Isolation XVI:There Is A War?

"There is a war between the rich and poor, a war between the man and the woman. There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say there isn't. Why don't you come on back to the war? That's right, get in it. Why don't you come on back to the war? It's just beginning" - There is a War, Leonard Cohen

"When there is life, there is hope" - Cicero

Stephen Smith, the show's arts correspondent, quoted Cicero on Newsnight on Tuesday evening while presenting a piece about how various leaders, throughout history, have dealt with crises and wondering what Boris Johnson, nearly as famous for his boastful scholarship of antiquity as he is for his reckless inattention to detail, his vanity, and his selfishness, might do now to help us through this crisis.

Where there is life, indeed there is hope - but for over 26,000 people in the UK now there is no longer hope because there is no longer life. Many thousands, millions, more grieve their loss yet some still protect Johnson and his Brexit death cult. My dad, an otherwise wonderful man but a Brexit supporter, said "there's no point crying over spilt milk". Which is odd from a 79 year old man who has a meltdown if his VCR doesn't tape the Moto GP. Priorities.

The nurses, doctors, care home workers, and other frontline workers are now no longer people so much as they are soldiers, heroes, and, eventually, martyrs. As such, instead of being paid properly or given adequate PPE so they can 'fight' the 'war' against Covid-19 while the decision makers hide behind them, they are applauded, showered with platitudes, and felt sorry for. Heroes die heroically in wars and if the government can keep the war talk up then we can believe they've died 'fighting' an enemy rather than simply doing a job that has, for the last decade particularly, been undervalued and underappreciated. Smooth talking Tory bullshitter Tobias Ellwood suggested the Red Arrows can fly through the air as we all applaud their brave sacrifice before returning to our quizzes, box sets, and ordering things we don't need (or even really want) from Amazon.

A spectacular waste of money, an empty meaningless gesture, and, contravening the government's own guidelines, clearly not essential work. The Red Arrows can work from home for now. Let's, instead, just pay these people properly and provide them with the PPE they need to do the job. Johnson, Hancock, and Ellwood sending the frontline 'troops' out to do their job without it is the equivalent of Douglas Haig using soldiers, human beings, as cannon fodder in Passchendaele and the Somme during WWI.

Over two million died and Haig is now remembered as the Butcher of the Somme. Johnson and Hancock's negligence will, surely, to historians, look equally unwise and possibly, hopefully - if there's any justice, criminal. Panorama, this week, exposed just how deep government lying about the lack of PPE has gone. Out of date and next to useless consignments of PPE delivered with stickers on them saying they should not be used after 2019 (covering stickers that say their use by date was 2016 or even 2009), paper towels listed individually as PPE items, and pairs of gloves registered as two separate items.

Today's the last day of April and it's the day that Matt Hancock promised the government would be testing 100,000 people a day. We're not even halfway there and nobody's even surprised. Outraged sure, but surprised - no. A government built on lies will lie and lie some more when backed into a corner. Hancock's not even the worst of them. Boris Johnson, earlier and now mostly forgotten, had promised 250,000 tests are day - and he wasn't even talking about his own paternity tests.

Johnson's probably the most notorious liar in British history, certainly his lying has had the most lethal consequence seen during my life time. Maybe we should cut him some slack though. He's had a busy year. Who else can say that, in the last twelve months, they've become Prime Minister, won an election, got divorced, got engaged, had a baby (his 6th, 7th, 8th, maybe 9th, maybe more, who's counting?), and been partially responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of people?

The reason lying, and Johnson's lying in particular, has not outraged and appalled everyone in the country is because, in recent years, lying has become more normalised and accepted in the UK than elsewhere (except in Trump's USA - one of only two countries with a higher death toll - it passed 60,000 yesterday - no biggie, some states are coming out of lockdown) is down to a class of politicians who have weaponised lying and used it as a tool to bully their opponents.

The public face of that type of politician is none other than Boris fucking Johnson. Criminally negligent, dog-whistle racist, serial adulterer, lying piece of shit Boris Johnson. His cabinet of toadies, yes men, incompetent buffoons, and downright nasty pieces of work are a cabinet built in his own image. Inspired by the man to serve the man and never the country. The minute's silence that took place for 'fallen' NHS workers on Tuesday morning should have, my friend Colin neatly pointed out, have been followed by a sustained ten minutes of booing and jeering for Johnson and his court of cronies, for those that have made a disaster exponentially worse than it should have been.

For those with so much blood on their hands they will never be able to wash it off. For those who should be ashamed to ever show their faces in public again without a huge public apology and a criminal trial. But the Panorama exposure, the astronomical death toll, and every other thing they've done that's absolutely stinking the place out right now. That can all be covered up by simply opening up another window in the culture war.

A culture war where, if you don't back the government - a terrible, lying, untrustworthy, and now deadly government, you're the traitor. You're the bad guy. Veganism, sexism, racism, and homophobia have all been weaponised by the far right but nothing has been weaponised as much, and to such tragic effect, as nationalism. It's unpatriotic to criticise your government at a time of crisis. Is it? Fuck off. It's unpatriotic to allow tens of thousands of people to die because your bellicose and jingoistic ideology can't adapt to the facts.

Soon after Panorama had been aired Twitter was taken over by the usual suspects accusing those that have been angered by Johnson's criminal negligence of being Leftist agitators happy to see the UK death toll rise to prove their point. Which, at least, admits their points have been proven. It's an odd take though, because Jeremy Corbyn's followers inability to do anything but argue among themselves and rage against the BBC would suggest that these 'Leftist agitators' would neither have watched the programme nor believed any of its findings to be true.

The culture war now is a pretty simple one. Your money or your life? Do we kill off thousands more, mostly elderly, people or do we get the economy up and running again? Is it really that important if your parents and grandparents live? What if they live but they live like poor people? Is that even life? What if they don't help Jeff Bezos to his next Space Invader score level of wealth? There are sufficient numbers of people so embedded in the capitalist system of aspirational living that these are questions we are actually asking. Do we let our family die or do we build that extension to the house?

It's a sad thought to think there may soon be extensions in houses around the country built for the owners' elderly parents to retire in that will sit eerily quiet because our greed for money was greater than our desire to keep people alive. Nobody wants their own family to die but many are willing to take a risk it won't happen to them. You'd think this would have taught them it can happen to them - and, if they continue as they are doing, it will.

I truly believe that Boris Johnson is the most dishonest, and dangerous, man that has lived in Britain during my life time. When this is all over he should be, along with his even bigger cunt of a mate Donald Trump, put in an international court (if they still exist) and tried for criminal negligence. Like a war trial.

We're not in a war but those who say we are, and use it to excuse their own culpability for this mess, should be treated as if we were. No-one asks for revenge or retribution. Simply truth. Those who can't give it now should prepare themselves for an eternity of shame. War, if you want it, is over - it has been for decades. If you continue to perpetrate the myth that it isn't then you are the war criminal and you should thank your lucky stars that we've moved on from treating criminals, war or otherwise, in the way you probably think we should.

Boris Johnson. Donald Trump. Go directly to jail. Do not pass Go. Do not collect £200. Do not grab any pussy on your way and do not have a number of children that, like the death tolls of the nations you were supposed to look after, can no longer even be counted. In fact, just like the coronavirus you have so enabled, fuck off, fuck off, and fuck off again. And when you've done that. Fuck off a bit more.