When you said that the pager explosives suggest a Hollywood script, what went through my mind was the Joker scheme from the first Batman movie in which various household items (shampoo, moisturizer, hair dye etc.) had been laced with poison and no-one knew what ones they could use. Knowing how various news items have been “pitched” (rehearsed?) by fictional vehicles (not least, the rise of Zelensky), I would not be surprised if this Joker manoeuvre was a mooted plot in some government office.
I am assuming that the Republican/ Democrat divide in the US is like that of Tory/ Labour in the UK. There is a visceral impulse animating most voters. I have always thought I could never vote Tory. Every cell in my body reacts against that. And this is due to the fact that from birth we in the UK have been indoctrinated into this theatrical notion of the Tories as landed gentry fox hunting snobs and Labour as cloth capped proles. I would unhesitatingly denounce this image from at least the point of Thatcher’s initial election. But even before that point, it was an ostensible Labour PM – Jim Callaghan – who told the Trades Union Conference that “the party is over”. (“Party” in two senses!)
So the notion of Snob/Prole was probably never applicable. And by the time we got to Tony Blair, the show should have been over. Thatcher called Blair’s “New Labour” party her finest achievement and explained why: that by that point there was effectively no difference between Labour and Tory.
But the image persists. As does the visceral pressure. Which I certainly felt on the last UK election where I actually did indeed vote Tory for the simple reason that, in this inverted reality, the Tories were, ironically, the only party which, at least verbally, were committed to at least one part of the working population i.e. the farmers. And there was no way I wanted to aid Starmer’s Labour party by doing what I had done up till then i.e. vote SNP as a tactical move in the Tory stronghold of the South West.
And that visceral revulsion still animates me in this confession!
Re: science fiction as a kind of regressive comforting fantasy, I think that David Bowie quite brilliantly deconstructed his early hit “Space Oddity” with a later re-interpretation whereby, playing the part of the song’s Major Tom in the accompanying video, instead of going into outer space, he simply walks into a padded cell and sings from a straightjacket – all this in preparation for his “Ashes to Ashes” song where he reveals that “Major Tom’s a junkie/ Strung out in heaven’s high hitting an all-time low”. Thus the voyage into outer space is revealed as a trip into inner space. And on reflection, I think that was the secret appeal of “Lost in Space” to me as a child.
When you said that the pager explosives suggest a Hollywood script, what went through my mind was the Joker scheme from the first Batman movie in which various household items (shampoo, moisturizer, hair dye etc.) had been laced with poison and no-one knew what ones they could use. Knowing how various news items have been “pitched” (rehearsed?) by fictional vehicles (not least, the rise of Zelensky), I would not be surprised if this Joker manoeuvre was a mooted plot in some government office.
I am assuming that the Republican/ Democrat divide in the US is like that of Tory/ Labour in the UK. There is a visceral impulse animating most voters. I have always thought I could never vote Tory. Every cell in my body reacts against that. And this is due to the fact that from birth we in the UK have been indoctrinated into this theatrical notion of the Tories as landed gentry fox hunting snobs and Labour as cloth capped proles. I would unhesitatingly denounce this image from at least the point of Thatcher’s initial election. But even before that point, it was an ostensible Labour PM – Jim Callaghan – who told the Trades Union Conference that “the party is over”. (“Party” in two senses!)
So the notion of Snob/Prole was probably never applicable. And by the time we got to Tony Blair, the show should have been over. Thatcher called Blair’s “New Labour” party her finest achievement and explained why: that by that point there was effectively no difference between Labour and Tory.
But the image persists. As does the visceral pressure. Which I certainly felt on the last UK election where I actually did indeed vote Tory for the simple reason that, in this inverted reality, the Tories were, ironically, the only party which, at least verbally, were committed to at least one part of the working population i.e. the farmers. And there was no way I wanted to aid Starmer’s Labour party by doing what I had done up till then i.e. vote SNP as a tactical move in the Tory stronghold of the South West.
And that visceral revulsion still animates me in this confession!
Re: science fiction as a kind of regressive comforting fantasy, I think that David Bowie quite brilliantly deconstructed his early hit “Space Oddity” with a later re-interpretation whereby, playing the part of the song’s Major Tom in the accompanying video, instead of going into outer space, he simply walks into a padded cell and sings from a straightjacket – all this in preparation for his “Ashes to Ashes” song where he reveals that “Major Tom’s a junkie/ Strung out in heaven’s high hitting an all-time low”. Thus the voyage into outer space is revealed as a trip into inner space. And on reflection, I think that was the secret appeal of “Lost in Space” to me as a child.