Sunday 24 July 2016

WARD OFF TERROR WITH THE LUCK OF FINTAN O'TOOLE



Fintan O'Toole (F O'T) is an opinion writer for The Irish Times. He is one of Ireland’s best-known columnists, with a large readership in Ireland and internationally. He is also a well-regarded theatre critic. Writing on July 16th, directly after the Bastille Day killings in Nice, F O'T defines the line between civilised, democratic society and its nihilistic opponents as the line between terror and pity.

Immediately F O'T has waded into the language quagmire which conflates civilised with democratic and describes certain perpetrators of violence as nihilists. The people who mow down other people, with a truck driven along a sea-side promenade as citizens and tourists enjoy a fireworks display, do not describe themselves as nihilist, if nihilists are people who have no beliefs or who believe in nothing. Like many of the people who fly fighter bombers, guide drone weapons and sit on the boards of arms' manufacturers, they have beliefs of various kinds, including, very often, religious beliefs.

According to F O'T, it is all a matter of luck. Some of us (sic)

are lucky enough to live in times and places where there are no warring tribes, no marauding armies, no exterminationist ideologies, no messianic cults, no megalomaniacal emperors, no young men convinced that they can become immortal by preying like vampires on other people's morality.

Who does the 'us' refer to? Such lists always present problems of 'what is missing?' How about people lucky enough to live under the protection of one of the great power blocs, in particular the ones with weapons of mass destruction; lucky enough to live in a country where the international arms industry is concentrated?; lucky enough to live where what the state's army does is legitimate and not terror, though it creates as much carnage as the lorry driver and his fellows; lucky enough not to be made so desperate by economic and war circumstances that you load your family onto makeshift vessels and venture into the sea to face the gun-boats?

Using 'luck' in this opinion piece removes agency from human endeavours. It's 'luck' then that a country has factories, colleges, schools, material goods in excess, farms that produce food and money, beneficial trade relations, sought-after currencies and gold reserves, nuclear and other weapons, stock markets and hedge funds.

Globalisation works, as you'd expect, across the globe, but unevenly, as within benefiting countries such as Ireland. What hope then for deficit countries, like, say, unlucky Bangladesh?

F O'T offers us pity as a counterbalance to terror, from the ancient formulation by Aristotle for understanding tragedy in theatre. F O'T suggests that nihilists have only terror. But who are the nihilists? The humans who plough lorries through festive crowds? The humans who smile to see their share prices rising when they review the balance sheets of the arms manufacturers?

Could it be that there are no nihilists, simply hypocrites who manage to hold beliefs in moral ideas of 'the good', often supported by religious beliefs, while engaging in economic, political and military acts, which others, on the receiving end of them, could not believe as 'the good'?

F O'T writes of 'our moral boundaries' without clarifying who he means by 'our' and not making any attempt to pin down the compass and extent of such boundaries.

Pity complicates things, as F O'T says, and that's no doubt the case. And vital. The use of the words 'we', 'us' and 'our' further complicates matters. F O'T asserts that compassion is a boundless as fear.

However, with all this resting on 'luck' rather than human agency, how might the largest possible compass of 'us' experience this compassion in 'our' lives? Get lucky?






There is an opposite to terror – and it is stronger; Fintan O'Toole, The Irish Times, Dublin, 16.7.2016



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Saturday 9 July 2016

POLITICIAN GETS EDGE



The next Prime Minister of the UK will be a politician.

This shocking news follows heated debates on overnight radio talk shows and headlines in this morning's London papers, in a story only displaced by the devastating use of his military skills by an ex-US Army reservist in Texas, well-known as an oil-rich state with a heritage of gun-toting.

The next Prime Minister of the UK will come from the current government party, the Tories and is now a contest between the last two MPs standing. They will go before members of that party who will vote for one of them. In a long-cherished manifestation of a well-loved democratic deficit in the UK, the electorate will not vote for the leader of the UK, which is the person who has the power to blow the world up with nuclear weapons and lead the charge to war and ruin like a previous incumbent did, as revealed in a recent report.

Of course, with such high stakes to play for the candidates will be using all aspects of their experiences, characters and personalities to give them the edge so that their fellow party members will give them the nod.

A report appears this morning in The Times, a newspaper based in London not to be confused with The Times of India or The New York Times, The Irish Times, Antrim Times, Angling Times, Arab Times, China Times or The Times produced on a weekly basis in Brownsville, Oregon. No, this is The Times, owned by News Corp., a Rupert Murdoch business. Historically, the paper has been very close to the political and financial elites in London, so a front page article is a big thing for a challenger for the position of key holder of No. 10 Downing Street.

In this morning's front-page report one of the candidates offers a specific personal attribute as a reason why they would make a better Prime Minister than the other candidate. The question is what personal attribute could cause politicos and pundits, bloggers(!) and blabbers to get into the major froth that this report has produced? It appears both candidates are heterosexual, white and not living with a disability.

Can you fill in the gap in The Times headline?

Being a—gives me edge

While the candidate concerned has rejected the article as being the opposite to what was intended, the journalists who did the interview, Rachel Sylvester and Sam Coates, stand over it. They are reported to be reputable, and no doubt they can record spoken words and write copy and probably have everything backed up mightily. Some people might suggest that writing for a newspaper in the Murdoch stable of titles immediately draws into question their reputations, if not their technical abilities.

But what could it possibly be about a candidate that could, so early in an electoral contest, however democratically deficient, have led to this furore when one candidate claims a more real stake in the future of the country over the other one, said to be ahead in the polls of the 150, 000 members of the Tory party who will vote for the Prime Minister of the UK, a country of 65, 000, 000 people?

Rupert Murdoch won't let you see the full report on-line without paying money. The Guardian has its own version, free on-line. Between them you should be able to fill in the gap and all the other gaps such a headline leaves. One possibility is, of course,

Being a politician gives me edge