Allo Pepys

Warming Up

8078/21009

Though I prefer to make my blog about Soleros and personal humiliation and how slapstick is not funny when it happens in real life, especially to a bleeding old man, I do have to have half an eye on future historians reading this (even though they will almost certainly not exist due to the planet dying one way or another within the next two decades). I don't think it's arrogant or hubristic to say that this blog will definitely form the backbone of the history of this period, with my first hand recollections of seeing some historical events on TV and also writing a lot about what it's like to be a comedian who nearly, but didn't quite make it, who is constantly dieting but still putting on weight. I am like Samuel Pepys off parmesan.

I'm like a Samuel Pepys who started writing a blog just over a year after the Great Fire of London (as my only recollections of 9/11 are joking about it happening on the 9th November - an obvious joke, but one that only I am relentless enough to pursue to my death and beyond).

So I should occasionally turn my eye to the big events in the world that are happening if not around me, in the same vicinity, as long as you count our entire planet as a vicinity. I write from the relative safety of Hitchin, Herts (oh how the future historians are laughing at that irony - he didn't know what would happen there!) , but still my wise old eye can observe, when I am not playing internet poker or looking at pornography. Both of which involve too many bad beats.

There are some dire predictions and possibly unrealistic hopes for the new (old) President of the USA and I don't know which side of lunatics will turn out to be right (though I know where my money would go if I had to bet on it). Regardless of whether this is a fascist regime or just a government full of billionaires who are determined to aggressively and angrily throw their hearts out to the world, I would say that Trump's attitude towards the climate is probably going to do a fair amount to destroy us all on its own. It should manage to turn us all orange like him before we go though. And it's fair to say that old fashioned ideas of democracy are pretty much out the window, at least for now. Maybe a good World War will manage to reset us all to realise that we should be looking out for each other. Admittedly we'll be a ragbag of mutants by then, but that should also mean we are less judgemental of those who are different. And at least we can turn on the normies in their nuclear bunkers.

The thing I'd most like to see change about American democracy (apart from everything) would be the concept of Presidential pardon. What the fuck is that bullshit? It's been roundly abused by (at least) both the last two Presidents and is a ridiculous notion in any case. I don't actually mind the January 6th prisoners being released, mainly because they never managed to apprehend and lock up the ring leader of that day (I wonder who it could have been, but whoever it was managed to trick those hapless fools into doing his bidding - at least he's got them released now though), but also cos I think it'd be kind of fun just to forgive everyone who did a crime on one random day a year. Could be April 3rd, could be November 12th. You only find out once the year is up whether you won the crime lottery, but if your crime was fully committed on that day, then you don't go to jail and you get a free t shirt. It would add a certain frisson. Just don't do a crime on a leap year or your odds are not as good.

Biden's pardons are if anything worse than Trump's and how the fuck do you pardon someone for something that they haven't been accused of and apparently haven't done? Are they just pardoned for everything they ever did? Does it cover future crimes? If they are innocent are they obligated to do the crime in order to make the pardon legit?

Simple solution to this America - just let the courts decide. Which would work if you didn't have a Supreme Court stuffed with political choices. Let's face it , democracy went wrong long before Trump came along. I don't blame anyone for not trusting politicians any more - they are all responsible for what has happened. I am only confused by why they decided to put their trust in someone so obviously untrustworthy and self-serving.

I always looked back at 1930s Germany and wondered how people allowed things to go the way they did and then so enthusiastically backed the results. If I'd been there I would have given Hitler a bloody nose. Or so I thought. It turns out, non-existent future historians, that when you're faced with all this stuff it's just like being in a warm bath that is very gradually being heated up further. Actually that sounds nice. It's not like that at all. Until the bath gets really hot that's a pleasant thing and you can always just get out of the bath when you start to go red. It's more like being a person who doesn't want any trouble and likes to think other people will sort things out.

It turns out that no one steps in to say it's wrong for a Presidential candidate to mock disabled people or that he's admitted grabbing women by the genitals or that he's been accused and found guilty of much worse. And once that's been established there's no stopping anyone who has no shame.

Enough people will say the first Nazi salute wasn't a Nazi salute at all and then at the next rally, Musk will do the same gesture, smiling to himself, saying out loud that his heart is going out to everyone and the supporters will, with a smile on their face, throw out their hearts to him, demonstrating for sure that the gesture was benign. Maybe they'll say Hail Heart as they continue to do it and eventually just HH. And then it will just be what everyone does at the beginning and end of every rally. Not as a Nazi salute. The exact opposite. It looks the same, but it's something very different.

And although lots of people, maybe most people, don't like any of this, they either can't be bothered to do anything about it (like vote) or feel there's nothing they can do. One of two of them might write a blog, but that's essentially the same thing, just with a sense of moral superiority. The bathwater of history washes over us all, and all of us are getting hot and somehow dirty. And not in a good way. Unless we're really into the uniforms.

Or maybe it'll all just be all right and we can sit back and wait for it all to blow over. That's a good idea. I can't remember any time when they didn't essentially work.

What's going to happen to Hitchin guys? If you have time travel by now please come back and warn me. You owe it to me for all this A Grade research material.

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