Kingdom of Cults, Part 2

Are our "leaders" self-righteous and cynical?

In Part 1 last week I attempted to unravel the mystery of why people in power seem so keen to kill us all. Reading it back now, I think you’ll agree it was a juvenile analysis. So this week I'll apply myself properly. I will employ all of my analytical powers. I'll draw on my postgraduate education. I'll dig deep into more than 20 years’ experience of writing in the political arena. 

They’re self righteous bastards

Now we’re headed for safer ground. This one appears to be self-evident. One of the many disgusting things that exude from every pore of the right wing is the unshakeable belief that they are right and you are wrong. 

Who can blame them? Their kin have been running some of the greatest empires on Earth since time out of mind. They always seem to be in the majority, at least across most of Europe, the US and Australasia. They are, for the most part, the inheritors of the vast colonial project of the passed several hundred years. They retain most of the vast wealth that flowed from it.  

Here again, I am using “right wing” not in the conventional sense. It's more a universal description of a certain type of power monger. This is because conventional politics in the industrialised world is so slanted to the right that it's going round in circles. 

The success of capitalist ideology in our society sets up a vicious cycle of attraction. It operates like a moral sinkhole at the centre of everything we do. And this is built in. It’s not a fault of the system, it’s a deliberate design feature. 

Even people we know and love, who would otherwise grow up as quite decent human beings, shift right to get ahead as they age. It’s unsurprising, when they can see this working so consistently around them. 

The worst thing is when this doesn’t work out so well for them. They stay poor. But they cling to an ideology specifically designed to make them hate themselves and everyone like them.

This explains the state of the UK at the moment. The entire nation is exhibiting all the masochistic self harm of a cheese grating dildo. It explains all the men in white vans lapping up the ideology of the psychotic billionaires who oppress them. It’s like the British Parliament is some kind of grotesque dominatrix and the entire population has forgotten the safe word. They seem to think it might be “Brexit”, “immigration” or “woke”.

The satisfaction of self-righteousness adds impetus to this cycle of vicious self-fulfilment. Look at us, they say. We’re successful. This proves we don’t need to help anyone else. We just have to convince them to think as narrow-mindedly as we do. Then they too will be successful. 

This logic allows them to dismiss anyone who isn’t lucky, successful and rich. They are unbelievers who deserve all they get. Or rather, who don’t deserve, so don’t get. This includes the homeless, immigrants, the poor or any of a number of minority groups who either can’t buy in, or choose not to.

This also helps us to explain the human tumour that is Boris Johnson. He is, very publicly and obviously, a pathological liar. He has been all his life. He built his entire career around this. He betrays his stated values nearly as often as he betrays the women he claims to love. But he sounds and looks like the sort of people who've been running Britain since the French accent wore off. So he became the Mayor of London and then, God forbid, Prime Minister. Right now he’s reportedly being paid £1 million to write a column for the Daily Mail.

I do this for free. People with my accent traditionally sell rat meat in pies on the Thames tideway. So nobody believes a word we say.

Johnson’s qualifications to run a major economy are the following. He talks like an overflowing drain full of port piss. He looks like he can play rugby about as well as a sticky toffee pudding, but would be willing to try. 

This is an international phenomenon. Donald Trump is as suited to run the world’s most heavily armed superpower as a brain damaged hyena is to operate a free range kitten sanctuary. He too will say absolutely anything and everything to get money and power. Even, or perhaps especially, when it makes about as much sense as his hair, which looks like a toupee made from pork scratchings. 

I would like to say that despite all this he was, and might be again, one of the most powerful and successful people on Earth, by this society’s standards. The most terrifying thing, as he begins his hilariously misnomered “run” for 2024, is that he is successful because he is such an abomination. He is a monster in a monstrous society.  

How am I supposed to explain this to my children?

“Darling, don’t go being a lying arrogant selfish bully. You might end up being mega rich and ruling the world…”

We reward such deformed people royally. We do this not just at the very top, but in most of the elite areas of our world. 

Many of Trump’s supporters are all too aware of this. They say they’re attracted to him because he is successful. To put it another way, this society allows people like Donald Trump to be successful. So more and more people want to support him or act like him. He’s like some kind of adult InAction Man. He does nothing useful. But he blurts out incomprehensible misogyny and prejudice from his plasticized skin every time Satan pulls a string at the back of his head.  

In fact, the two words: “Donald” and “Trump” could replace this entire blog, if its sole purpose was to prove industrial civilisation is collapsing. It’s like the entire western world slipped into a coma in 2017 in front of a scratched DVD of Total Recall. Only Arnold Schwarzenegger’s surprisingly effective time as Governor of California gave early warning that the end was nigh. 

They’re cynical bastards

This follows on from the previous point. It appears that many of these world leaders can’t possibly have any idea what is going on in the real world. But this surely can’t be true. They have the finest minds in the world at their disposal to tell them. It’s in their job description to listen. Even if they don’t listen, people will write it down for them and draw them pictures.  

So maybe they know only too well what is happening. Maybe they know better than any of us. If so, they have a breathtakingly cynical take on it. Ignore their poker faced professionalism. Overlook their chummy populism. What they're really saying is: “Fuck it, we’re all doomed. Every idiot for themselves.” 

A lot of them went to Prep Schools. Maybe they’re just prepping, at everybody else’s expense? Instead of buying bunkers they’re turning whole countries into bunkers. We think it’s power, but maybe it’s desperation? 

It’s like asking a teenage boy what he would do if he knew the world was ending. They'd go on about collecting weaponry and grabbing whatever jollies they could. That to me sounds like the leadership style of this era. Maybe they’re not coming up with solutions because they, more than anyone, think it’s too late.

  

Ok, we’ve had our fun. Next week, in Part 3, I’ll reveal my actual best guess on why this is happening. Then, hopefully, in Part 4 the week after that, we can move on to what we do about it. 

Thanks for coming along for the ride.