Sinister: Pick Up Your Feet, Fall In, Move Out

[P F]

For weeks they have said: once we're in a war, public
support will swing behind it. I have never doubted
this. That's one reason I have never appealed to the
fact that 'the British people don't support this war'.
The British People, whoever they are, did not set my
political agenda in the miners' strike.

Soon enough the slaughter may be naturalized. The
conflagration we know to be wrong may seem to be
granted legitimacy, not by law or argument, but by
happening. 'The rational is the real' and vice versa:
the difficulty of denying the actual. I fear for my
instincts. I hope yours will not be dulled.

A page in history turning: a new start. The US
government apparently promises that after this, things
will be different: they're going to be in charge, and
do as they like. That will make a change. A new moral
era. A grey gauze cast over the light of spring days,
as we pass to another world founded on colossal crime.
No world in which to live.

I walk an early evening Oxford Street to see Evan
Dando play. I have never seen such a crowd here. He
starts with 'Eve of Destruction', a song I barely know
but recognize enough. Today it electrifies. He goes
into 'Rudderless', half the rest of Shame About Ray,
tons more, rarely stopping for applause. He pauses for
one speech in which he tells the truth about Dubya.

The new Evan Dando record is marvellous. An amazing
proportion of the songs are tuneful, touching,
thoughtful. He's a sufficiently good lyricist to make
baffling the old assertions about his stupidity.

Yet at some level, for the first time, I feel what
9/11 made some people (and not me) feel: doubt about
what all this can be worth; about where value can
live, from now on.

I walk back down towards Centre Point, imagining
nuclear conflagrations set off by this unprovoked
action. Last night a majority of the democratically
elected representatives of the UK voted for it - voted
to unload the most advanced military equipment in the
history of our solar system, and probably our galaxy
(to speculate beyond that level seems rash), upon a
poor and weak nation which has been forced for months
to destroy its weapons. A poor argument for democracy,
these mad, bad fools, weak-minded yet all too strong.

Westerns: if someone asks you for a fist-fight, you
throw away your gun-belt. It insults cowboys to
compare the US administration to them: that's what
they want you think, and what crass half-thinking
media encourage. The US administration insists that
you drop your guns, so they can shoot you. If you
don't drop them, they'll shoot you for not dropping
them. If you drop them, they'll shoot you because
you're unarmed.

I think of this coldly calculated insanity, and think
of the shame that should burn in the heart of all
those bad people who voted for this carnage, and the
worse people who drafted it to suit their own
calendar.

What will survive of them is evil.


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