Saturday 31 December 2011

never brought to mind or party likes it's the year 1932

Franรงois the head is certainly ready to party. Daily Mail writer Dominick Sandbrooke presents an interesting, though rather bleak and depressing, article paralleling the political and economic framework of the year to come with that dark period eighty years ago.

The analysis is not a condemnation or pronoun-cement of doom but does offer some stark similarities in mood and faith that are in turn some stark warnings. Though I think when there is profit to be made from social anxieties and fearful portrayals it is hard to escape corporate and media traps, the world, I think, will not go down the same path. There has been an embarrassment (embarrassment as a unit of measure, like the cup of kindness that we all share as well) of disappointment and discouragement, but rather than bringing the world to the brink of chaos, maybe positive things will come of this frustration--a backlash that steamrolls injustice, avarice and gentrification. Predictions are notoriously difficult to make, and perhaps now that Mr. Sandbrooke has put his reporting out there, though he never posed it as anything more than a question, a possibility, maybe he has jinxed it, our future guarded from all cheerless best-guesses. We can resist the influence-peddlers and propagandists and make this coming year a bright one, though hope and pride both humble before the lessons of history.