A Ricochet Science Experiment
The object of this post is to determine how many Ricochet readers' heads will explode in response to an item that has nothing to do with Sarah Palin.
The British actor/writer Russell Brand, who is either -- depending on your taste -- a comedic genius or an insufferable git (or possibly both), has written an editorial for the Guardian in which he tries to come to grips with the violence convulsing English cities. As you'll see, it contrasts somewhat with the Peter Hitchens piece I cited yesterday.
Brand is a self-confessed ex-lout, so he brings an insider's perspective to the spectacle of young people wantonly trashing their own communities. More than that, the piece is striking for the absolute confidence it conveys in the left's enduring dominion over the ideas of love, compassion, and generosity of spirit. There's an analogy to be drawn to American politics -- the received stereotypes of the Democrat as inclusive, tolerant beacon of kindness and the Republican as narrow-eyed, business-suited, other-bashing Scrooge -- but the Brand and Hitchens pieces are most useful for the joint portrait they present of the two poles of British political culture. Summed up, Brand's prescription for the unrest is love the lads more. Hitchens would likely prefer that they receive six of the best bending over a chair.
Hit it, Russ:
I should here admit that I have been arrested for criminal damage for my part in anti-capitalist protest earlier in this decade. I often attended protests and then, in my early 20s, and on drugs, I enjoyed it when the protests lost direction and became chaotic, hostile even. I was intrigued by the anarchist "Black bloc", hooded and masked, as, in retrospect, was their agenda, but was more viscerally affected by the football "casuals" who'd turn up because the veneer of the protest's idealistic objective gave them the perfect opportunity to wreck stuff and have a row with the Old Bill.
That was never my cup of tea though. For one thing, policemen are generally pretty good fighters and second, it registered that the accent they shouted at me with was closer to my own than that of some of those singing about the red flag making the wall of plastic shields between us seem thinner.
I found those protests exciting, yes, because I was young and a bit of a twerp but also, I suppose, because there was a void in me. A lack of direction, a sense that I was not invested in the dominant culture, that government existed not to look after the interests of the people it was elected to represent but the big businesses that they were in bed with.
I felt that, and I had a mum who loved me, a dad who told me that nothing was beyond my reach, an education, a grant from Essex council (to train as an actor of all things!!!) and several charities that gave me money for maintenance. I shudder to think how disenfranchised I would have felt if I had been deprived of that long list of privileges.
That state of deprivation though is, of course, the condition that many of those rioting endure as their unbending reality. No education, a weakened family unit, no money and no way of getting any. JD Sports is probably easier to desecrate if you can't afford what's in there and the few poorly paid jobs there are taken. Amidst the bleakness of this social landscape, squinting all the while in the glare of a culture that radiates ultraviolet consumerism and infrared celebrity. That daily, hourly, incessantly enforces the egregious, deceitful message that you are what you wear, what you drive, what you watch and what you watch it on, in livid, neon pixels. The only light in their lives comes from these luminous corporate messages. No wonder they have their [expletive deleted] hoods up.
...
These young people have no sense of community because they haven't been given one. They have no stake in society because Cameron's mentor Margaret Thatcher told us there's no such thing.
If we don't want our young people to tear apart our communities then don't let people in power tear apart the values that hold our communities together.
As you have by now surely noticed, I don't know enough about politics to ponder a solution and my hands are sticky with blood money from representing corporate interests through film, television and commercials, venerating, through my endorsements and celebrity, products and a lifestyle that contributes to the alienation of an increasingly dissatisfied underclass. But I know, as we all intuitively know, the solution is all around us and it isn't political, it is spiritual. Gandhi said: "Be the change you want to see in the world."
In this simple sentiment we can find hope, as we can in the efforts of those cleaning up the debris and ash in bonhomous, broom-wielding posses. If we want to live in a society where people feel included, we must include them, where they feel represented, we must represent them and where they feel love and compassion for their communities then we, the members of that community, must find love and compassion for them.
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Re: A Ricochet Science Experiment
He is a bubblehead.
Sep '10
Re: A Ricochet Science Experiment
At risk of violating the Ricochet CoC, the rejoinder to Brand is that there's no community to form unless young men are taught that there's something they must keep in their pants besides their wallet.
Dec '10
Re: A Ricochet Science Experiment
I only read the excerpt, but I have to say his sentiments-- while naive and mostly wrong-- are much more self-aware than those of the average left-wing trustfarians that represent the social gene pool from which he swam to celebrity.
Look for him to have a Robert Downey Jr-esque semi-conversion in 5-10 years.
May '10
Re: A Ricochet Science Experiment
Judith, you may record in your lab notebook that my skull exploded at the moment he blamed Margaret Thatcher.
May '10
Re: A Ricochet Science Experiment
Jun '10
Re: A Ricochet Science Experiment
Compassion minus wisdom equals syrupy sentimentality and nothing more. The only thing that can change this is a good and personal mugging by reality.
Re: A Ricochet Science Experiment
Duly noted. I thought that might happen.
Feb '11
Re: A Ricochet Science Experiment
"my hands are sticky with blood money from representing corporate interests through film, television and commercials"
To use the term "blood" in connection with selling soap or cars, or whatever it is that he promotes, is truly obscene at a time when there is so much *real* bloodshed--and danger of much more--in the world.
Mar '11
Re: A Ricochet Science Experiment
Insufferable git (warning - clicking on the link takes you to a place that violates Ricochet CoC)).
"These young people have no sense of community because they haven't been given one. They have no stake in society because Cameron's mentor Margaret Thatcher told us there's no such thing." - Err, wrong in so many ways - it's the standard argument of the left in both the UK and US (and possibly Israel?). And, far from being Cameron's mentor, Mrs Thatcher is a true Conservative, whereas Cameron is a Liberal Conservative. Boris Johnson, the mayor of London, is more of a Thatcherite, and well worth reading.
May '10
Re: A Ricochet Science Experiment
"Hello, my name is Russell Brand. As a writer, I make things up. As an actor I make an outrageous living by playing make-believe. Now, I want you to believe that what I have to say reflects political reality..."
Jun '10
Re: A Ricochet Science Experiment
Brand: "there was a void in me. A lack of direction, a sense that I was not invested in the dominant culture, that government existed not to look after the interests of the people it was elected to represent but the big businesses that they were in bed with."
Subtext: the only way a void in a young person can be filled is by the over-arching, benevolent government. Sorry, if you're waiting for government to create your soul, it will be a long wait. This is why the destruction of the family and the marginalization of religion have created such societal chaos.
Re: A Ricochet Science Experiment
It often seems that all of contemporary pop culture may be reduced to two themes: losing lovers and loving losers.
I just don't know why people find either so interesting. I'd be really into a pop figure who wanted talk about maritime law and these most interesting developments in the southeastern Mediterranean.
Mar '11
Re: A Ricochet Science Experiment
Three cheers for maritime law.
As for Brand, I was really getting concerned that he was a moral idiot (in the literal sense) and complete buffoon--a man who neither knows what seriousness is nor is capable of it-- but thankfully he salvaged the whole interview by citing a tiresome platitude.
May '10
Re: A Ricochet Science Experiment
You know what? I agreed with Peter Hitchens and I also agree with this guy to a degree. He of course mixes up a lot of liberal nonsense into the whole thing, but there are some truths poking through in spite of that.
Ever heard of "Tough Love"?
Yes, these hoodlums need love. Love of the kind than values them and tells them they are worth something, but love that also does not shy away from correcting them when they are wrong.
Guess what-- society can't give them that to the degree they need it. It's in a healthy FAMILY that they can get it. A society can back up the family, or it can undermine it, so society still does have a role here, but it is secondary. It sounds like he dabbled in this kind of stuff because of the crazy society around him, but he pulled back because of his relatively better family upbringing, even though it doesn't sound like they used much of the "tough" side of love.
I also agree with him that our culture of consumerism is debasing, and gives people an incorrect way to measure their worth. I don't have a solution for that at a societal level, but a grounded family life would certainly help counteract that.
Edited on Aug 15, 2011 at 7:57amJun '10
Re: A Ricochet Science Experiment
The Christectomy performed on their young people was successful. The patient lives, but has no purpose or shame.
Aug '11
Re: A Ricochet Science Experiment
Most of the rioters weren't political players in anti-capitalist events. They were mostly kids of an underclass whose last year of school was at age 16. Most were young guys with plenty of testosterone and aggression, who need threads and cool stuff so they can look like their wealthy football heroes. They haven't exactly been oppressed by the long period of labour government since Tony Blair was elected in 1994. When Cameron was voted in, he didn't apply specific cuts to destroy the rioters' benefits, so their looting and violence is not so very political. I imagine there were political people who wanted to control the riots to make statements on class issues, however.
I don't think there should be any special treatment of the rioters as anything but vandals. They shouldn't get more benefits, like blood money, to allow the rest of Britain to carry on quietly. The rioters need to appear in court.
Jul '10
Re: A Ricochet Science Experiment
What a total clown. The takeaway line for my money:
These young people have no sense of community because they haven't been given one.
Perhaps they'll unite in condescension for this pathetic scrap of dribble. The reflexive swipe at any political figure that suggests people are strong enough to find their own way if challenged. The expectation that there should be a queue somewhere in the great mother state where one can wait interminably to pick up ones sense of community, as if the great mother state could reliably prepare and deliver the required notices. The personal loathing because his work was considered to be of sufficient merit that a "corporation" [hissing from the peanut gallery as the villain twirls his mustache] sought his endorsement.
We roll our eyes and moan about vestigial Cold War social engineering enemy action and its influence on our polity. This boffin makes the Obama-Holder-Geithner axis seem almost sane.
Dec '10
Re: A Ricochet Science Experiment
"These young people have no sense of community because they haven't been given one. They have no stake in society because Cameron's mentor Margaret Thatcher told us there's no such thing.
If we don't want our young people to tear apart our communities then don't let people in power tear apart the values that hold our communities together."
The back-to-back incoherence of these two thoughts took me from the immediate threat of cranial explosion to compassion. The poor boy is deeply confused by leftism. He's not only drunk the kool-aid, it has been absorbed by his system and is coming out the other end as these pathetic puerile "ideas".
Conservatives like Margaret Thatcher are the only obstacles to his socialist Utopia, despite decades and decades of leftist leaders tearing "apart the values that hold our communities together." Values inculcated by Judaism and Christianity, like the dignity and infinite worth of the person as made in God's image, the covenant nature of marriage, the accountability to a Higher Authority, are the absolute antithesis of modern liberalism.
Chris Deleon is right. There is hope for Brand in his glimmers of self-awareness.
Feb '11
Re: A Ricochet Science Experiment
Antoine de St-Exupery pretty much explained it all:
A civilization is built on what is required of men, not on that which is provided for them
and
If you would have them be brothers, have them build a tower. But if you would have them hate each other, throw them corn.
Apr '11
Re: A Ricochet Science Experiment
So apparently it's not that hooliganism is bad in itself, it's just sad that the hooligans didn't choose better targets. If only they had burned down banks, looted the homes of stock brokers, and administered beatings to conservative politicians, it wouldn't be tragic at all.