poliphilo | The Quality Of Our Leadership

Will be? It already is.

It's really weird that Hague- a failed party leader who one assumed had been laughed off the field- is not only still around, but in office.

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shanghai7.livejournal.com

Well, we are agreed, the Tories are crap. Next stop? The student demos may have the potential to blow the lid off.

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The whole Wikileaks thing has filled me full of "tell me something I didn't know".

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But it's nice to have it confirmed- from the horse's mouth.
The things journalists write are deniable; things written by diplomats not so much.

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It would be good to think so. Do the students have the stamina to keep the protests going, or will they shrug and give up?

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What a strange state of affairs. If the ruling class had any sense of shame, this would bring down the government. And it won't, obviously.

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Blair set the precedent for cosying up to the US government no matter what. He positioned himself as Clinton's best friend- and then as Bush's. The relationship with Clinton one could understand- both were supposedly men of the centre Left- but Bush?!

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Thatcher still thought of Britain as an empire, a world power with views people should hear and respect. This works on Americans; under-confidence kills in American culture and it's why Europe tends to leave us cold.

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She regarded herself and Reagan as equals- which is the proper attitude for a national leader to have. Blair and his successors see themselves as America's clients and courtiers.

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ron-broxted.livejournal.com

Good point. I looked at the demo. Two camps. Harriet & Tarquin in scarves giggling (no stamina) and dem angry yoof with faces covered (lots of stamina). More and more I am minded of Russia in 1917.

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Today's protests against Sir Philip Green and other tax avoiding businessmen have been very heartening.

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Which is quite sad. The key to a good relationship in the US is to not live in its shadow. The problem with Blair, et al is that they're suck ups. The problem with some of the alternatives I've heard about is that they're antagonists.

The problem in both directions is that it places the US at the center of British prestige. Prince Andrew's tirades at every mention of the US are just as pitiful as the PM's supplications.

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Britain's relationship with the US is intense and complicated. We believe we taught you everything you know and are angry that you've surpassed us. We want you to love and value us, even as we crow over your every failure.

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Strangely enough, most Americans don't really care about Britain. I think the relationship is more important to you than it is to us.

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Yes. We're pathetic.

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I don't know about that. How does the British public feel?

I mean, seriously, the leadership of countries is often a bunch of craven assholes with so many neuroses that it's a wonder they haven't collapsed under their weight.

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We don't like your wars and we can't understand why you're so religious, but we'd like you to keep on sending us your music, your movies and your TV shows.

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Seriously, I don't get the religious thing either anymore and, the older I get, I'm less able to understand the entire military edifice.

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Oh my. How long has our LJ break-up been going?

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It has been going on a lot longer than that. World war 1 perhaps. We are one of about ten significant "special relationships" the US has. They are dating several countries, they never said we were "exclusive".

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Many British people are quite strongly anti-American. They don't like the arrogance and the materialism. But they keep watching the Simpsons and buying the Coke.

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Like parents and grown-up children,

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I really don't know that the US is more materialistic than Britain is.

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Blair was the first British PM whose cosying up to American power felt like a national humiliation. Churchill and Thatcher acted- in public anyway- as if they were the equals of the American president, Macmillan mentored Kennedy, Wilson kept us out of Vietnam.

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Very like.

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We look at you and see ourselves as we were in the high Victorian age- a great, self-righteous, god-bothering Imperial power.

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ron-broxted.livejournal.com

Surprised they were allowed. Plod came down hard on the last flash mob. Winter Palace remix?

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I agree: it seems that Blair was the first. His relationship with Bush is more easily understood when one realizes that the differences between Bush and Clinton were more cosmetic than substantial. Both were card-carrying members of the ruling class and served its interests to the best of their ability. In every way that mattered, they both sang from the same page of the hymnal. Bush was a front man for the energy sector and the Western elites, Clinton for Goldman-Sachs and the Eastern elites. What does it matter which faction has its biblical way with the rest of us?

And, yes, I am damned bitter, these days.

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I believe Blair is still a bit of a hero in the States. Over here he is deeply hated- and can't show his face in public without being yelled at or mobbed.

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The comparison simply does not hold, though. At its height, the British Empire was secure and self-assured. You had absolute and unquestioned faith in your superiority as a civilization and the natural confidence that springs from such faith. The US has none of these things and has never had them. We collectively piss the bed at every loud noise and are terrified of every suggested threat, whether foreign or domestic and however palpably absurd. Even at the peak of American empire the US was arguably less self-assured, not more.

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I find it hard to disagree.

The USA is a very new country- a patchwork entity with a civil war in its recent history. I've always thought the bravado and flag-waving hid a deep-seated insecurity.

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You know, I always debate whether the US is an imperial power. Certainly the US is a massive, powerful and militaristic country, but it doesn't subjugate-and-tax the way every other empire has done.

I just don't see "American Empire" being comparable to other historic empires after, say, the Civil Rights Act.

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You have a point, the American sphere of influence isn't exactly like the old time empires. I use the word- as many others do- as a kind of shorthand.

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I tend to think the US got pulled into "empire" by the vacuum created by the end of World War II. A lot of demands were made of it as a result, especially considering the programme of our Russian counterpart and the resulting paranoia in Europe.

I don't know whether Europeans understand how much World War II sticks out in the American imagination. Or how it means we don't trust them; I really think most Americans have a nagging voice that says "the moment we're gone, someone will start trying to conquer the world and nuke Los Angeles for no apparent reason, just wait, it's their MO". Not like it hasn't happened before....

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I mean, we were neutral in World War I and then Germany started plotting a war to prevent us from helping Britain should we decide to enter.

Japan bombed us so we wouldn't declare war on it first.

We put an ocean between y'all and us and it still wasn't enough. We even militated for a fair peace, the only people who did, and it wasn't enough. There's this deep-seated need on the part of people in Eurasia to send troops to this continent. Started in 1492 and has never stopped.

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I have no idea how the public feels about Blair, over here, since I no longer follow the media, not even vicariously online. No doubt the media still loves him.

Personally, I hate the bastard and always will. Blair was a figleaf for Bush's obscenity, used to create the illusion of adult supervision. It is difficult to imagine an educated man sinking so low.

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