Revelations from Eurovision

I am a regular viewer of the Eurovision song contest and have watched if for a few decades. I am not a fan, being too old to enjoy the popular music, but I enjoy seeing what is popular and enjoy the blatant nationalism that is on show – it is far better to see this fought out with dancers and rigged votes rather than soldiers and bombs.

This year was rather different. I was worried that the acts could have been created by AI algorithms. The majority seemed to be long-legged pretty girls, posing, without much clothing, in front of equally revealing backing dancers doing their sexually suggestive routines. The lyrics of  “na na na” or “rim tim tagi dim”  being equally banal and singable in all languages. This was all standard fare.

The intrusion of genderism was well on show. Anything queer or non-cis-het was going to do well, even a talentless, screeching, queer witch doing horror film impressions did quite well. It is no surprise, however, that Switzerland won the jury vote by a huge margin. It had it all – a catchy chorus (“Ooh ooh I ooh”), a gamine boy dressed in girls’ clothes, an adult with childrens’ pompom accessories and a pointer in the lyrics to non-Binary happiness. Perhaps this was also ChatGPT’s answer to what is a winning entry.

Whatever program the UK had used had a serious bug. Although it got the lyrics, gay boy singer and backing dancers all correct, indeed the song was pretty catchy, setting the whole thing as a raunchy sex scene in a lavatory was a serious error (perhaps they reused some of pornhub’s code by mistake). It cost them dearly as, although the juries thought they had followed the instructions well, the popular vote was mostly struck by the bad taste and vulgarity and awarded them no votes whatsoever.

I may have thought the biggest revelation was going to come from Ireland’s Bambi Thug entry. Indeed this did look like a cast member from the Book of Revelations. I was wrong. The biggest surprise was the Israeli vote. It’s no surprise that the national juries tended to give it low scores. Anti-Israeli sentiment at the event was high. Their singer was under round the block guard for her safety, had to sing against a barrage of booing and knew that there were ongoing Pro-Palestinian demonstrations outside the hall. The juries kept faith with this sentiment, but the popular vote did not.

Although none of the national juries had given high marks to Israel it received the second highest popular vote, with 15 countries giving it the highest score possible. The song was not so bad that it warranted the extremely low national jury votes, this was clearly political point scoring against Israel. This gives rise to the second revelation; the public knows this bias is ongoing and does not share the ruling class’s animus against Israel. There are not enough jews in Europe to push the voting in this manner and the Israeli song was not so spectacularly good that it blew all the competition out of the water. What happened here was that the European public saw what was being done to Israel and wanted a corrective voice to be heard. The populations of Western European nations, in the phone-in polls, voted Israel the most possible votes. I think the silent majority, fed up with the biased reporting of this war, found a chance to have their say, for once, and shouted out their support for Israel.

Through this chink we were able to see that the media’s reportage, suggestive of widespread support for Hamas’s attack on Israel, may be inaccurate and that many people want to see Israel defend itself and defeat this terrorist group.

The War on the West by Douglas Murray

If you have read his earlier books, then, it is probably true, that you have already read this one. The enemies of western civilisation have been in Douglas Murrays crosshairs for some time; the loss Christianity as a guiding principle for the west, growing individualism and alienation in society, and the emergence of Islamism as an power with imperial ambitions and the myriad problems when our society no longer seems to hold ethical views in common. In many ways this book is simply a joining of the previous books into an overall thesis. This is no bad thing as Douglas Murray writes well with a clever turn of phrase and an acute eye for many of the vagaries and stupidities of or present cultural situation. He is also droll and frequently very witty, so even though the reader may feel some repitition from previous volumes it is never irksome.

Those unfamiliar with his earlier works will benefit more. This is a good summary account of the perils that we face by being blind, sometimes willfully so, to the threats our civilisation faces and by the dangers of the unintended consequences of those who do not think clearly and fully about the plans to which they agree. Like ‘Chesterton’s fence‘ we should always be aware of why certain things are as they are before we blithely change them. Western Civilisation evolved over millenia of painful years to become the the thing is it now; equality under the law, freedom of thought and expression, universal sufferage and presumptions of tolerance were neither quickly nor easily won. However, they can be easily and rapidly thrown away, especially by people who presume that those who came before us were all bumbing buffoons who did not match our present day intelligence and perception.

Those who see our history as something unversally bad and shameful, something with no redeeming features or successes, do tend to be in the asceency in our arts and academia. As they profess themselves, they are keener to deconstruct and take down what our forebears created, than to assess and modify. These are dangerous people and we should be careful that we do not allow them to lead us, sleepwalking, back to medieval barbarism as they have in some areas of the Middle East. This book will give you some guidance as how to remain vigilant and aware.

A pleasant side-effect of reading this book was that I realised how poorly informed I was about aspects of my own cultural heritage. In an attempt to rectify this deficit I found, and started watching, the BBC series Civilisation by Kenneth Clark. Though mainly about the development of art it is a fascinating story of humanity’s acheivements in the West and well worth watching. Made in 1969, it is unlikely that it would be commisioned today as it does view many of the magnificent artistic creations of the past as worthy of wonder, awe and respect. Currents programs would prefer we forgot such things and focus instead on our society’s bad behaviour and crimes. Such a one sided view is neither helpful nor healthy and may lead us to destroy what is good before we have worked out what will replace it.

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There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.”

G.K. Chesterton

The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt

There are many things for which I am thankful. After finishing this book I can add another to the list. I am thankful that I am not bringing up children now. My own three kids are now all adults, with kids of their own, each happy and successful. Whatever mistakes I made, it seems that they weathered these without lasting sequeleae. The big concern in my parenting days was around “smacking”. Although we did not avoid this I could probably count on  the fingers of one hand the number of times was used. Rarity seems to have made this more effective and I can imagine familiarity could have bred contempt.

Looking at my own kids, they do not use corporal punishment. They do seem to have to work much harder and much more creatively to ensure good child rearing. It seems to work as well as anything I did but I am not sure I would have had the wit or stamina to follow their strategy. But after reading this book I now know that are facing much greater challenges than I ever did.

In “The Anxious Generation” Jonathan Haidt, the social psychologist, addresses the rise in mental distress in our current youths. Some have argued that this may be a moral panic and more related to increased talk than to any true rise in distress or disorder. However, the book makes it quite clear that there is a real rise in mental distress by looking at ‘hard’ data rather than just reporting and, on multiple measures, we are seeing a significant rise.

The causes of this are harder to pin down and it can be difficult to be sure that one is not mistaking correlation for causation. However, he makes a compelling case, backed by convincing data that two factors are of great importance. Firstly the oveprotectiveness that has caused us to withdraw our children from unsupervised real-life pay has meant we have robbed children of the important learning that real-life risky play affords them. At the same time, with the aid of ubiquitous smartphones and social media, we have allowed our children to play unsupervised in the virtual world with all the risks that this entails. At their most vulnerable time, when children are trying to understand about risks, about what is is to be an adult, about their sexuality, we have abandoned children to the care of social media companies in the hope that they will ensure they are allright.

Fortunately these are things we can do something about. However, I know how hard it is to refuse a child something that “everyone else has” and parents need support to boulster their nerve. Parents, and the community, also need to show solidarity saying that we know this is wrong and we won’t take part in it. If you need a spur to action and the rising rates of anxiety, depression and self-harm are not enough, or seem to complex, then perhaps a single example from the book may help. Just recall that now, it is quite likely that a young boy will have seen anal sex before he has even had his first kiss – this is not a healthy way for children to develop.

I would strongly recommend this book not just because I think people will find it a valuable and informative read but alse because I hope it will promote futher community awareness of a major risk which we seem to be sleep-walking towards.

Latibulating through Christmas.

It was another strange, almost melancholy, Christmas this year. We had met with the children a week ago in a park equidistant to all of us now that we stay in three different countries in the U.K.. This was fine, we had a meal in a cafe, exchanged presents and spoiled the grandchildren with sugar and E numbers. It stayed largely dry with only mild drizzle which didn’t dampen anyone’s spirits. This being done it left us back alone for Christmas day itself.

We followed all the usual rituals (except watchnight service as this was cancelled), prepared the usual overly large meal, watched the Queen’s speech and drank alcohol far too early in the day. We exchanged presents as usual and in the evening we all met through the wonders of video conferencing. This was great, as the noisy din made by the grandchildren reminded us of the joys of being a grandparent rather than a parent; we only have to cope with the noise for short periods and don’t have to deal with the fallout from broken toys, sibling rivalry or exhausted batteries.

As the pandemic undulates through our communities we continue to hide in our corner (latibulate) until the danger might have passed. We wait and contemplate how worried we should be by our recent Omicron wave. This quite life does lead one to contemplation and this Christmas I realised that, even before this coronavirus altered our lives, I knew something was seriously missing from Christmas and that the festival as gone awry.

I found that the article below, by Paul Kingsnorth, struck a chord with me and explained things much better than I ever could. I urge you to have a look and see if it chimes with your festive mood.

Nadolig Llawen i bawb a Blwyddyn Newydd Dda !

https://unherd.com/2021/12/why-we-cling-on-to-christmas/