Good people must stop tolerating LIARS

It is something I will seek to explain to my son as he gets older – there are three types of people in life. (1) People who care about others who seek and stand up for truth and morality  (2) People that favour appearances and gratification – for them morality is variably their camouflage and/or an obstacle to be bludgeoned / hurdled (3) People who care – but lack the will to stand up and be counted.

Nobody joins a political party to remain silent and so they divide into two groups – those that struggle to tell the truth on behalf of others and those who lie and manipulate to serve themselves. This is the true divide in contemporary political life the world over – and it has been this way for a very long time, Plato’s Republic was in part a warning about the societal corruption of the day.

This is the choice that always faces any vaguely functional democracy – it is a muddied choice as political parties divide internally along these lines as well. One should be suspicious of groups with rigid on-message unity (Get Brexit Done!) – for they are guided by expediency, they pivot around tyrants like Trump, Johnson or Blair.

Selfish people will fight like rats in a sack for control of a narrative (for that is power) – but this should never be mistaken for any concern for the truth. Careerists lack the humility and the motivation to engage in dialectic, all that matters to them is leverage, appearances and victory.

The real battle in politics (and journalism and education) is not between left and right, Corbynistas and Blairites, Tory and Labour or Republican and Democrat. The good fight can only be fought by people with a vocation and some knowledge of it – their struggle is against people who will deploy any camouflage / lie to advance their status, career, material wealth and power.

Careerism transcends left and right – the entire political spectrum has its opportunists. For every Farage there is a Chuka Umunna, for every Michael Gove there is a John Mann – and yes Momentum will have its sophists that are harder to spot.  

The societal balance between those with a vocation and those with a career is shockingly important. As the balance tips towards vocation then moral accountability gains strength, as it sways towards the selfish then expediency and lies gain faux credibility.

Credibility is a word you will hear a lot in the months ahead as the careerists in the political / media establishment hug themselves with delight about the defeat of Jeremy Corbyn and work ruthlessly to brow-beat those with a vocation within the Labour movement to give up and fall silent.

The reason why careerists fear and loathe people with a vocation is because it exposes them – it threatens their ability to pass themselves off as people that care – their only hope is to marginalise vocations – to bury their truth under lies.

So the corporate media and the politicians that have worked tirelessly to smash any chance of Labour winning the last election (including many within the Labour movement) will froth with fake concern about the direction that Labour should take next. They will conclude with crocodile tears that what Labour needs is a ‘credible’ leader – someone who is just like them, a careerist who can be relied upon to look after hacks and lobbyists.

The battle lines are already drawn – Rebecca Long Bailey will be the choice of those with a vocation and she will be ranged up against any number of careerists who will not hesitate to smear her as an extremist loser. They will mutter that Labour is a ‘broad church’ and that they represent some mythical middle ground of competence and pragmatism – in reality the Labour movement is not a broad church at all , it is sharply split between those that truly care about others and those that don’t.

The majority of the membership does care – and this represents a serious problem for establishment careerists – so they will attempt (once again) to discredit the membership and fight all democratisation of the party. There is nothing that selfish people fear more than the participation of a moral majority, so they will fight tooth and nail to deprive that majority of a voice.

Depriving morality of representation is of course what this is all about – as we said on the eve of the election:

That we even have a genuine choice today is a minor miracle – given the united hostility of the establishment with all of its agency and resources. Don’t allow anybody to fool you into thinking that this election is about Brexit – it is actually about choice….choose wisely.

The election may be lost but the war is far from over – those who voted for Johnson largely fill the demographics of old age and poor education. A decade or so from now much of the tory vote will be dead and a new generation of switched on youngsters, many filled with the passion of genuine vocation will be ready to claim the political mainstream.

For now – for right now, it is absolutely vital that cynical and wholly dishonest careerists are prevented from re-establishing their control over the Labour movement, for they will insist (of course) that Labour must serve their ends;  they ache for Labour to be Blairite again –  an empty vehicle of spin and expediency, aligned to the needs of capital and establishment power. 

The only way for politics to have any meaning is for the vocational life to steadfastly refute the lies of  the careerist life. Those with a vocation must ignore utterly the self-serving lies and hubris of the corporate media, especially The Guardian and the BBC.

Mainstream ‘journalists’ have a built a career out of disguising the propaganda of the establishment as truth and wouldn’t be where they are if they did otherwise. These people are self censoring and self limiting – they have chosen career over truth and that must never be forgotten.

No political victory based on the abandonment of principle is worth anything – for those with a vocation there really is no choice but to continue the never ending search for the truth and to speak out.

Where do you stand? Is being on the winning team all that matters – no matter how empty the victory? Are you ready to fall silent because confronting the careerists is tough and dangerous work? 

One thing that screams out to me in recent days is that the distinction between those with a career and those with a vocation needs to be made much more sharply and without apology – it is time to stop giving obviously selfish people the benefit of the doubt.

Sophists delight in passing themselves off as decent people – it gives them the proverbial ring of gygees – a cloak of invisibility behind which they can do whatever they like. 

Alan Clarke famously remarked that: 

There are no true friends in politics. We are all sharks circling, and waiting, for traces of blood to appear in the water.

This is the lie – the only thing that matters they say is consuming each other – but there is a truth here also. Careerists are utterly ruthless and focused – they won’t ponder for a millisecond if they are being fair and truthful about their opponents – good people by contrast must pause and reflect, but this must not lead (as it too often does) to self doubt and timidity.

Simply put, it is time to end our tolerance of LIARS and to fight them even harder – after all they will not tolerate truth being spoken – quite the reverse. 

You need only look at what has happens to truth tellers the world over – environmental activists are murdered in many nations, Greta Thurnerg is particularly feared  – both Trump and Putin both felt the need to smear and insult her. 

Look at what has befallen  Ed Snowden, Jeremy Corbyn and Julian Assange: one an exile living in permanent fear of his life, one viciously vilified and smeared daily by the media for five years and one being slowly tortured to death in Belmrash Prison by isolation and refused health care. Their ‘crime’ has been to tell the truth. 

Enough with the apologies and the compromises and the tactics – these things are for careerists, that is their game so leave them to it. 

We must not succumb to the gas-lighting of the usual suspects any more – I will say to my son that there is no alternative to humbly seeking the truth in dialectic and then courageously speaking it as best one can.

Good people must speak without fear or compromise and let the liars be damned.

To quote a certain Michael Foot – a man who had a vocation:

“We are not here in this world to find elegant solutions, pregnant with initiative, or to serve the ways and modes of profitable progress. No, we are here to provide for all those who are weaker and hungrier, more battered and crippled than ourselves. That is our only certain good and great purpose on earth, and if you ask me about those insoluble economic problems that may arise if the top is deprived of their initiative, I would answer, To hell with them. The top is greedy and mean and will always find a way to take care of themselves. They always do.”

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