The age of emancipation, empowerment, entitlement and the right to have an equal opinion to others no matter how speculative, shallow, hysterical or insane it might be arrived quite recently.
The Thatcher era blended perfectly with that of Blair which followed it. Then Major with his Citizens’ Charter, a weak follow up. Then the rest.
We were to be the new kings and queens demanding others listen and provide us with only the best of service, or else.
Each one of us was encouraged to be Little Lord or Lady Fauntleroy, owning our own castle and demanding the epitome of good service from all... because we deserved it.
In the Blair era all socialists would drink champagne and send their children with a pristine pure conscience to private schools, bankers would be buddies and cool suits and Cool Britannia would carry us all to Thatcher’s universe vers 2.
We would strive for success without a twinge of doubt, engage with all monolith religions as stakeholders in common with the new religion of PR politics. The shiny new status quo was here to stay and the City of London would show the way.
Everyone was empowered to be as opinionated and as greedy as possible. Hypercriticism was on its way as cabling brought the joys of internet flaming to every household. No need to restrain yourself now. Let rip. Old British reticence was about to be banished in an orgy of babel-like verbal vomit.
We inspected those who used to be known as our betters on Question Time and discovered them to be craven liars and dissemblers, deceivers, dumbos and in most cases rank bastards.
The waterfall of know-best screamers was rushing down the pike and there would be no stopping them. Though the monstrously out of touch edifices of established religion still pushed out their epithets of stricture and warning less and less gave a fuck about anything they said any more. Now we were all pundits, know bests. Hadn’t we been told we were? Weren’t we now fully empowered, masters and mistresses of our own destinies, getting filthy rich and increasingly selfish? We had those we demanded service from. We expected to be served only the very best... or else. The cold walls of self-interest where our lives were lived based on a business plan where outside inputs (people) had to provide what it said ‘on the tin’.
Much was beyond its sell-by date including almost everyone we knew. Friends would now be chosen on the basis of what they supplied to you. If they didn’t make you laugh, curious or come they were gone, dropped like an empty crisp packet on the street for someone else to pick up.
People were for use depending on their appearance, their CV or clothes’ style, inspected and interrogated in job interviews where they were expected to say how much they loved you and your business model.
Everyone was getting the same eagle-eyed, cold-soulled look in their eye always watching for the main chance.
Thatcher died at last. Blair rose and led a mass slaughter of socialism and another in Iraq then was gone. The rest are a blur of dummies trying to minutely adjust a steering wheel locked in place heading in entirely the wrong direction.
In the USA that had been in the mode the UK now took on for years saw the heroic Reagan, the cuddly affable uncle give the thumbs up to the kind of terrorism in both Afghanistan and Nicaragua that we have seen time and time again since in America’s ever ongoing and ever evil proxy wars.
It all led up to now. A maelstrom of headless chicken certainty from a billion pseudo kings and queens demanding the best of everything and asserting their right to have it, have themselves heard and have what they think was agreed to.
“When everyone wants things their way, no one gets things their way.”
This is the unending, open-ended rite of passage for unlimited confusion from here on out in the western world. A sale-day opening of the human soul where we rip at each other to get the goodies we came for. Where the human animal tears the mental flesh of all others in an attempt to assert his or her ultimate individual rights. It’s reality TV for everyday life with every subliminal or shallow message generated by a billion screens onto minds otherwise as washed clean of deeper meaning as a new slate.
Ignorance is bliss and the shallower you are the more you’ll fit.
Just demand.
Get into the swing of it, be cool, look right and make sure your elbows are sharp enough to get to the top.
Welcome to a western world where only we are good and all else is put up with temporarily.
A western world where knowledge has been traded for the latest, easily imbibed conspiracy theory. Where nothing is trusted other that the latest diatribe against whoever your ire is directed at today.
In a world where no one knows much, but everyone claims to know everything.
Where everyone is wrapped up in themselves as an antidote to thinking about anyone else or anything very much.
In a western world where unlimited chaos roils round each head as the absolute norm.
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