows at this point, but it has been hinted that option one is the least likely.