Recap

As I was saying in my previous post, we all make use of cherry-picked examples when it suits us. Sometimes it’s genuinely necessary to cherry-pick for quick and easy, soundbite-style emphasis, but there’s a fine line between wilful bias by omission and diluting one’s argument with too much background information. Taking things out of context on purpose is nasty, but people who do it habitually dent their own credibility, which ultimately has to be counter-productive. 

Back to finding oneself politically homeless, which is how Melanie Phillips seems to feel. I mean, the way politics is constructed automatically involves a whole bunch of compromises and caveats. It’s a Party Line thing. We toe it for the sake of political unity and efficacy. Finding flaws and faults in your political or ideological compatriots is par for the course.

Who could support Trump unconditionally?  With unconditional love? No-one! He’s decidedly repulsive, inarticulate, almost infantile and seemingly totally un-self-aware. But somehow, his fundamental political instinct seems - if not ‘simply the best’- at least “better than all the rest.”

Another of my bête noire obsessions is the Sarah Champion contradiction. She’s cast as the epitome of unjust political ill-treatment and victimhood - sacrificed at the altar of Corbynism. But she’s no saint, and painting her as one is lazy and misleading. She’s a 'Philo-Islamic' antisemite who kowtowed to the Rotherham Muslim community throughout a vitriolic anti-Israel campaign in 2014, and who sat through Rotherham’s grooming gang activities for a good long while before ‘bravely’ speaking out. So, no, she’s not quite the innocent victim she’s made out to be. 

(I've posted this video about four times now - it's when the camera pans out to reveal 'the room' that I find fascinating)

On the opposite side of the coin, there’s the curate’s egg of Miriam Margolyes. She’s totally and utterly wrong, ignorant and gratuitously vociferous about Israel. Nevertheless, a certain charm still seeps through the narcissism, crudeness and ungainliness. If you see what I mean.

In a similar vein, there’s Jo Brand. Everyone loves to hate her, and even more so following her battery acid quip. Not funny Jo. However, she has a certain wit and I liked her ‘Getting On’ sitcom. It was quality TV.

See? I even like the Guardian. Only for its TV reviews and recaps, mind. At the time when most TV dramas are more or less incomprehensible, the Guardian is invaluable for  ‘explaining’ what passes for ‘the plot’.

I was wrong about David Goodhart. I felt insulted by his definition of ‘Leavers’ as ‘somewheres’, which I interpreted as a euphemistic term for parochial, narrow-minded and insular. Turns out not to be exactly the case. 

I’m ambivalent about nearly everything -  the thing that goes “I used to be indecisive but now I’m not so sure’ that's me, that is. 

Although I am pretty decisive about the (admittedly few) things I do know about. As Douglas Murray said - when you read nonsense about something of which you have first-hand knowledge, it dents the credibility of everything else that emanates from the same source.