Spanish life is not always likeable but it is compellingly loveable.
- Christopher Howse: 'A Pilgrim in Spain'*
The Bloody Virus
- Today, the USA will overtake the Netherlands in the deaths/m table, rising to 7th, after France.
Life in Spain
- Yesterday, reader (and fellow blogger) María posted a comment on Spanish politics which merits posting here: Spanish democracy is in danger, but not like in 1936, when the army was the institution to fear. Now, it's the courts. Look at the judge who won't let the accusation against the government over the March 8th marches be dismissed. Or the four conservative judges on a panel of the Consitutional Court that have acceeded to Vox's request to look into whether the deputies who swore their oath to the Constitution changing the wording, should not be allowed to sit in chambers, thereby making the government illegitimate. The danger this time is the court system and all the left overs from Franco's era still sitting there, or those who have been mentored by ultra-conservatives. Little by little, law by law, they will whittle away at democracy until Vox, or some other ultra-right conservatives, walk into Moncloa and finish the silent coup.
- And here's something which rather endorses María's fears, headed: Spain’s Post-Lockdown Culture War Has Only Just Begun. Some tasters:-
- The coronavirus response has increased political polarization, threatening the country’s economic recovery.
- The pandemic has deepened the erosion of civility in Spanish politics.
- The right-wing battle for support is just one part of the culture war emerging from Spain’s long lockdown. The other axis of discontent is the ongoing tussle between the central government and Spain’s powerful regional governments.
- Spain’s parliamentary debates and media discourse are a cacophony of accusations and fake news.
- Religion is, of course, still a large factor in Spain, though much less superficially observable than it was when I first came here in 2000. When clerics regularly appeared on TV, to spout RC dogma. Now, behind the scenes, things are left to the far-right faithful of Opus Dei, whose membership was said to include a large majority of the last PP government. And possibly everyone who votes for Vox.
- A lighter take on creeping authoritarianism.
- And here's María's normal take on life here - Day 33 of her Comeback Chronicle.
- Here and here - if you can see them - are The Local's advice on life changes under the New Normal and what we currently know about travelling to Spain this summer. Or don't don't know in the case of the UK.
The USA
- A couple of opinions on Fart:-
- The editor of the conservative National Review: If Trump loses in November, it won't because he pursued a big legislative reform that was a bridge too far politically. It won't be because he adopted a creative and unorthodox policy mix that alienated his own side. It won't even be because he was overwhelmed by events, challenging though they've been. It will mostly be because he took his presidency and needlessly drove it into the ground, 280 characters at a time.
- Although stupid, Trump talks as if he really believes he's a genius. Which he does, of course. Oblivious to what most of us think of him. That old Dunning-Kruger effect.
The Way of the World
- Mustn't offend the Germans . . . The BBC said last night that it had temporarily made the Fawlty Towers episode 'The Germans' unavailable while it carries out a review. The episode, first aired in 1975, showed hotel owner Basil Fawlty goose-stepping while shouting "Don't mention the war" in front of a group of German tourists. Even the Germans are astonished at this, I'm told.
- Nuance is no good in this age of self-righteous identity politics. See the article below.
Finally . . .
- Within a few minutes of posting my comment yesterday, the books arrived at my door. On the surface, it looks like the 2 week delay was in the Netherlands, not Spain. Which is a turn-up for the books . . . Oh, quite literally.
THE ARTICLE
Nuance is no good in this age of self-righteous identity politics: Jemima Lewis
The word “gaslighting” derives from a 1938 play by Patrick Hamilton about a sinister and controlling husband, but has
been popularised more recently as part of the new lexicon of social justice. It means to manipulate a person using psychological trickery until they begin to question their own sanity.
It’s funny, because I feel increasingly gaslit by the very generation that so rightly abhors this behaviour. Like the befuddled wife in Hamilton’s play, I am almost afraid to trust the evidence of my own senses. Things that once seemed, and still seem, self-evident facts have now been recast as faulty thinking, with no room for nuance or disagreement. Anyone who persists in clinging to wrong thoughts is ridiculed, threatened, berated and ostracised: a perfect template of the gaslighter’s art.
JK Rowling has been subjected to this sort of treatment for years, ever since she absent-mindedly “liked” a sceptical Twitter post about gender identity. This marked her out as a wrong-thinker, and set off of a trickle of abuse that has since swollen to a flood. This week, in a long and nuanced blog, Rowling attempted to explain why she has become increasingly concerned about some of the doctrines of the trans-rights lobby, such as the demand for legal self-identification, the argument that lesbians who don’t want to have sex with people with penises are bigots, and the strange disappearance of the word “woman” from polite conversation.
Rowling revealed some painful episodes from her own past to reinforce her argument. She had endured domestic abuse in her first marriage, she said, and suffered a serious sexual assault in her twenties. These experiences had convinced her of the need for female-only spaces.
I don’t doubt Rowling’s sincerity, or her cunning: she knows that the only hope of getting through to the social justice brigade is to bare your own wounds. According to the rules of identity politics, your “lived experience” – especially the painful stuff – is what justifies your opinion. “My life has been shaped by being female,” Rowling tweeted this week, using her enemies’ tactics against them. “I do not believe it’s hateful to say so.”
It didn’t work, of course. The generation that insists on the sanctity of individual identity also demands complete conformity of thought and speech, on this and on many other matters. Anyone who questions the new orthodoxy, however politely, must be punished.
Some of the Twitter responses to Rowling’s blog have made my hair stand on end: not just the torrent of obscene threats, but the wilful misinterpretation, the cod psychology, the belittling of an intelligent woman. I saw one blue-tick influencer urging people not to read the blog for themselves because it’s “a waste of time and an insult”; another diagnosed Rowling with something called “internalised transphobia”; yet another (a journalist for Pink News, for heaven’s sake), dismissed Rowling’s history of domestic violence as a “nonsensical pity party”.
A school in west Sussex announced that it is dropping plans to name one of its houses after Rowling because she “may in fact no longer be an appropriate role model for pupils”. It’s so zeitgeisty it’s almost (but not) funny. Watching JK Rowling being pulled from her plinth by the excitable mob, I feel utterly estranged from my country. But that’s how gaslighting works, isn’t it? It’s not the world that’s going mad, dear: it’s you.
* A terrible book, by the way. Don't be tempted to buy it, unless you're a very religious Protestant.
Note: his blog has long appeared on Blogger here: www.colindavies,blogspot.com where there's a nice foto which EoS declines to include, even though it was taken by me.