37. Egomaniac
... being a few further thoughts on Tupac Shakur, and a consideration of politics in a post-truth society.
We are in the middle of an election campaign in the UK and the leaders of the two main parties are openly calling each other liars. Maybe I wasn’t paying enough attention in the past, but I can’t recall the word ‘liar” being employed so feely. Politicians used to dismiss each other as incompetent, as presiding over a shambles, as not being up to the job, as being dangerous and as being ideologically unsound. I don’t recall the suggestion that an opponent was a downright liar being a thing at all.
Personally, I always believed that people in government never really lied, I understood that they might be manipulative, or emphasise the most positive sides of their arguments and downplay the negative, but not lie. Maybe I am naïve. But surely we didn’t have politicians like this before Donald Trump became the President of America, and Boris Johnson became the Prime Minister in the UK?
Maybe I’m wrong. I suppose that in America, Nixon lied to cover up the fact that he was involved in a plot to wire-tap the headquarters of his opposition. He was only saved from jail because his successor granted him a presidential pardon (and the prospect of a presidential pardon’s very much with us again today) . But then surely Nixon was an aberration, whose lies were to cover up his criminal activity rather than about policy.
I’m not sure that we had a downright liar in charge of the UK before Johnson. I always saw Margaret Thatcher as a brutal, unfeeling, despotic sort of a leader, but I imagined that she was ideologically unsound rather than someone who deliberately told untruths.1
Politicians make me angry, at least the ones that I really don’t agree with do. I have written a handful of political songs and poems, but I have never felt that they have been particularly good ones. I tend to fall into the trap of being too preachy, too obvious, or too flippant, I feel that I should stay away from that genre and stick with my usual stuff about sex, death and foul language, laced with childhood memories and stuff about my dad. I am on much safer ground there.
However, after looking at my poem about Tupac Shakur last week, I recalled a piece that I had written during lockdown, on the subject of Boris Johnson.
I had offered to run an online session for the read to write group, to help keep things running when we were all stuck at home. I originally thought that I might prepare something on Larkin or Betjeman or AE Houseman, but then I rebelled, and decided that there were too many poetry workshops in the world dealing with those (admittedly fine) poets, and perhaps I ought to shake things up a bit by doing one about Tupac. I still have my notes, appended with the lyrics of Changes, the piece which probably cemented him in my mind as a fine protest poet and a Byronic figure.
Changes is an angry piece of writing, centred on Tupac’s personal story. It draws on the experiences of people like him in America, who feel that the mainstream of society don’t care about them, mainly because they are black and come from deprived backgrounds.
And still I see no changes, can't a brother get a little peace? It's war on the streets and a war in the Middle East Instead of war on poverty They got a war on drugs so the police can bother me And I ain't never did a crime I ain't have to do But now I'm back with the facts giving it back to you
He suggests that these people are under-represented by government and that they are both manipulated and controlled. He suggests that people like him are set one against another and distracted from seeing the bigger picture. He comments on all of this in his angry swaggering style. He paints the bigger picture, but doesn’t necessarily offer any solutions.
At the Read to Write group, after a reading and some discussion of a poet and their poetry, it is traditional for members to have a go at creating something of their own. In order to prepare for this, we explored the relevance that Tupac’s work might have to a to largely comfortably off group of white poets.
We had questions about how much our government really represents us and if our ideas really counted when big decisions are made. We thought about how people in this country are often manipulated into voting in a particular way. Would it be possible to express our feelings about this in Tupac style perhaps, like him, using internal rhymes and trying to look at the bigger picture?
At the time, I was angry about the Brexit referendum and its aftermath, throughout which Boris Johnson had appealed to people’s emotions, suggesting that Britain could return to a glorious golden age in which everyone was happy and free. It could be argued that he was preying not only on our emotions, but also on a particular trait of the English, a distrust of intelligence and reason. As another prominent Brexiteer said in the run up to the referendum “I think the people of this country have had enough of experts2” This trait was noted as early as 1919 by an American academic, John Erskine
“The disposition to consider Intelligence a peril is an old Anglo Saxon inheritance. Our ancestors have celebrated this disposition in verse and prose. Splendid as our literature is, it has not voiced all the aspirations of humanity, nor could it be expected to voice an aspiration that has not characteristically belonged to the English race. The praise of intelligence is not one of its characteristic glories.”3
I was also uncomfortable with the way we were being led through the pandemic. Johnson was our pandemic Prime Minister, and had seemed very slow in appreciating the scale of the problem we faced, and slow to take the advice of scientists, again, using emotional appeal to “British pluck and resourcefulness” before a rational approach to the problem.
Long afterwards Johnson was removed from office because of his behaviour during the pandemic (the part where he threw illegal parties at 10 Downing Street) and his subsequent lies about it. A lot of questions remain about other behaviours, including preferential treatment given to friends and donors when lucrative contracts for medical equipment were being handed out at the height of the crisis. Most (but not all) people now accept that he was unfit for office, and should never have progressed so far in politics.
Even before he was elected it was reasonably well known that Johnson could be untruthful when it suited him to be so. He had been sacked from positions both inside and outside of politics for that very reason but, amazingly enough, this was seen by many as a part of his charm. He was one of us, a bit of a lad, a rascal who got things done and was just what the country needed.
Over in America, similar sorts of excuses were being made for Donald Trump. Yes he was a foul mouthed abuser of women, who often disregarded the difference between truth and falsehood but many saw this as refreshing. He was hailed by many as a regular guy who would cut through the nonsense and could get things done. He too has now been exposed in court as a liar, but it is still possible that he will succeed in getting a second period in charge of his country (and use that presidential pardon loophole to exonerate himself).
It is said that we now live in a post-truth society. Johnson and Trump are seen as perhaps the biggest examples of what is possible in a situation where truth does not matter so much as a larger than life character who can appeal to the emotions rather than the intellect. It is claimed that many of us have lost the ability to concentrate on detailed information, due to the instant gratification offered by social media. We are no longer interested in reasoned arguments but in quick soundbites, the truth of which is much less important than their memorability. We English are living up to our distrust of experts.
The Brexit campaign was fuelled by the idea that “we want our country back” that we would save vast amounts of money that would fund the NHS, and even that we would be able to put bendy cucumbers and bigger bunches of bananas in our shops once we were freed of the shackles of European red tape (both of these were nonsense ideas designed by Johnson to stir up anti European feelings, as was the claim that the Italians wanted to use European law decrease the minimum width of condoms on sale in the community.
On the other side of the Atlantic “Make America Great Again” still resonates as something that fires people up, although there is little indication of what it means. Anyone stating facts in contradiction to Tump was accused of peddling “Fake News” and, like Johnson, the force of his larger than life personality was seen as sufficient to compensate for any real substance to his policies and ideas.
This poem is around four years old - Back then perhaps we were all a bit more naïve than we are today. But many of us were concerned about Johnson and didn’t like the cult that seemed to grow around him, and the presentational style that seemed to have made his path to success easier. We didn’t know then what we know now, back in those early lockdown days. Yet even now the grim spectre of Nigel Farage is still here to prey upon those of us who prefer manipulative appeals to the emotions to truth and reasoned argument.
Anyway, here is a poem about Boris Johnson, written by a white middle class English poet. (It was Tupac who made me do it).
Egomaniac
You Egomaniac You made us want our country back Even though it had never been taken You snake in the grass, You godforsaken Privileged prince of prevarication Caring only for the cash you rake in Riding the gravy train for personal gain You told nothing but lies in every campaign Regarding us all as vacuous suckers Gullible mugs and ignorant fuckers To be milked like cows, To be fleeced like sheep, Then left to rot on the discard heap Chewed up and spat at By you and your fat cat Aristocrat friends You twat Laughing all the way to the bank While those you deceived stand grim at food banks Wondering why their wealth has decreased Well, you gave us our country back at least A country built on boasting and lying A country we can all be proud to die in.
Perhaps I am really naïve. If you believe that any of my views on the history of lying in politics are wrong, please feel free to engage with me in the comments or by email, educate me, change my mind as they say, so that I can be more precise in future versions of this post and ones like it.
Michael Gove - who thankfully decided not to stand at the next election.
“The Moral Obligation to be Intelligent” - John Erskine 1919. It is worth reading, as it is just a short essay which is available free in Google books, and he develops the theme of the suspicion of intelligent characters prevalent in English literature.
Excellent poem, Tupac would be proud
Its unfortunate that BJ probably wanted to remembered as a modern day Pericles and not as a pillock. Having been involved in local politics from my teenage years I have learnt that ,as in life, there are 2 kinds of people who go into politics, those who want to serve and those who wish to be served.These characteristics apply to individuals regardless of which party they represent ,believe me.
Even those with good intentions can go over to the dark side with promises of travel expenses, chairs of scrutiny, with renumeration etc, you get the picture.
I fortunately escaped with most of my mental health intact but politics isn't for the fainthearted, which is why I find the system outdated, immature and not fit for purpose.
I gave up hope when Brexit happened, expecting the outcome from the off.As regards the pandemic ,having nursed in hospital all the way through, to be fair noone knew ,at first what was going to happen and you had egos in government, egos with the health advisors and WHO, who have, I think been desperate for a pandemic to be able to exert their unelected muscle❤️
Incidently the only song I've ever written was one aimed at Nigel farage, ie 'He wants to exit with Brexit'. Its not very good though
I think the lying happens because noone in politics wants to admit they are wrong or because they are lying to cover up something else that they are too embarrassed to having to admit to doing, eg misuse of public monies etc
I don't know where to start and I guess no-one cares; but the subject of intelligence is perhaps the fulcrum on which a great deal of decision making is skewed. To be blunt, many 'sudden' experts comment on matters using what they know to pontificate about matters, which is insufficient to make a rational point. And this includes people from all walks of life, in all fields from religion to science. The mistakes made over cultural expectations, presumptions about race and class, and indeed having any freaking idea about a given matter are beyond credulity.
I could and maybe should stick an oar in the departure from the European Union issue (let's not use snappy nick-names for things, the tabloids coin enough terminological inexactitude to blow your cigar off your face). Anyone here old enough to remember Edward Heath? Got the ball rolling on pit and steelwork closures, sailed a yacht, dragged everyone into the common market or whatever snazzy euphamism they had for it then when everyone knew it meant cheaper steel and coal from abroad and sailed a yacht. That's good for economy innit? Depends on your preferred style of capitalist enterprise. I for one detest 'global' markets, because they energise sweat/child labour, poluution, underpaid workers all over the world, put inferior goods in where once we were proud of quality and make local traders either cowtow or go bust. Not that my command of economics or politics is too fine, but I detest liars and as Anje says, there's two types of politicians.
It dribbles down like a stream of filth and pox into local council behaviours. The wasted mornings faffing about with curled up sandwiches and taxis when we are meant to be debating the under-priveledged of this parish. At least I stuck one in their eye by getting funding from the then ALMO at Sheffield for a well-being (trendy phrase) community music venture that the arts council wouldn't touch (it's community) and the Community funders hove away as an arts programme. Lieing fuckers - there, I swore because their avoidance of responsibilty enrages me.
As to 'im poet, he echoes some of Bob Marley's sentiments in a way. Although Bob had some answers. But every generation throws a hero up the pop chart (Paul Simon) and previous to that too, the same old truths get chugged out, quite incapable of enlightening the less intelligent brigade - who make up most majorities. Hence a lot of incredibly stupid things/people get voted in, and minorities (who also have large thick populations) often revolt in unconstructive ways - and why, among other things, democracy is a joke.
By which I mean that voting doesn't work towards the common good, it just pleases the majorities - who follow flat-earth Farragians/Johnsons/Trumps regardless of logic or lack thereof. How is that democratic?
No-one can see that lateral thinking though. It's like speed cameras - they prove ad infinitum that cars and even drivers are safer at greater speeds than they fine people for. OK, I get the argument about child impact but A: not all accidents are caused by speed B: Nor do they all involve pedestrians. We digress, just forget the fuming for a moment and think about lateral stances. Take Hillsborough bus Gate - extended hours (different to the website) and half the time there's no 'other road user' preventing the progress of any public service vehicle. Go look at fine revenues and tell me your arse isn't sore (I've taken on an O'brien-esque tone, eh?).
This is only meant to be a comment though and I've surpassed credulity and politeness really - in trying to retrieve some. Let's cut it down to this; neither The Common Market nor Leaving The EU were bad ideas - they were just executed by liars. There, I could have just said that but would it have weighed in so sensibly?