All Trumped Up!

Or, maybe it is more 'All Trumped over?'

I can still vaguely recall- the Daily Mail pages of my parents breakfast table- an imagined yawning divide between life in the UK and that of the US of A. Five shillings was still just occasionally referred to as 'a dollar,' and the UK had, in those more aspirational times, recently voted to join the Common Market.

America, or more precisely the United States of America, was then a very different type of place, a place to be dipped in to- so as to avoid the sugar rush- a place to be glimpsed through the silver screen, a place to be talked about in jealous moderation, before again docking and then getting on with the more-down-to-earth world of everyday life.

Footfall One

In the days of my youth the four-dollars-to-the-pound exchange rate had, in reality, already long departed. During the immediate post WWII years, through an element far more of iron fist than of slight of hand, the Americans had effectively orchestrated one of the UK's worst financial crises. The 'global conflict had not helped, or perhaps it had. The net result was that, by the 1970s, the exchange rate was closer to $2.50 than four, although the slang of a 'dollar' still sometimes presided. But the USA had, it seems, already absorbed the valuable lesson that battles, even those of the domestic nature (and of many flavours), didn't necessarily need to be fought in one's own backyard.

Considering the iron grip that our erstwhile 'allies' had upon the nation it's a wonder that anything even vaguely American didn't come with some sort of fluorescent toxicity label. And yet still the UK permitted the US to blitz our screens with glitzy images of 'the better life,' often repackaging and selling back to the UK even its own role in WWII. Of course, now Hollywood owns outright the copyright to this narrative and, by default, to the widely perceived history of the post war years. In generations to come maybe the 'facts' of that second global conflict will have been thoroughly rehashed, in order to sit the good ol' US of A at the seat of God-given supremacy? Enough films, enough biographies, enough closed libraries and who knows, the Sky's the limit?

It can have come as no real surprise to the US, that the UK voted so overwhelmingly in favour of joining the Common Market (1973). At least one of those puppet strings was duly, albeit temporarily, severed! But maybe we should have employed sharper and more industrial scissors. Probably, we should have cauterised the wound!

Mull

John Wayne, a man who 'obligingly' stabbed in the back even many of his own former colleagues- I doubt he had any true friends- almost haunted our Sunday afternoon TV screens. He had named virtually all of his fellow Western actors as "communist sympathisers," during the worst days of the McCarthyite purges of Hollywood. Consequently, all of those far-superior actors were blacklisted and Mr Wayne's face became ever-more prominent upon the screens.

Marvel and DC super-hero comics, although still somewhat embryonic in the late sixties UK market, had begun to creep onto the shelves. Even the superhumans preferred to spend their lives in the States, where a driven Bruce Wayne might become a billionaire industrialist (Batman in Gotham City), or Tony Stark a wealthy business magnate (Iron Man), or the mega-patriotic Steve Rogers (Captain America) might both assist ol' Senator McCarthy in his anti-commie-assault whilst, if not literally rewriting chunks of WWII, then at least paving the way 'forward' in this regard. It may have been mere fiction but, Christ, how far from the real New World could this sparkling multiplicity of metropolises honestly be? Even the names were evocative! The Golden Gate Bridge, sunny California, flower-wearing San Francisco, good ol' Texas (don't mention the assassination!)? Gasoline  at tuppence a gallon, was it? Disney, MacDonald, Land O' The Free!

Somebody said to me around that time, "Look to America today to see what will become of the UK 'tomorrow.'" We didn't need to dwell upon the fact that many within the US population couldn't, even then, access proper health care. The US was thought to be aspirational, cleverly marketed as such.

Owning a gun was a mark of freedom, wasn't it? Healthcare was way better, if one worked hard enough and could actually afford it. Those yellow taxis were far more colourful than our rather drab black efforts. All that wonderful music, that which wasn't anyway stolen from the UK. Just hop on a Greyhound bus and the world was your oyster, or was it lobster... a big chunk of it anyway!

Footfall Two

We were peeking at the splendours of Ancient Greece from a mud hut in the corner of a damp forest clearing.

In the UK, the poor man of Europe, all we had was a free-at-point-of-delivery NHS, what's to like? Barely out of rationing? We weren't even permitted to own our very own guns! Council homes, damn them, were blighting the chances of any entrepreneurial and budding developers. Wherever were we expected to get our share of 'Candy Mountain' rough sleepers from? University grants were still being dolled out to just about anyone with the right kind of qualifications and abilities, it was like the dark ages, whereas just across The Pond?

Thatcher happened in the 1980s and by the early 1990s the UK had grasped those bootlaces and... well, pretty much hanged itself! The Military, sorry the curiously unmarked police force, had 'gently' disarmed the unions. Kid gloves? Or was it kid slippers? Boots? The nation's utilities were privatised- and then swiftly renationalised by any-other-government-except our own. Council homes went under the hammer of progress and we haven't looked back since.

Mum always swore that newspapers were excellent for cleaning (up) windows, she omitted to mention that they were also pretty good at clearing up state violence. Handy tip!

The promise hasn't quite come home to roost, but we're getting there, "Look to America... "

So we should, look to America that is. Look across The Pond and 'ahead,' to see what's in store for our children and our grandchildren and, should we get so far...

Even the 'painting' of Thatcher, as some kind of very-worse-kind-of-dragon-manifest- which she absolutely was- has served to cleverly wrong-foot the nation. Hiding behind that grotesque image and far-reaching icy shadow has merely enabled the pillaging to morph and to continue. 'Neoliberal,' it's still the case that many in the UK haven't even now fathomed the truer meaning of the term? The new liberal revolution, whereby everything will be liberated, set free! Even here the imagery is almost, well, liberating- Liberals, aren't they the lot who are given to questioning the worst of Conservative excesses? Now that it's rather too late it seems highly plausible that this newer and more twisted use of the term 'liberal' has not been a mere chance application. Now we are perhaps just beginning, some of us, to realise that it's all simply been a repackaging exercise, marketing in it's purest form yet!

Commerce

The future's always going to remain uncertain, it's always going to remain, by definition, in the future, outside of the purely theoretical, of course it is. I don't suppose that many of Thatcher's speculators will have factored in plastic pollution, or those huge forest fires, or potential seismic events- maybe global warming?- but we should bank upon some of them having done so. The thing about serious money is that it affords serious time, and with serious time comes the ability to contemplate and to speculate upon projection, or upon various potential projections. I doubt those in the woman's think tanks, any of them, will have been able to predict quite where we are at now. But they will have had the money and the time with which to speculate. And they'll have had the money and the marketing with which to nudge the country in the direction of their own choosing.

So, "Look to America... "

'All Trumped up!' then?

But we're gong to need quite a wide angled lens to do so! The US is already decades ahead of the field, dabbling in other governments, playing roulette with other nations cash, sending in the accountants and the bankers and, if that doesn't work sending in the troops to 'ease' things along. Unveiling the international masterplan, though, it's rather like trying to paint fog! So, we're going to have to look ever so carefully, also to their extracurricular excesses. They're not the only nation doing this, but we're not currently allowed to notice some of the others, without being labelled racist, or more specifically...

At least when the British dabbled we did so in style, and the globe was coloured-in accordingly- this bit and that chunk over there, those are our's! People knew where they stood, the smart uniforms were always on hand to help clarify any misunderstandings.

Of course, the nation (US) with an obsessive thirst for publicly-held guns and gun ownership will have ingested also its fair share of gun crime and violence. But so much the merrier if they've also been able export cartloads of armaments to other parts of the globe. Who'd have thought that so much money could have been invested in (well, essentially) death, whether it be gun crime or military conflict? Any signs of a revival in the UK and the wider UK network? What do we think?

Units

Terrorism and terror... fear? Do we live in a more fearful world? Is fear a consequence, or is it perhaps also increasingly a tool? Would the UK, were it not quite so intent upon selling its own armaments, be rather more outspoken and direct in its condemnation of Saudi Arabia, for the murder of Jamal Khashoggi? Has open assassination become far more of an inconvenient tool than an actual crime, when carried out by certain factions? The 'good' factions? The richer factions!

In the background, ducking currently under the radar of international conflict, migrant refugees, various environmental crises, and Presidential buffoonery and general incompetence, we still have TTIP, wriggling like an eel, morphing and evolving, repackaging itself. The NHS will be liberated, if not wholesale then piece by tiny piece. Given that other European nations appear to have a better grasp on this concept than do 'our lot,' then it is likely that it will be slowly privatised and then renationalised by governments other than our own.

Much of sport may well have gone to the gambling cartels- self-regulation, what like the supermarkets did with plastic packaging?- but have we also noticed that even that simple ad-hoc game of park football or cricket has now fallen under the hammer? "Kick around in the park, sonny? Can I just check your permit?" The fine art of repackaging and reselling specific access to mown grass, right back at us!

Christmas now both contradictorily sustains certain sales, whilst partially consuming other retail? When The Spirit of Christmas graces those retail spreadsheets is there really no longer any room at all for 'The Spirit' part, outside of those seasonal liquor sales?

So, even where this neoliberal thing seems to be sowing the seeds of of its own demise, any viable alternatives are still deemed to be wholly unpalatable, are they? Currently we are being reminded ad nauseam that "the people have spoken," consequences be damned!

In order to sustain neoliberalism we will need to also consume neoliberalism? In the revamped image of Christmas (then) will we have time, in this hectic season- an extra 5% 'free' this year- to notice the high street chrysalis being consumed by the on-line butterfly? 12.5% more plastic that we won't have to worry about until when is it? 

Recyclable? Of course it is, partially, some of it, sort of!

And, if we can push home the zero-hour advantage, maybe we can ease another 14.5% into the pockets of the 1%. Those spreadsheets must be an absolute nightmare to project! Or to justify.

Turnover

"Humanity isn't destroying the natural world. We're changing it. And, in many ways, our changes are creating richer and more vibrant ecosystems," it has been claimed. Yet still this ideology will have to factor in the 50% (60%, 70%?) loss in retail potential, by which I mean the dying natural world. Is this process euphemistically termed, 'squaring the circle?' Something about a glass ceiling? Are envelopes involved... somewhere?

The gambling cartels are hungrily feasting where there's almost nothing left to feast upon! The guns are turning in upon themselves! We're wrapping the globe in plastic! Is this why it's becoming so much more sweaty down here, do we think?

But, just how is it going to be possible to find or to conjure enough stuff for 1% of the people to spend that 40% of global wealth in order to sustain this neoliberal dream? How expensive are cars and yachts going to have to become at that 'top'-end? Will the elites tolerate their own built in obsolescence? Precisely what is it that's going to trickle down to the minions? Is it far more likely that it's going to be some sort of toxic seepage? And what about the 90+% of the population(s) that can't realistically afford to consume 1% of what they actually produce? How are we going to justify another 'top'-end tax cut- always assuming they actually pay any- for those who already have far more than they can possibly imagine? So much so that others are constantly having to 're-imagine' ever more to possess on their behalf's.

Zero-gravity flights? Super-super-yachts? Kill a snow leopard with your very own manicured hands and hand-carved personalised bullet, why not? There're only so many islands to go around- perhaps we could start building new ones- out of plastic? Will that work?

Hair implants? Anus bleaching? Personal sleep manager? Can we interest you in a new smile, whiter implants guaranteed! Flawless quality diamond cutting edge science? I think we can manage that! Something with which to smile at the chap squatting in the doorway? Contour that nose? Contour that fender? Contour that land promontory? Contour that taxable income?

Why would they turn off the lights? They want this stuff to be noticed by others, there simply isn't the time for busy-them to drive/sail/use/see it all for themselves!

Is it neo(liberal)progress, or merely socio(economic)evolution, when those being spat out at the bottom are beginning to utilise the spiralling numbers of defunct properties in order to keep the remaining targeted parks looking fresh? Is there any way that we could start charging, do we think?

So, I think we'll probably have to go with 'All Trumped upon!'

Are we nearly there yet?