Terry Field writes again from Normandy, France, reflecting on 'pessimism' and in particular the election in the United States. Terry writes with passion and urgency. While I disagree with some of his observations, he always forces me to 'reflect while reading'. A spirited person, he welcomes your comments and a good conversation. - GNH
I have, on the odd occasion, been accused of pessimism, but I think the uncomfortable reality is that the ideas of the West - of artistic sophistication, of sophisticated inclusivity, of rational logic, of enterprise and wealth creation, of the respect for intellect and 'deferred gratification' (or Yankee thrift, if you prefer) plus the inheritance of the thought on democracy from the 18th and early 19th centuries, comprising the happy acceptance of the Christian inheritance and ethic, concerning mutuality of responsibility and the honour to care for ones neighbour, with respect and consideration given to cultural, political and religious minorities, are all collapsing at a speed even I would not have believed. Though the West would be replaced by other, more brutal ideas from the rising East, but I did not expect that the West would deconstruct at such a pace.
Trump. He is a temperature read by a thermostat taken from a fevered patient. But Clinton, the opportunistic, vote-buying, minority-corralling, Eva-Peron light creature of egomania is not better.
The centre has disappeared on both sides of the Atlantic. The German ex Director of the Tate in London correctly identifies the dread danger.
I am not pessimistic. I simply observe the signs.
I wrote a piece twenty years ago, a summation of a lecture I gave at the City University in London in 1977. Then I identified a world that would subdivide into three distinct elements. The first would be the global, dissociated super-rich, the second the declining and insecure nationally-based technical middle classes, and the last the rise all over the world of the urbanised, uneducated, partially-working, unstable and violent mass 'proletariat' There would be no more 'first world'. The western definition of the citizen - his or her place, rights, duties, obligations and opportunities, would be at an end.
That has happened, and in America, a significant part of the black group, has, in very large measure, descended into a dreadful existence, characterised by disproportionately high levels of violence, gang control of young men, the widespread use of guns, drugs entirely commonplace, the widespread use of knives, non-working and unskilled, dreadful food, consequent disease and, in consequence, comparatively tragically early death. All the while, their condition is as unknown outside and in the wider community as was that of the poor in the minds of the wealthy in Dickensian Britain.
It is suggested by many that the history of slavery is the prime cause here. For the record, I do not think that stands examination now. By that argument, Israel would sue Egypt in the International Court in the Hague for pain and suffering whilst constructing the pyramids.
History for both Jews and Black people is gone and well and truly in the past. Stop the excuses. They do not wash.
After the Great Society of LBJ after the 60s, there has been every opportunity for all citizens to work, study, and succeed, according to their abilities. The United States experienced truly glorious and quite incomparable prosperity for decades, until 2008.
It is high time, I would contend, that other factors, for long dismissed by the left, need to be rigorously examined and truthfully confronted, since the situation now being experienced in the United States defies the old political prejudices - of both the left and the right.
Much of America now considers that the positive discrimination from the 1960s onwards achieved almost nothing. In addition, the payment of state moneys to the vast numbers of dependent people many would contend, as would I, simply adds to the degeneration and rot of morality and motivation.
The left liberal one-time elite used to believe none of this was true, but it cannot now be any more denied.
Throwing money after inclusive prejudice has failed in America, and in Europe and the United Kingdom to an even greater degree. And there is no excuse of slavery there.
Which his why the election for President is split down race lines, and whole segments of the continent are infected with such extreme conditions of isolation, for each 'community,' (dreadful word, but the left makes us all use it now) that there are permanent vote predictions, decades on decade for states and regions. That alone is a disaster. - Terry Field, an Englishman in France
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