Rupert Dreyfus's Blog - Posts Tagged "bleach"
Updates and Some Thoughts on Trumpmania
I hope everyone is safe and well.
I’d first like to give a shout out to all the people who have recently read, are reading or intend to read my books in the near future – particularly those folks on Goodreads who are leaving reviews. And an extra thanks to the people who have been helping me to locate more readers. I know I’m repeating myself but the least fun part about being a Skint Eastwood indie author is hunting down readers so if you’re up for reading my stuff and reviewing it or know of anybody who might be then feel free to drop me a DM and I’ll hook you up.
In other news Broke is approximately halfway there. However, in real terms it’s still going to be some time before it’s released into the public domain. I’m looking forward to the day, though, because it’s going to be a lot of fun. I know it virtually means nothing to say it, but I do think that what I’ve written so far is some of my sharpest writing to date.
I’m part of the way through reading a new collection of poems by Harry Whitewolf called Two Beat Newbie. I was over the moon to see a reference to my debut novel Spark. This is particularly touching because Whitewolf writes poetry which echoes many of my own sentiments with regards to the state of the world. So if you’re up for an anti-establishment ruckus in poetry form then I’d highly recommend checking out his books.
Here’s the link to Whitewolf’s website:
http://www.harrywhitewolf.com/
Last month I mouthed off about the EU referendum being a waste of everybody’s time. I figured that if I put out socio-political satire then I should probably try some serious commentary from time to time. Apologies if it came across a little abrupt. I was just bored of listening to people present their arguments as if it was going to solve any problems in the real world. I suppose this attitude stems from some some sound advice I once received from a good friend: before deciding which army you’re going to join, ask yourself if the war is worth fighting for. Normally it isn’t – as with the EU referendum. A so-called Brexit (which has got to be one of the most annoying media terms to be banded around in the last ten years) would be no different to busting out of a prison cell only to realise that at the end of the first corridor is just another locked door. Tell me I’m wrong.
Truth is that the significance of the EU referendum pales significantly in comparison to what’s going on in America right now. It’s been a trend of neoliberalism that when things barely work for ordinary people, the disciples of laissez-faire get it in their heads that shifting things even further to the right will make everything okay. In the UK we’ve had a largely unchallenged UKIP pushing the agenda rightward for the last however many years (they have played a significant role in putting this year’s EU referendum on the agenda); however, in America this has manifested in something even more alarming: the abomination that is Donald Trump.
If you don’t already know Trump is a trillionaire ex-wrestler who these days makes his money out of real estate and other business ventures. Research suggests that he’s so wealthy that he’s the only person in the world to have had a designer wig weaved out of the fur of native Tasmanian sugar gliders. He also believes that wincing at scientific facts (such as all the independent data which supports climate change) is tantamount to rebutting them. I remember watching a Fox News interview online and Bill O’Reilly asked for Trump’s thoughts on climate change. Trump then proceeded to make the elementary mistake of confusing weather and climate…
I could go on with the usual ridicule but in sum it’s hard to understand why anyone of sound mind would find him an attractive option to be the next President of the World.
Now as far as I see it the real frightening thing about all of this is that Trump is just the result of a system which has turned politicians into shrewd businessmen and shrewd businessmen into politicians. This is observable wherever in the world there is neoliberalism. I will make a prediction that the next step is going to be that businessmen no longer have to buy politicians with their wallets; they just become them. And because these two types of curious species are becoming virtually indistinguishable from each other, the general public will no longer be able to tell the difference – hence Trumpmania.
This is all very well if you accept that what we’re presently seeing is the natural order of our species and that governments should be ran no differently to, for example, Starbucks. However, I don’t. If you look at the details then you’ll find that in order to thrive under free market fundamentalism you first have to learn a complex language which hardly anyone speaks. This is the language of doing business and if you don’t speak it -which most people don’t- then your chances of getting off the treadmill are virtually nil.
Yet even if you are one of the few people who try to master this alien language, the people in charge will then tell you that you have to cross your fingers and pray to Jesus because your chances of speaking this language successfully depends on a degree of luck; the same sort of luck that people who hit the lottery jackpot infrequently experience.
This, in a nutshell, is why we have a handful of people hogging most of the wealth while the rest of us are fighting over who should own the crumbs. But what’s the answer? Vote for one of the very wealth hoggers apparently.
Trumpmaniacs will no doubt argue that he’s giving the establishment a boot up its arse. I wish this was true, but the fact of the matter is that Trump is the establishment – at least a tiny part of it. To give the establishment a meaningful boot up its arse you’d also have to do the dangerous thing and stick your middle finger up at the free markets. I don’t see any mainstream politicians doing that because if they did, they wouldn’t survive in the politics game for very long.
So that’s this month’s mouthing off done. I’ll be back next month to discuss whatever shite is going on. Hopefully it’ll be a bit more uplifting, but I won’t bank on it.
Take it easy.
R.D
I’d first like to give a shout out to all the people who have recently read, are reading or intend to read my books in the near future – particularly those folks on Goodreads who are leaving reviews. And an extra thanks to the people who have been helping me to locate more readers. I know I’m repeating myself but the least fun part about being a Skint Eastwood indie author is hunting down readers so if you’re up for reading my stuff and reviewing it or know of anybody who might be then feel free to drop me a DM and I’ll hook you up.
In other news Broke is approximately halfway there. However, in real terms it’s still going to be some time before it’s released into the public domain. I’m looking forward to the day, though, because it’s going to be a lot of fun. I know it virtually means nothing to say it, but I do think that what I’ve written so far is some of my sharpest writing to date.
I’m part of the way through reading a new collection of poems by Harry Whitewolf called Two Beat Newbie. I was over the moon to see a reference to my debut novel Spark. This is particularly touching because Whitewolf writes poetry which echoes many of my own sentiments with regards to the state of the world. So if you’re up for an anti-establishment ruckus in poetry form then I’d highly recommend checking out his books.
Here’s the link to Whitewolf’s website:
http://www.harrywhitewolf.com/
Last month I mouthed off about the EU referendum being a waste of everybody’s time. I figured that if I put out socio-political satire then I should probably try some serious commentary from time to time. Apologies if it came across a little abrupt. I was just bored of listening to people present their arguments as if it was going to solve any problems in the real world. I suppose this attitude stems from some some sound advice I once received from a good friend: before deciding which army you’re going to join, ask yourself if the war is worth fighting for. Normally it isn’t – as with the EU referendum. A so-called Brexit (which has got to be one of the most annoying media terms to be banded around in the last ten years) would be no different to busting out of a prison cell only to realise that at the end of the first corridor is just another locked door. Tell me I’m wrong.
Truth is that the significance of the EU referendum pales significantly in comparison to what’s going on in America right now. It’s been a trend of neoliberalism that when things barely work for ordinary people, the disciples of laissez-faire get it in their heads that shifting things even further to the right will make everything okay. In the UK we’ve had a largely unchallenged UKIP pushing the agenda rightward for the last however many years (they have played a significant role in putting this year’s EU referendum on the agenda); however, in America this has manifested in something even more alarming: the abomination that is Donald Trump.
If you don’t already know Trump is a trillionaire ex-wrestler who these days makes his money out of real estate and other business ventures. Research suggests that he’s so wealthy that he’s the only person in the world to have had a designer wig weaved out of the fur of native Tasmanian sugar gliders. He also believes that wincing at scientific facts (such as all the independent data which supports climate change) is tantamount to rebutting them. I remember watching a Fox News interview online and Bill O’Reilly asked for Trump’s thoughts on climate change. Trump then proceeded to make the elementary mistake of confusing weather and climate…
I could go on with the usual ridicule but in sum it’s hard to understand why anyone of sound mind would find him an attractive option to be the next President of the World.
Now as far as I see it the real frightening thing about all of this is that Trump is just the result of a system which has turned politicians into shrewd businessmen and shrewd businessmen into politicians. This is observable wherever in the world there is neoliberalism. I will make a prediction that the next step is going to be that businessmen no longer have to buy politicians with their wallets; they just become them. And because these two types of curious species are becoming virtually indistinguishable from each other, the general public will no longer be able to tell the difference – hence Trumpmania.
This is all very well if you accept that what we’re presently seeing is the natural order of our species and that governments should be ran no differently to, for example, Starbucks. However, I don’t. If you look at the details then you’ll find that in order to thrive under free market fundamentalism you first have to learn a complex language which hardly anyone speaks. This is the language of doing business and if you don’t speak it -which most people don’t- then your chances of getting off the treadmill are virtually nil.
Yet even if you are one of the few people who try to master this alien language, the people in charge will then tell you that you have to cross your fingers and pray to Jesus because your chances of speaking this language successfully depends on a degree of luck; the same sort of luck that people who hit the lottery jackpot infrequently experience.
This, in a nutshell, is why we have a handful of people hogging most of the wealth while the rest of us are fighting over who should own the crumbs. But what’s the answer? Vote for one of the very wealth hoggers apparently.
Trumpmaniacs will no doubt argue that he’s giving the establishment a boot up its arse. I wish this was true, but the fact of the matter is that Trump is the establishment – at least a tiny part of it. To give the establishment a meaningful boot up its arse you’d also have to do the dangerous thing and stick your middle finger up at the free markets. I don’t see any mainstream politicians doing that because if they did, they wouldn’t survive in the politics game for very long.
So that’s this month’s mouthing off done. I’ll be back next month to discuss whatever shite is going on. Hopefully it’ll be a bit more uplifting, but I won’t bank on it.
Take it easy.
R.D
