what was that about zeitgeists again

[maradydd]

Warren Ellis, in Planetary #7, January 2000:Jack always said it was difficult for us Americans to understand what it was really like [in Britain] in the darkest parts of the eighties

Comments

[darthzeth]

Thatcher, Reagen, Bush Jr, and Obama are far from the worst leaders, and their administrations are far from the worst administrations. I'm all for taking strong political stands and pushing for the direction you want the society to go. Their policies might not have been good, and we can always fight for a more perfect world.

But people in the first world complaining about the 'darkness' of the 80s is bunk. It annoys me to hear rich people whine about the state of the world.

[heron61]

I can't really offer a position on Thatcher because I have never lived in the UK and have only visited for short periods of time. As for the rest, Obama is a mediocre president and Reagan was a bad president, but definitely far from the worst of world leaders. However, Bush II is responsible for the death of hundreds of thousands of people (in Iraq, Afghanistan, and New Orleans), and he helped seriously set back civil rights and individual freedom in the US as well as helping to wreck the US economy and impoverish hundreds of thousands. Also, it looks fairly clear that his handlers were looking for something not far from a fascist takeover of the US. The only good thing that can be said about them is that they were largely fools who believed their own lies and so were singularly ineffective at many of their goals. He's by far the worst US president since WWII and possibly in the last century.

[darthzeth]

it looks fairly clear that his handlers were looking for something not far from a fascist takeover of the US.Right, and Obama and his handlers are orchestrating a communist takeover of the US! according to his critics, anyway. I've heard this crap about presidents and their opponents since I've been paying attention to politics

[darthzeth]

*lack perspective about how dark it can really get, anyway.

[kragen]

DARKNESS? Try having Saddam Hussein as your dictator for a while.

Or Paul Bremer, whose body count of dead Iraqis beat Hussein's by about an order of magnitude, and whose reign presided over a looting of Iraq unprecedented in three generations.

[darthzeth]

Are you saying you'd prefer Ba'athists running the US over Republicans?

[barbarienne]

While I agree with your points regarding perspective, saying "It could be a million times worse" still doesn't make it good.

Terminal cancer is a million times worse than a broken ankle. Doesn't mean I want to walk around on that ankle.

[kragen]

No, I see no reason to attribute either Hussein's brutality, Hussein's gradual destruction of the country's economy, Bremer's brutality, Bremer's incompetence, or Bremer's looting of the country to their professed political ideologies. Much more plausible explanations suggest themselves.

[nancylebov]

I suspect the reason the first world continues to be a relatively good place to live is because people take it seriously when things have gone moderately bad instead of saying, "oh well, at least we aren't living in Zimbabwe".

[heron61]

Well said. That doesn't make the leaders any better, merely that they can get away with a whole lot less in first world nations than they can in many third world nations.

[darthzeth]

Wow. Beyond parody, baby. Beyond parody.
(If it's any comfort, you're not the only one.)

[heron61]

Oh really? How about the Patriot Act, the pointless and bloody war in Iraq, the mixture of incompetence and bigotry behind the lack of aid to New Orleans, a host of laws deregulating banking and investment firms that lead to the current recession? At absolute best, Shrub is right down there with Herbert Hoover for worst president of the last century. Given his appointment of far right bigots to the Supreme Court, and the crackdown on civil liberties like the right to assembly and free speech, and it looks a whole lot like Shrub is worse (or more accurately, the people behind him were worse, Shrub being largely a mean-spirited idiot).

[maradydd]

So, what I think Ellis is actually talking about here is the effect the Thatcher administration had on the next couple of generations. Thatcher's legacy, for instance, helped pave the way for the surveillance society that the UK has become; I wonder what fallout we'll see from the warrantless wiretaps that haven't been shut down yet, as well as what fallout we'll see from the wreck that is the credit collapse.

[darthzeth]

Yeah, I looked up Planetary since I was unfamiliar with it. I realize that there may be context around that comment that would make it annoy me less

[maradydd]

I don't want our myopic inept politicians giving tools to potential future evil politicians.

Oh, right there with you. I think it was in a conversation with staghounds that this came up most recently, that the Left often puts tools in place that the Right promptly uses against them when the Right comes back into power. And there's a lot that can happen in just shy of three years.

Although, if that quote was about surveillance, I wonder why it's in the past tense. If anything, the UK's gotten worse...

It was written in 2000; I think a lot of the worst was still yet to come at that time, though with regard to social unrest, a lot of that was already in place. For all that Labour sees itself as having won a lot of victories, their policies don't seem to have had many of their predicted effects.

[darthzeth]

the Left often puts tools in place that the Right promptly uses against them when the Right comes back into power.

Yeah. I would ask American conservatives if they wanted Bush's expanded police powers in the hands of there favorite love-to-hate liberal, usually Hillary Clinton at the time. Even if you do trust Bush, why would you trust his successor?