Monday, August 08, 2011

Why I read Ian Welsh

Ian.

The Conservative austerity measures are destroying the possibility of a future for a generation of young people.  There is this weird idea amongst English elites, which I encountered in person during my London visit, that the problem in England is their welfare culture...hey are making ordinary people pay for their masters sins.  And they are putting the worst of it on the people who they feel are least powerful: the young, immigrants, the poor and so on....
...The response to a system which refuses to do the right thing, which offers Coke-Pepsi politics (if you don’t like Coke, you can always have Pepsi!) is turning more and more violent. If electoral politics offers no solution, people will look for one elsewhere.
Our elites live in a bubble. They think that what happens on the street doesn’t really effect them.  There will come a day when many of them will be wrong.  They’re playing with their lives, with our lives, and with the lives of their families and loved ones.
What will happen in each country will be different.  Some will get a man on horseback, some will screw in the repression and hang on, turning into aristocracies, others may find what many on the left are insisting on, a Robespierre. And maybe one or two will do the right thing, stop the bailouts, stop the reforms, and make a commitment to restructure in a way which creates a future for everyone.
Maybe.
As one sitting at the upper end of that generation of young people, I am not sure the implications of these days' events have fully registered.

It will, I think. But many won't necessarily understand why and they'll act out of whatever narrative they live by...

1 comment:

Rev.Paperboy said...

Ian does indeed stomp upon the terra. One of my regular reads to be sure.