THE SILVER LINING IN EVERYTHING - BY MR BIFFO

THE SILVER LINING IN EVERYTHING - by Mr Biffo

31/1/2017

I'm from the generation that was born long after World War 2, yet is still old enough to have a link to that era through my grandparents.

Though my dad's mum had died before I was born, his father continued to live in the house they'd bought on a leasehold back before the war. It didn't look like it had changed at all in the intervening decades - barring the removal of the Morrison air raid shelter which once doubled as a dining table.

The furniture, the decor - there was even a big, iron, range in the kitchen... I see these reality shows where families go "back in time" to spend a couple of weeks living like we did in the 30s, 40s or 50s... and just think "Oh - it looks like Grandad Rose's house".

My maternal grandparents' home was similar. They lived in a little rented bungalow with those lace doily things on the backs of their sofas, a pantry full of powdered mustard and custard, and a mangle in the garden, which I presume my nan used to wring out clothes, rather than flatten rats. My grandad had been a mechanic and chimneysweep - he still had his old brushes in the shed, should he ever fancy clambering up on the roof for an impromptu Cockney sing-a-long.

They had single-glazing, and in winter the house would get savagely cold - with frost on the inside of the windows. Getting from one room to another was a case of legging it between pockets of warmth, provided by a number of paraffin heaters placed in doorways. Most of the time, though, we just stayed in the kitchen, where the coal fire was always burning.

I remember my Nan getting up before dawn most mornings to prepare it for the coming day. We'd fetch in the coal from outside, I'd help her brush out the ash from the previous day's fire, scrunch up some newspaper as a firelighter, add some kindling, and then the coal. There was something comforting about the semi-ritualistic way we'd go about it.

I've no doubt that their life was tougher in lots of ways than we have it now - I mean, they lived through a full-on World War for pity's sake (though the closest my grandad came to action was hiding in a tank - albeit a watertank - from some Germans).

The Cuban Missile Crisis, the Cold War, recessions and rationing and energy crises... the 20th Century wasn't easy. But, I speculate, much of that felt like a step up from having bombs dropped on you... and between those moments of historic awfulness we made progress.

Massive advances in medicine and communications, the advent of the Welfare State... an increase in leisure time - not to mention the social changes which took us closer than ever to equality for all.

I don't think it's entirely nostalgia talking when I say that in a lot of ways it feels preferable to where we find ourselves at now...

GRANDAD ROSE-TINTED SPECTACLES
I get that our perspective, our frame of reference, is narrow and blinkered. We don't have first-hand experience of Then, so all we have to go on is Now.

So, it might simply be a lack of perspective, or rose-tinted spectacles, which cause me to see the Then as a simpler, less chaotic time.

I know that's probably not true, and that it's probably this sort of dangerous yearning which allows people to buy into slogans such as, say - to pull one out of a baseball cap - "Make America Great Again".

And yet, when I woke up this morning, I instinctively slipped into the same ritual behaviour I've been performing every single morning for over a year now; becoming fully conscious by anxiously reading news stories about Donald Trump, and seeing my biggest fears unfurling hour by hour.

And for some reason this morning it made me think of the contrast between how I start my day, and the way my nan would start hers; literally burning the previous day's news to provide warmth.

That newspaper would arrive around breakfast time, my grandad would scan it, fold it over, and spend most of the rest of the day working on the crossword. I envy that pace, that slowness. I feel like I'm trapped in a hamster wheel of ceaseless electronic information.

Our news screams at us from every screen, recycled and analysed, and spun to the point of irrelevance until the next news bomb drops. It's exhausting - it has been exhausting for a while - but the pace at which events are moving now is giving me the bends. Plus, it's all so relentlessly bleak.

It's becoming harder and harder to face the world with flippancy or humour. I started this year with the intention of using Digi2000 as a light-hearted antidote to everything bad, but... I can't. I've tried, and I can't find it in me. Not until we're on the other side of this.

You don't need me to recap or dissect everything that's happening in America right now. It has become starkly clear that Donald Trump and his closest advisers are attempting some sort of fascist coup of the most powerful nation on the planet. With each day, with each early-morning trawl of Twitter and newsfeeds, feeding my fear with more reasons for it to exist, it becomes clear that Trump, Bannon and the rest are determined to roll back so much of the progress that my grandparents lived through.

Fortunately, there is hope... and that's the rock that I'm clinging to right now.

LET IT LIE
For every unilateral dictate or befuddling lie from Trump, there is resistance.

People are coming together, being united, by this administration's actions and intentions. Republicans and Democrats alike. Nations around the world have united in their condemnation of Trump - however tepid that condemnation may be <COUGH>Theresa May<COUGH>. It's honestly beautiful to witness. Once again, last night, tens of thousands of people around the world stood up and said that what America is trying to do is wrong.

They might all have different reasons - some might be worried that Trump's selective Muslim immigration ban makes the world less safe (which it does), or that it'll damage America economically (it will)... but the basic message is this; whoever you are, whatever you believe, wherever you come from... the majority of us accept you.

THE PC STICK
Political correctness gets a lot of stick; it frequently gets taken too far, becomes too aggressive or condescending, and damages its very purpose.

Yet even when that happens, political correctness has to be better than the alternative; what it exists for is to say that we are all - beneath the trappings of social inequality and the wholly artificial system we've created - equal. Fundamentally, the aim of political correctness comes from a place of compassion and selflessness.

Trump and his administration are gilded scum floating on the surface of the world, lacking empathy and seeking only to bolster their own fragile, self-interested, agendas. They're the worst imaginable representatives of the West. And from my point of view - of male, white, straight, privilege - I don't want others around the world thinking I'm like that. It seems, mercifully, that I'm not alone.

The protests, the resistance, feel to me as much a way of saying "I'm actually really nice" as they are a way to exert political pressure.

PUNCH DRUNK
After I wrote a piece last week condemning the on-screen punching of the white supremacist Richard Spencer, I was asked whether getting punched in the face last summer had led me to have sympathy for him. Quite the opposite - I hope it hurt him as much as it hurt when that 'roided-up rotter smashed me in the face.

My opposition to it wasn't because I felt sorry for him, or because I think we should all go out and hug a Nazi. It was entirely because I felt the punching helped his cause, and had seemed to bring out an ugly side in those who were celebrating it. I suspect Spencer wore his bruise as a badge of honour, and - indeed - many who are far smarter and more informed than me have offered similar opinions.

But no. For me... getting punched had an unexpected consequence. It showed me - in the actions of everyone who came to my assistance - that the good in this world does outweigh the bad.

The compassion and kindness I was shown completely overshadowed what had happened - I found it was impossible to have any anger or resentment towards my attacker in the face of that. He'd actually given me a gift, and being punched didn't matter. What mattered, the thing I took away from it, is that a lot of total strangers were nice to me.

For all the bad that is pouring out of Trump's executive order pen right now, as terrified as I am at the thought of Breitbart's Steve Bannon taking a seat on the National Security Council, what we are witnessing in the opposition to that should give us all hope that people - the majority of people - are good, and kind, and passionate about their compassion.

That's what's going to get me through this.

FROM THE ARCHIVE:
THE PUNCH HEARD AROUND THE WORLD - BY MR BIFFO
THE DIGITISER2000 FRIDAY LETTERS PAGE
HALF-LIFE 3 AND THE GULF BETWEEN CREATOR AND FAN - BY MR BIFFO

ATTENTION!
If you would like to appear on this week's Digitiser2000 Friday Letters Page, or you've something you'd like me to give some attention to in our occasional Plug Zone - please send your emails for next week to this place here: digitiser2000@gmail.com

24 Comments

King of Duckhenrys

31/1/2017 12:28:37 pm

Thanks to anonymity I can say this out loud. I'm terrified of what is happening in the world. I can't sleep, and it's making me ill.

The protests and strong words can't provide me with enough solace.

While I'd like to think that there are a lot of Trump voters that are suddenly regretting the outcome, as there was after the referendum. I don't think there are in significant numbers. I think there are as many fuckwits in the US and UK that are happy with what is happening as there are people concerned by it.

There is a depth of the stupidity and selfish wilful ignorance among those people that I can't fathom. I'm not sure that these people can be reached and brought into actual reality

While they exist in this state and in those numbers, I can't see how this can be fixed.

Tomegranate

31/1/2017 03:52:23 pm

Unfortunately I think what you say is accurate.

"the majority of people - are good, and kind, and passionate about their compassion."

Almost half of Americans chose to vote for Trump while he very clearly espoused politics and policies that are completely empty of compassion. I guess there will be some people who voted for him without being totally comfortable with his politics (e.g. distaste for Clinton, falling for the 'taking on the establishment' trick), but I'm not sure that enough people are going to perform an about face that they will add up to a compassionate majority.

dab88

31/1/2017 06:05:56 pm

43% off Americans did not vote. That leaves your assessment of half the US population voting for Trump as being incorrect. Perhaps you should think about that before signing up to the doom and gloom

31/1/2017 06:36:45 pm

Thats actually a really good point. You can stick your patronising attitude up your nose though, thanks.

Clive Peppard

1/2/2017 02:18:38 pm

Come on kids this article is about being nice to eacj other and here you are bickering over statistics.

Yes a lot of people didnt vote, but yes over half the (electoral college) votes went to trumpton.

whatever, you two hug it out!

DEAN

1/2/2017 03:07:04 pm

Clive!

Let them sort it out natural.

I for one was looking forward to seeing the results from the LIE DETECTOR and the DNA test.

Ste Pickford

31/1/2017 01:45:37 pm

Well said Paul.

Mr Biffo

31/1/2017 06:42:57 pm

Thanks, Ste.

Paul

31/1/2017 01:46:14 pm

It’s hard to be positive at the best of times. I’m a card-carrying pessimist (I get that from my grandma on my mother’s side), and recent events have been very hard to compartmentalise in my mind so I can carry on without the nagging feeling of dread around every corner.

School in the 1980s was much the same - growing up in Watford, we soon learned how close to Northwood we were, not through any educational exercise at school, but by virtue of a map that was stuck on a door on my way to my form room. That map had a series of concentric circles radiating out from Northwood, where there’s a military base, showing just what kind of damage would happen if a nuclear weapon hit it. I think the school was in the “your flesh will crips nicely, and you’ll get radiation poisoning” zone. We all mused that maybe the “vaporised in a flash” was probably the better place to be, and certainly better than the “lingering death where your hair and teeth will fall out” zone.

That, all the stuff on TV, as well as books and other literature meant that my secondary school days were made up of a feeling of dread. Was it really going to be worth it - all those exams and things if the USA and the USSR had what Roger Waters described in Radio Waves as a “frank exchange of views”?

The Doomsday Clock was moved 30 seconds closer to midnight this January, a response to Trump getting elected. We’ve had rumblings from China recently too, as well as North Korea flexing its muscles.

It’s scary, and I fear the worst, and it’s very had NOT to look past that and think that this will all pass, and better times will be ahead, we just have to get through this, with gritted teeth.

David W

31/1/2017 02:34:54 pm

Though now you mention it, hugging Richard Spencer would probably have done more to discredit his views than punching.

Chris

31/1/2017 04:17:37 pm

Biffo's gone all Superhans on us. Next he'll be suggesting we free the paedos.

Picston Shottle

31/1/2017 02:52:59 pm

I'm genuinely scared of what will happen in the US. America has always rode a massive wave of patriotism but, I fear, this wave of patriotism has been turned into a tsunami of nationalism, whipped up by Trump and his puppet masters, and if you're not surfing this tsunami with them, then you're a Muslim loving liberal who hates America. Sean Spicer said as much about his own diplomats yesterday, for them daring to disagree with Trumps fucked up, ill advised travel ban.

I truly am worried about how far this will go, and what will become of me and my family if this tangerine Mussolini stays in power.

Kelvin Green link

31/1/2017 06:08:19 pm

Frost? Frost? The windows in my flat grow icicles on the inside when it gets cold. Frost. Humph.

Anyway, well said, Biffster.

zootle

31/1/2017 07:26:04 pm

Confirmation Bias.

Stop limiting your echo-chamber.

It will be bad, I hope the U.S. burns down, but remember how bad people thought GW Bush was, we got through the 8 years, and had the wonderful charming polish of Obama; I'll ignore the assassinations of innocents and un-tried or no wall st. arrests, et al, but he sounded nice!

Trump will be no different in reality, it'll just me more vulgar and obvious.

All the broader causes of late 20th century have largely come from the comfort of wealth: for example, you can worry about gay people subverting all history and language to be able to marry, when you have the luxury of the past few decades in time, money, media and freedom.

But the feeling of those against trump now, imagine how the population that didn't ask for all those changes has repeatedly felt when there was no compromise and there wishes ultimately over-ridden, but enough people thought they were making enough economic or social progress to not fight it out with the way the world was going, until they were emboldened by nothing more to lose, because in reality, only one thing matters, whether your a fruit seller in tunisia or an old miner in america, can i feed my family, survive, have basic dignity.

Without that, all bets are off.

And yet, it is the history of those in power to divide us without it.

As an example of the silliness of political correctness, undermining its wankish circle-jerking, we now are told of "intersectionality", rather than, you know, good old-fashioned concepts of solidarity and unity!

Kara Van Park

1/2/2017 11:35:06 am

Excellent post, sir.

Paul Jon Thrillin'

31/1/2017 08:19:10 pm

was at a family gathering (well, a funeral) yesterday, and though we have political beliefs ranging from super-lefto PC partyboys to Daily Male maniac Todd T. Squirrel poison sacs, all of us are currently united in our hatred of Trump and fear at what his administration is doing.

Which is something, I suppose.

Euphemia

1/2/2017 12:13:23 am

I'm about a ball-hair away from the US border, with another trip across the line due in the next few weeks for work. Not really looking forward to that, feels like I'm endorsing something by going there, in a vague and uneasy way.

Throw in the added bonus of going across through the rural bits with a British passport and that just adds to the dread. I was so nervous about not getting in one time that I agreed through a rictus grin with the US Customs guy about how if you live in the US, there's no point travelling abroad because they have everything you'll ever need to see right there. Or not snorting when another one asked where I was originally from (Scotland) and said, like he'd caught me in a lie, "says right here U-nited Kingdom, not Scotch Land." When I got taken into the office for fingerprints and pictures to be taken, which was apparently totally normal and not a reason to freak out, the next guy asked the same question and I said "United Kingdom" to which he replied "says here Great Britain, buddy."

I fucking ask you.

Hopefully Brian Eno is onto something, and this is the barrel-scraping part of the deep pit where things quite literally can't get any worse before they turn around. Bar a nuclear holocaust.

1/2/2017 12:23:42 am

During the Bush Years I was pulled aside by Homeland Security and marched into a room where I was questioned. I had been back and forth to the US a number of times around then and this was new, so I was a bit worried. Meanwhile my wife was outside the room in a panicked rage, trying to get someone to tell her why I was being detained.

I happened to catch a glimpse of the agent's computer screen as he was questioning me about my recent whereabouts and activities and noticed that the Kelvin Green they were looking for was black and American.

I'm quite a pasty Brit with a touch of ginger in my hair, but they only let me go after they'd taken and run my fingerprints to make sure that I wasn't wanted for burglary in New Orleans.

I lost a bit of respect for Homeland Security then. I dread to think what would happen now.

1/2/2017 12:51:33 am

When I first started traveling to the US on business not long after 9/11 I had a border guard ask me "Why are you coming to the United States?", so I replied "For work". He the told me I didn't have a visa so I was not allowed to work, so I said, "OK, then, I am here on business" and proceeded to explain that I worked for a multi national company. He still proceeded to act like a cock and told me "I could have you deported". I was already in a foul mood, and this was the last straw, so I called his bluff and said "Go on then". He didn't deport me, because he had no valid reason, so he just stamped my passport while glowering at me. Yeah, welcome to the USA, buddy!

1/2/2017 02:06:34 am

Don't f@ck with a tetchy scouser, eh?!
Good for you, man. Liked that :O)

Mind you, I think you'd have to be borderline nuts (get it) to make a fuss right now...
Don't worry, Daddy's just going next door to play truth dunking!

Darren link

1/2/2017 09:50:04 am

The world is full of idiots. For my own sanity, I've learnt not to care. I said this would happen. Everyone else said it wouldn't. So fuck 'em. They made their bed, they've got to lie it.

Ignorance is indeed bliss.

Elvo

1/2/2017 02:19:04 pm

My New Years resolution was to stop reading or subjecting myself to the news. As long as my family is ok I don't see what relevant it has to me. I've realised its making me unhappy and I've only so many thoughts i can deal with in a day. So to have whatever is happening upset me seems a waste of my brain space. I feel a lot happier for it. I've avoided social media as I can't get away from my fiends liking things about the news or Nigel Farage et al. Isn't it odd that my friends share more about the leader of a country they don't even live in than they do about their own family? I agree with the sentiments shared here but I'm going to have to avoid these types of articles as well. Some people say I'm burying my head in the sand but it's not so much that as simply paying no attention to things that likely upset me, freeing my mind to concentrate on what makes me happy instead.

1/2/2017 03:22:54 pm

Fair play to you, Elvo.

I think concentrating on getting on and enjoying the things that really matter is to be applauded.

I could argue that worrying about the World is simply raising a smoke screen around your own problems. Problems that involve being proactive beyond mewling on social media.

Each to their own.

1/2/2017 05:12:05 pm

You might have a point there, Dean.

THE SILVER LINING IN EVERYTHING - by Mr Biffo

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