Old but evolving

 

NEVER STOP CHANGING

Do you have a particular word that you know perfectly well how to pronounce properly, but also know that there's a mispronunciation lurking deep within your brain which is always likely to leap out at you unexpectedly?  I have one that has it's own special annoyance.  It was a word that was common when I was growing up, usually as an adjective for flooring or kitchen tablecloths.  Then it seemed to fall into disuse and I could feel comfortable knowing I probably wouldn't have to use it.  Until, like a bad smell you thought you'd got away from, it made it's reappearance.  Now with a brand new meaning that seems to be everywhere.  There was nothing wrong with record, or album, or LP, or 33, but they have all been superseded by my linguistic nemesis.  Yes, the word is vinyl.  Which I do know, really I do, should rhyme with spinal.  So why does a part of me want it sound like compile?  I have no idea where that came from.  I do know it will always be there within me, and care will always have to be taken...

A few months ago I posted on here about 2022 being the year when I started to feel properly old, due to some physical health issues that have sprung up, and the consequent treatment.  Sooner or later, it's something we all have to face up to, in some form or other, as the years pass.  And I have to admit that my mental abilities maybe aren't all they once were either.  A bit slower to process information sometimes, a bit more forgetful.  My driving certainly isn't what it used to be.   All these things I accept as part of growing older.

But there's one aspect of ageing that isn't as inevitable as the above, and which I will fight off succumbing to with every facet of my over-the-hill mind and body.  I don't know what the name for it is, but it's that mysterious and insidious visitor that leads older people into bigotry, brexshit and Daily Fail reading.  The ones who think that growing up with ice on the inside of their bedroom windows never did them any harm.  The ones who imagine there's some strange force that's not allowing them to say Merry Xmas.  (And who rant against people who use that 'X'...)  The ones who don't want people who "aren't like us" to have any rights.  Who think immigrants should be "sent back where they came from", that anyone reliant on social security for their food and housing needs "to get a proper job" and that the BBC has become "woke" (even if they don't know what it means).  

No thanks.  That's not a road I ever intend to head off on, for the only end points are irrational fear and unwarranted hatred.  I'll stick to becoming more left wing as I age, more convinced that Scotland needs to go it alone, and more in favour of extending human rights to marginalised groups like trans people.

But I can see how so many of my contemporaries end up heading towards the dark side.  

The Fascists are still out there

YOU KNOW YOU SHOULDN'T....

But sometimes it's just so hard to resist.  You know it's all too easy, you should try for something more ambitious.  But you can't stop yourself giving in to temptation to have a bit of fun.

Yes, it's so easy to find yourself taking the piss out of far right loons who post gibberish on a public forum.  Especially when they are repeating, and actually give every indication of believing, something that's been discredited so many times you wonder how they can type when they must be in the foetal position out of sheer embarrassment at behaving in so crass a manner.  (Presumably Farage has a broom handle stuck up his back to prevent his spine spontaneously rolling into a ball whenever he says that 75% of our laws are made by the EU.... total bollocks of course.)

In this case it was that old favourite of the desperate fascist, that Nazism was a form of socialism.  The clinching argument always being the word 'socialist' is part of the party's name.  I can only assume they also believe that the DDR was a fully functioning democracy and the TPA actually represents taxpayers.

But this nutter was taking it to another level.  His justification was just that bit more towards the fruitcake end of the spectrum.  He believes it because.... Hitler said so.  Which is perfectly reasonable when you recall the one thing we all remember about wee Adolf was his inability to tell a lie.  Or was it something to do with cherry trees?  I'm always getting those two mixed up.

When you're still pumping out this level of nonsense, even when a right wing historian writing in a right wing paper is able to point out why you're talking out of your anus, you really are outing yourself as a genuine fruitloop.  He compounds it with his ever-so-modest nomenclature, a Twitter persona of 'Richard Lionheart'.  No, nothing narcissistic or egocentric about this chappie, he has his feet firmly on terra firma.

So I gave in a took the piss.  Just a little.  And settled back.  Wondering if he would be daft enough.  Maybe he'd just laugh.  There must be somebody on the far right who has a sense of humour, I mean look at the illustrious line of famous right wing comedians we see so often.....

No, me neither.

Sure enough, the bait was taken.  Clueless as to what was going on, he followed the usual pattern.  Gets irate, becomes abusive, then puerile.  Followed by smug at having 'vanquished' another' lefty', and seeking the approval of his sycophantic fascist mates.  A kind of virtual mutual masturbatory session.

But out of this amusing little encounter I did have a more serious thought.  The main stream media will tell you differently, because it's not in their interests to say so, but possibly the greatest threat we may be facing right now, even more so than climate change, is the gradual rise of fascism in what we refer to as The West.  In some cases it's overt, with the likes of Golden Dawn in Greece.  In most it's far less obvious, coming in under some cloak of respectability.  I used to joke that ukip was just the BNP for people who didn't want the neighbours to think they were racist, but they have proved to be a more insidious influence on UK politics, dragging it towards the extreme right.  It's a relief to see support for them steadily falling, but that tendency towards fascism remains worrying.

There's no clearer illustration of this than what's happening in the campaigning to be the next US president.  Two men are commanding most of the headlines, both viewed as extreme by US standards.  On the one hand there's Donald Trump, becoming increasingly more racist, increasingly more outlandish, and increasingly closer to what we understand as fascist.  Although most of us over here would view him as a caricature, he's being taken seriously by an awful lot of people over there.  They seem to have forgotten what the fight in World War Two was really about.

For a country with their dark history of McCarthyism it feels like a huge leap forward that so many people are beginning to look at Bernie Sanders as a possible president.  An avowed socialist, he stands for many progressive values that have had little opportunity for expression at the top level of US political life.  Like we do in Europe, he believes that healthcare is a right of all, not a privilege of the wealthy.  Radical stuff by American standards, when they are so used to doing without many of the rights we enjoy here (or do for now, but that's a whole other story....).

And therein is the dichotomy that gives the lie that fascism has any link to socialism.  Trump's popularity is based on raising fear and hatred, of defining people as 'other' so that there is an enemy to focus on, obscuring the empty rhetoric behind it.  Whilst Sanders offers hope.  Hope of change, hope of a fairer society and a chance to start  reducing the exploitation of the poor by the wealthy.

Hope of hatred?  I'm with Bernie.


PS  Now, do I send a link to this post to 'Mr Lionheart'?  I know I shouldn't, but....

David Bowie's dead

ON THE BOWIE BANDWAGON

I noticed that David Bowie died today.  I couldn't help but notice really, since all the news programmes and all my social media timelines have been about little else.  Big event, eh?

Well it seems to be for a lot of people.  Cue much wailing and fearfulness and a great gnashing of teeth.  Or something like that.  His death is a sad event, but all deaths are.

OK, I sort of get it.  Most people have songs or albums from their past they associate with particular moments in their life.  Sometimes they feel the artist was talking just to them and helped them through some difficult patch, usually in their teenage years.  And Bowie did turn out some good songs, and was amazingly long lived as a pop star.

But that, when all is said and done, is all that he was.  A pop singer.  An influential one perhaps, but he's still just someone you either liked or didn't, or just found to be a background noise to your life.  And if it's the former you shouldn't really expect everyone else to feel the same way you do.  Yet I suspect many will find my words objectionable.  (I saw one tweet that linked to a video of his last gig and said that everyone - yes, everyone - had to watch it.  Or maybe I could make my own mind up?)

I looked at one article that claimed to list his seven most important songs.  Right enough, I'd heard of six of them, and really liked a couple.  The seventh meant nothing to me.  It's noticeable that the latest of the six was recorded in 1983, round about the time I realised I no longer felt any need to pretend I was taking an interest in pop music.  Much as I think Space Oddity is a great song, some of Bowie's stuff I found a bit annoying.  He had, to my ears, that slightly whiny quality you get with some London accents, and that could be off-putting.  So I was never going to be a fan, was never tempted to buy his music, even though I was fully aware of who he was.  Many people weren't, and what's wrong with that?  Yet there are articles out there on the internet wondering how anyone could not have heard of him.  It's not that hard to figure out....

A few days ago there was a similar, albeit far lesser, outpouring about the death of another singer called Lemmy.  (Sorry if you're a fan of his, but I'd genuinely never heard of him.)  If someone dies who was an important part of your formative memories then such events are upsetting.  Shortly before that I heard of the death of a singer who was important to me when I was developing my own musical tastes - Andy M Stewart.  I'm well aware that hardly anyone who reads this will have a clue who the guy was, but he mattered to me.  Bowie didn't.

We're all different, we all have our own tastes, memories and heroes.  Let's not expect everyone to share them.

Ironically, from what I do know of Bowie, I think that's a message he'd have approved of.