It was a mantra of the New Left that arose in the 1960’s that “Everything is Political”. Part of the reason for taking this approach was to try and break free from the old Marxist take on the world where everything boiled down to the economics of class warfare.
With the rising tides of feminism, environmentalism and the Counter Culture, the pure Marxist approach was seen as obsolete and it was noticed by at least some of the Baby Boomer leftists that the likes of the Soviets were pretty damned conservative when it came to issues of culture: the USSR welcomed sex, drugs and rock and roll less eagerly than did the Mormons in Salt Lake City.
As we all know, the Boomer Left won this argument and nowadays politics intrudes into every part of our lives: what job you do, what car you drive, whether you drive at all, what herbicides and pesticides you use in your garden, what sort of house you live in and where and…. on and on and endlessly on.
It follows then that politicians are now involved in every part of your life, and thus the machinery of politics, with its laws and rules and regulations and the bureaucratic machinery that makes it run.
But of course that also means that political and ideological ideas are now in your face everywhere. The Left would argue that this was always the case; that both of these things were ever-present but often not acknowledged. Perhaps so, but it becomes difficult to disentangle them from ordinary, everyday culture and if the intention of politics is not to preserve but to uproot and replace the status quo ideology, and with it the culture, then that would seem to be a very fraught, dangerous process. It might even by counter-productive.
It also means that it becomes hard to distinguish politics and ideology from simple, crude propaganda – even when it comes to the weather.
| 2000’s: hot, sunny and cheery | Today: SCORCHING DEATH! |
With that in mind have a listen to this wonderful comedy skit from the 1960’s by Marty Feldman. When it was first made he was poking some gentle fun at the fire-and-brimstone preachers that were still present in Britain at the time. But strangely enough it remains timeless given that we face a whole new set of such preachers today.
No Minister 
Hi Tom, have you got a reference to the weather image from the 2000s. I want to pass it onto some “friends” but I know they will ask where it came from.
Ah John. You’ve decided to bring your hardline “thinking” (“the heroic Russian army”) over from The Daily Blog eh?
I’m sure you’re quite capable of Internet searches, so here’s The Huffington Post with a “fact check” of how there’s nothing at all to the idea that the weather maps have been changed to scare the shit out of people re Climate Change. In fact he claims the maps have been doctored. Well, except for this admission:
“changed”. Yeah.
But you knew all this anyway! As did I before I did the post.
Tom, I think you have totally the wrong John White. I’ve never even been to the Daily Blog until just now to see who you were referring to. I honestly just wanted to know where I could find the original image from the 2000s to prove the point to true believe in climate change.
Fair enough John…. But at least now you have both sides of the story. 🙂
Ahahahahahah…..Fact Checkers eh….
