Captain Kirk 'making it so'

reflexions on Britain and more?

The Creek, magnificent as it is, smelled sour this morning as I walked onto the balcony for a nice shot of the sunrise. We haven’t had that surprise during our five permanent years here. Then again, we have not had this sustained heat during that time, either. I guess my nose better get accustomed to it. This picture from yesterday afternoon offers some variety, however.

As you likely figured, I read a variety of materials. Daily newspapers, of course, and books that populate the coffee table in front of me. Online sources are plentiful as well.

Last evening, I read probably the harshest assessment yet of the past fourteen years in Britain. I raise this article from the London Review of Books not to beat up on the Tories (that happens regularly, I see, on top of their amazingly bad performance at the polls a fortnight ago) but because the overall crux of the type of analysis is a caution about what government can do, should do, or did not do. This is a single case, Britain between 2010 and 2024, but some comparable promises may not work out in other places.

Let me start with a couple of devastating comments that William Davies provides in “Fever Dream”.

“Biological time may have retained shape, but political time felt like a mess“. [2010-2024]

“Nobody yet quite knows how to fit the lockdown years into their sense of self or society: neither a crisis nor an era, but some unnameable combinaton of the two”.

‘Ideological rhetoric …has been flung about like confetti”.

“One reason for this disorientation [of everything] is the absences of any discernible economic or social progress, according not just to conventional statistical measures (such as GDP or life expectency) but also to the preferred measures of the governing party. What would those measures be?…Real wages have stagnated, no higher today than when the Cameron-led coalition first came to power in 2010, while the scant growth in GDP since then has been largely an effect of high immigration”.

“…Britian became the textbook example of an ‘asset economy’, in which collective and productive progress is sacrificed for capital gains. This has produced an eerie temporality: society stands still, while certain households seem to pull away magically from others. Libraries and Sure Start [Labour begun assistance for job, health, child care, and other social/economic assistance] centers have closed...Public spending per school pupil flatlined, while private school fees rose by 20%. In 2010, it was still possible to believe that a liberal society as Britain’s was travelling in the direction of greater meritocracy; in 2024, we hear much more about ‘nepo babies’ and inherited wealth”.

The remainder of the article is no more upbeat. Davies argues that '“education is little more than a nuisance to the current generation of frontline Tories” while immigration, that hated topic across the west, is now well over twice as high as when Cameron went to Buckingham Palace to “kiss hands” (become Prime Minister) in 2010. Recall that immigration was front and center in the Brexit vote because those opposing immigration claimed the EU restricted Britain’s ability to prohibit immigration. I guess not so much since the Brexidus happened almost precisely four and a half years ago.

William Davies is a “political economist at Goldsmiths” according to the identifier at the beginning of the edition. Regardless of his title, his piece is absolutely devastating as it describes the foci of government action and inaction over this period.

The Pandemic, of course, was hard in every society, regardless of the political orientation. Xi is still paying a price for the lockdowns, Vlad the Impaler still sits (apparently) at long tables away from any possible germ victors, and various participatory regimes either teeter or have fallen. But, the spread of ennui, hopelessness, and pervasive sense of government lack of interest in the average citizen was a clear message imbued in the British public before they walked to the voting stations on the 4th of July. The Pandemic was hardly the sole reason, of course.

Britain had five Prime Ministers following David Cameron’s coalition seizing the reins from a thirteen year Labour government under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. Two long-running periods of one-party rule may be partially to blame (seems likely to lower accountability but that may be my skeptical mind) but the end for the final PM under Tory rule was synonymous with ignominy.

This piece beats up on Britain but I wonder if our own society wouldn’t undergo similar critiques by both sides?

The value of Davies’ scree is to remind us that campaigns are aspirational in nature with no guarantee of accomplishing their proposed intent. The biggest reason for that may be disingenuousess but I suspect it includes something else. Neither those seeking to govern nor those surrendering the privilege to govern through the vote often enough recognise how hard it is to use instruments to achieve an effect? The world is not full Captain Kirks sitting on the bridge of some massive government ship saying “Make it so!” only to have policy outcomes materialize without conflict, confusion, or unintended consequences. Most importantly, politicians rarely understand how the instruments they seek to implement as policy will actually work. That is hard to overstate as a challenge for any regime except perhaps the rarest of single-handed rule.

Plus, each and every action creates consequences unforecast for the immediate, short, medium, and long-terms. Some of those consequences are occasionally actually good but they are not what was anticipated (thus often feared). In other words, aspirations not equalling policy outcomes is a disappointing reality more often than not because of the real world versus the theoretical one.

Script writers created Captain Kirk while we the voters create those who govern us. We the voters, not someone else. If we choose not to vote, that still has consequences.

Life is hard these days. When someone promises us something too fabulous, it’s probably not going to materialize as stated but with some definite changes.

Thoughts? Rebuttals? I welcome any and all of them for the discussion I seek to expand. Please be a part of the conversation. Please feel free to circulate this if you find it of value.

Thank you for reading Actions. Thank you for recommending it to your friends and colleagues. Thanks especially to those of you who subscribe as you make it possible for me to do more because of your support.

The heat is supposed to diminish tomorrow (who thinks in the depths of January that upper 80s will feel cool?). In any case, be well and do be safe. FIN

William Davies, “Fever Dream”, London Review of Books, 4 July 2024: 3-6.