Has somebody died?

There mut be millions of words being written about Michael Jackson right now. This is the most ridicluous I've read so far. From k-punk, who we can forgive almost anything, but even so : "And if you asked me to choose between Off The Wall and the entire back catalogue of the Sex Pistols and the Beatles, there would be no contest."
!!. The argument being that The Beatles were like passé by the early eighties. And Michael Jackson, the vampire's vampire!

How wrong we were

We said the Iraq war was mainly about oil. They said WMD and democracy. Here's what the NYT says in an article that appeared on Friday. Under the headline, “Warily Moving Ahead on Oil Contracts,” a Times correspondent reports from Baghdad: “When Iraq puts development rights to some of its largest oilfields up for auction to foreign companies on Monday, the bidding will be a watershed moment, representing the first chance for petroleum giants like ExxonMobil to tap the resources of a country they were kicked out of almost 40 years ago.”

The Iranian diversion

Anything to take people's minds of the horror perpetuated in our names. Sixty people were obliterated by another drone attack in Pakistan and nobody in the West really gives a flying f*ck, diverted as they are by some stooge rallies in Tehran. What does Zizek have to say I wonder? Not that you'd really bother reading what that fraud has to say!

This is why events unnerve me

This on youtube - that deathly archive - a video someone took driving through Manchester in the early 1980's interspliced with other evocative shots to New Order's 'Ceremony'. The time that has past since...

Better news

With current events in Iran only splitting (what's left of) the left further (see the response to Zizek's awful letter on the subject, for instance) it's good to see there is life in the class war in Britain. Seumas Milne's article in The Guardian argues that when workers stand up to their employers, they tend to win and that passivity and inaction lead to wage cuts and redundancies.
He writes "It's now become obvious that only by defying or ignoring the anti-democratic legislation bequeathed by Margaret Thatcher – which outlaws, for example, all solidarity action – will there ever be the political will to ditch or replace it with something more reasonable."

It's about time someone in the MSM said as much.

Meanwhile the war goes on

Whatever the outcome of the Iranian elections (REL prediction - the story will fizzle out this week) the military encirclement of Iran tightens. The British army has just launched a raid "on a Taliban stronghold in southern Afghanistan." Cheer on those brave troops.

Keep Britain wanking

Sorry, but, well - it really does deserve that -http://www.keepbritainworking.com/supporters.aspx

The website has that Ikea Orwellian feel to it. The TUC, the LibDems and Boris Johnson all say how important the site is to battling the country through the slump. There's even some 'propaganda' [sic] postcards for sale...slogans taken from the second world war. Not 'chilling' just sad, really really sad.

Kissinger lord of darkness

http://www.infowars.net/articles/june2009/220609Meddling.htm - if you want to get wound up politically. It's the arch Vader himself in usual slippery form not actively openly saying "Send the US troops in now!" but coming down near enough. But my point here is why he uses the word 'crisis'....whatever is going on in Iran, from the actual situation based on political force and regime stability, the Iranian government is not teetering on the brink of collapse. So why use the term - presumably because the US is, as it stands accused of, actively promoting a faux revolution.

Iran

There are experts out there but a lot of us are pretty much in the same place when it comes to Iran - a foggy situation where things are often not what they seem (the BBC fake footage, the Nada killers), a country about which we do not know a great deal but about which it seems clear that some American plan appears to be being played out.
Three points that stick out -
1. Who to support. You've got to bear the crushingly obvious with repect to this. Over in the comments box at LT for instance there's been an extraordinary amount of traffic and theoretical analysing of who the left should support. But what on earth does 'support' mean here - logistical support, air support or just millions of working class organised into militias? It's academic and theoretical support that is 'at stake' - important enough but let's not think that our posistion towards the tumultuous events in Tehran and throughout the rest of the country actually have any material impact. Secondly - the left is stuck between two unpleasant options - if the idea of support means anything - giving (theoretical etc.) succour to an incumbent regime that, face it, is not ideologically to our tastes, yet enjoys significant working class support in Iran or being accused of 'US stoogism'. Then, there is the religious aspect to this and the anti-semitic nature of the regime (the willful misrepresentation of Ahmadinejad's 'wipe Israel of the map' remarks notwithstanding) which all count against 'us' defending the regime. (Imagine these verbs actually being required of you in a proper material sense - weapons, orders and flinging yourself against hordes of US tanks....do you support the Iranian government now?!) Then again - taking this either/or predicament at face value for the moment - who would want to support the anti-government forces of Mousavi, that butcher of the left and obvious US sock puppet - but someone who has mustered popular support that has taken to the streets and has physicaly confronted a less than wholly democratic government.
The 'a curse on both your houses' approach is a comforting one but bourgeois - in the end one need not support the regime wholeheartedly but one can manifestly oppose the clear and present Western interference in Iranian internal affairs and resolutely stand up against any military option. That has to be opposed and not just with puny million strong days out in London - but this time with active, disruptive and violent measures. A military strike against Iran would signal a declaration of war on all working class people in the world, in the current international economic and political circumstances.
2. The elections - it is far from clear whether there was a significant amount of voter irregularities in the elections. It was certainly less obvious and meaningful than the stolen elections of 2000...in the US. So if in doubt in a conversation about who to support it does well to think of it in those terms - just who is using (cardboard) democracy-ideas to stir up instability when closer to home those same 'cherished' democractic values are flushed away. Another point is that the 'revolt' itself is made up mainly of middle class element "It is no secret that many of the demonstrators come from the upper middle class, for whom the priority is not primarily democracy (and certainly not social justice), but the extension of their social privileges, which are currently restricted by the clerical regime." Further, where was the similar media outrage, forensic coverage and calls for action when bloody Israel was murdering Palestinians?
Finally - 3. Learn from the chaos - it will be visiting you any time soon..........

Chronicle of a cover up in advance

A pointless Government initiates a pointless enquiry into a pointless war. Grey on grey indeed. No matter, though, the white wash will "[be] designed on a similar basis, he added, to the Franks inquiry into the 1982 Falklands War, and it would aim to identify "lessons learned". " So it will reveal what a good job has been done, then! Obviously, it will all be held in secret and "people could decline to answer questions they weren't happy with.". What is the point?

Another ridiculous thing...

From the same paper, this time Martin Kettle, "Europe's left is in crisis. The choice is stark: adapt or wilt The big social democratic parties – not least Labour – must learn from Blair's example. Or accept a role on the political margins"

wtf?

A ridiculous thing before breakfast

You have to read what the opposition thinks every now and then. It keeps your wits sharpened and gives you a good laugh from time to time. Take this, from Dan Roberts in the Grindinglydull "'Don't waste a good crisis." The words of White House chief of staff Rahm Emmanuel ought to be ringing in our ears this week as we contemplate a possible end to the recession. Unfortunately that is exactly what has happened: we've missed a golden opportunity to remake capitalism on firmer, fairer footings."

Where to start with something as outlandish and funny as that? Well, after some cornflakes or something...

The philosophy of problems

In an attack on Dawkins in LRB a few years back Eagleton remarks on God that "He is the answer to why there is something rather than nothing. "

But how do we know that, really, that there is nothing rather than something? Maybe the universe has yet to be created.

Underground strike

It goes without saying that the tube workers strike is to be supported. Their struggle against bastardmangement is a microcosm of how the whole country is run. The elites make off with the money and in the long run, workers' wages and conditions are reduced and their plight vilified in the dreadful right wing MSM. On another, metaphorical, level the strike takes place out of sight in an unseen yet vital distributional organ of the capitalist system. It is repressed and its functioning transfered to other less efficient (strike busting) techniques. The repressed cannot be crushed for ever. The violence inflicted on them will return, magnified, to the surface.

Grim but not as bad

. . as feared. The BNP election 'success' is fading away rapidly. Their victory depended on a low turn out and a government rapidly disintegrating, but even here their actual vote declined in number. This was not a British, let alone a working class, 'turn to the right' but a unique set of circumstances that allowed the fascists in. That still means the BNP must be confronted, ideologically, politically and physically. The SWP open letter is a good starting point and this conclusion is well worked out too. We should not sit back in despiar and wail on about the 'racist chavs' whilst at the same time whinge on about free speech for the BNP (see comments section on LT) and turn rancid. That's the way fascism wins.
This is a calamity, though, but in terms of the next two years or so, is going to be just one challenge we must take on and defeat. Because even if the Labour party weren't finished, even if they win next year, there are going to be enormous confrontations that we cannot afford to lose at all.
In that vein - hurrah for the tube workers. That struggle is far more significant than some lousy fat fuck winning the right to sit in some neoliberal shitpalace on the strength of some Daily Mail cunts voting for him.
Buck up.

1979

Paul Blackburn was jailed in 1978 for a crime he did not commit and got out 25 years later. But 1979, as k-punk reiterates, was the turning point at which Britain changed, or started to change, from a (tempered) social democracy to a more neoliberal harsher chillier place. His incarceration spanned the two nodal points, near enough. He was jailed just as Callaghan was capitulating to the uninevitable and was released (without apologies, explanation or compensation) just as the neoloib turn started its dramatic collapse. No wonder he remarks " I can be in whatever nasty area of London at 4am surrounded by drug addicts, crackheads and robbers, it holds no fear for me. I've just been living with them all for 25 years... It was a big Asda, I turned round and walked out again. It's all just too much for me. Too much information, too much choice, too much going on."

Interestingly Blackburn turned to words and writing in order to save himself.

Australia booms

You'll have read that there are 'green shoots' growing in Australia...unsurprisingly, the GDP growth rate is based on dodgy accounting and the fact that imports have declined. But the government are milking it - the social upshot is that the unions are being well behaved and doing their job of policing the working class - "We are all in this together, and that involves the unions as well, and we are working closely, of course, with the business organisations.” said Rudd the PM.

we're all in this together

fuck off

Perspective

Some perspective on the BNP fiasco from www.makemyvotecount.org.uk
"BNP gained seats with fewer votes
In Yorkshire and the Humber, the BNP actually polled 6399 fewer votes than in 2004. In the North West, 2865 fewer people voted for the BNP this time than last. However, the BNP still won a seat in each of those regions.
The BNP has not gained many more recruits at all in 5 years, just solidified the ones it had already. Instead, what we saw was a huge drop in turnout and a large drop in support for Labour. These two factors together enabled the BNP to squeak in to win the final seat available in each region.
It was very close though.
In Yorkshire and the Humber, Labour needed its vote to hold up by 10,270 more votes to keep out the BNP. The Greens needed only 15,683 more votes to have come above BNP and get that final seat instead.
In the North West, it was really tight. If UKIP had received another 1200 votes, than they would have taken another seat instead of Nick Griffin. The Greens tactic of saying they were the ones who could beat the BNP in the NW almost worked: they were within 5000 votes of overtaking them and this winning that final seat.
Therefore, even within very large regions, the result can be very close and a few votes here and there really can make a difference. Unfortunately, people do not seem to have got that message: they stayed away rather than vote. They, and the parties who failed to mobilise them, should hopefully get the message from now on that voting in proportional elections is not just important, it can easily effect the whole result, no matter where in the region you live."

For dickheads to prosper, what needs to happen is for good people not to do enough. But then again, we did vote New Labour once and look where it got us. It'll take more than voting. . .

Black edged day

This poor bugger died on a beach in France fighting it.

These doomed soldiers died along with 25 million of their comrades fighting it.

And these and millions of other 'undesirables'...

So how comes cunts like this get elected to office?The psephology of the BNP vote will be interesting. No data as yet, of course, but our gut reaction here is that it was the low turn out that allowed the fascists in with a strong middle class Daily Mail vote. And the collapse of the Labour Party. That is, it is important we find out how many working class voters switched to the BNP. It is one almighty "fuck off", not only to the ghostly remnants of the Labour government, but to the whole political system. How has this happened? It is an absolute disaster for every type of politics to the left of Gordon Brown and has humiliated the entire country. More importantly, it is a green light for sections of the Tory party to get more right wing and prepare deeper attacks on the working class upon assuming power next May.

The time has come, now, to physically harass the BNP from the streets. Their moment of glory will not last and long term, will have no significance. They are riven by internal divisions and are political inept and, face it, intellectually challenged. Their success will disintegrate in the next few years into resignation, scandal and politicial impotence. But in the short to medium term this is a very sorry fucking outcome. We on the left, in a way, deserve this - we have never even come close to getting our act together. True, though, we are up against a totalitarian system with all the means of education, persuasion and repression at its disposal. But even so, nazis getting elected.....This wailing siren of an alarm call must galvanise people into not just anti-fascist action but revolutionary socialist action. First they came for the muslims - first they came. They are here..........do something

White supremacists

Police have actually (?) found some terror stuff in a house. But soft...it's not 'Islamofascist extremists' but...some white guys. A big let down for all the MSM - what can they call for, if not rounding muslims up, locking up all the lone white middle aged blokes?....that'd be half their readership behind bars.

Debris sighted

Wreckage seen floating in the Atlantic earlier this morning has been identified as that of Flight New Labour which was last heard of as it flew through huge turbulence off the coast of a banana republic. It is thought that fighting amongst the cabin crew and navigational failure were to blame for the disaster. There are no survivors.

Twitter

An article on the new(ish) way to stay in touch. On second thoughts, stick it up your twitter.

unoriginal thoughts no.1457/s4(a)

Success is not an option

The left loses even when it 'wins' elections.

Labour election meltdown

It looks like the results are even worse than expected. Labour at a turning point? Well, when you're turning around in circles, everyday's a turning point.

Materialism versus spirits and gods

It's a beautiful morning outside the REL offices. Cool but sunny, clear skies, birds singing cup of perfect temperature tea. Not hungover, us that is, not the birds. The world seems a more hospitable place. We even feel the impetus to thank someone, somebody, something for this unexpected, doubtless fleeting and illusory sensation of meaning and hope. It surely points to a higher purpose for us all. The God impetus.

Nonsense of course.

It's all down to a rare good night's sleep, good food and a place to live. Mudane material things that don't seem to add up to enough mystery for some people. Some people let themselves be prone to seek an irrational explanation for things when the more prosaic explanation exhausts every other possible theory.

Take ouija boards. One stoned night many years ago, an REL memeber tells us, she joined in a session and decided, for a laugh, to push the wine glass they were using, to spell out all sorts of secret messages and histories and played along in schlock astonishment. The believers were delighted. When our REL volunteer finally told them it was she that had enineered it all, they just laughed and dismissed her account. The spirit exists, they told her and you sceptics should just get your head round it. Somehow, for them, the human element, the desire to take the micky, the 'social experiment' or the group dynamics just weren't seen as important or even relevant to the night's proceedings. The spiritual realm had been invoked and that held all truth. All other accounts were heretical and besides the point.

Why this need for other realms of immaterial forces? It's everywhere. We blame Plato for a lot of it - 'What is seen is not known, what is known is not seen' and all that voodoo poison. It's an attractive philosophical drug that bewitches you into believing in forms, souls and Gods. And aliens.

Take crop circles. Now, there's a very interesting (but mundane) explanation for this. Logistically, socially and economically one could construct an impressive story out of its ingredients. Who does what, when and how. But for some, this is too simple. It has to be aliens.

The Plato impetus compels them to dismiss the material, mundane grind of putting these circles together (and they are quite wonderful artistically) prefering to move straight onto their idea, their impetus and their magical nature. It's an elitist snobbish and ultimately boring account of how things get done.

Next time you feel like worshipping something because something is good, fascinating or even magical - look at the work and workers behind it because it is there that the explanation and interest lie. Not in some spaceship or form.

Tautology

Prescott criticising some Labour stooge or other - "Not so much a Blairite as a careerite". wtf?

Justice?

"It's political correctness gone mad." I wonder if youy've ever heard that phrase? Usually it's to do with social services reportedly making sure their info doesn't say 'he' or 'white' all the time and some Daily Mailer wailer whinges that those plucky soldiers on D-Day didn't die so all this PC nonsense could destroy the very fabric etc. etc. but really, 'politically correct' should apply to the 'normal' way the system operates, politically, economically, and socially. In fact 'Economically Correct' could be a reverse physcology ironic way of describing how inequality get justified...but this story about an entrepeneur who killed his wife on a scuba dive riled the feminist contingent here at REL. You'll have read the story. So the bloke finally confesses. Now in a PC world (a Daily Mail version of PC) - the guy would be debollocked and flung in jail with hardened lesbian criminals for twenty years. In the real PC world, he gets off with five years and four suspended and will be out before the British general election comes round.

Result: PC 2 Justice 0

Politics bollocktics

Whilst all this systemic self-indulgent nonsense continues, the election results, the boring boring MP expenses scandal and even the bail-out corruption - all the time the war machine grinds out more destruction and death in our name. Sure, UK troops have pulled out of Iraq, but they are still there in Afghanistan and face it - our political culture is steeped in blood, guilt and shame for the Iraq debacle.

All this current furore should be seen in that perspective. A nothing happening to political nothings and other political emptinesses profiting for their nothing futures. And ours, if we carry on being so disunited, ineffective and nothing too.

Our decimation cannot wait

Labour is over. We will be some 15 years older when some other bright new dawn May Day heralds another Labour government. Meanwhile the disintegration is proceeding normally. "Purnell, a confirmed moderniser, decided, in contrast to Blears, that he would wait until polls closed last night before making his announcement so that he could not be accused of damaging Labour's chances in the elections."

We liked that "...so that he could not be accused of damaging Labour's chances..."

- like, what chances?

Headstone

Something to write on New Labour's headstone - "The UK’s experience in the 1980s and 1990s showed that the strategy of hoping that growth in living standards at the top would ‘trickle down’ to those at the bottom did not work."

Poverty, for some, is as high now as it was in 1961 - "Poverty for working-age adults without dependent children is now at its highest level since the start of our comparable time series in 1961,” according to the IFS report."

Do you pss on the coffin or wait for it to be buried and dance on its grave?

Deflection

The MP expense hoohah has claimed another high profile 'victim'. Jacqui Smith has all but resigned over 'immoral' financial claims. Other despised Labour figures are under the same pressure, pleasingly that odious boil-squirt Gef 'Buff' Hoon.
The hatred towards the government is obvious, omniscient and palpable. For example, British visitors to our obscure little village are seething with indignation, the MSM is full of it and the comment section of the Guardian (ok, not a scientific barometer of public opinion) are universally and viruently anti-Labour. The New Labour phase of Late-Capitalism is giving way to a harsher looking 'postcapitalist capitalism'. The Bank bail-out, is the real scandal, of course. But it is being all but air-brushed out of current political discourse, whilst the Telegraph drip by cynical drip feed the rest of the MSM with further tit-bits and fodder for middle England's rage.
Us here at REL are not evidently, going to come to the defence of MP's a la Joan Smith in the Guardian recently, who argued indignantly that her husband and a lot of her friends are MP's and because of all this invective, hey, you know what, they want to give it all up. How high minded and sorrowful they must look - tempered by the consolation that they'll get 30000 quid pay off next year to tide them over - in the face of all this public outrage. Smith actually concludes that it's not the scandal that is causing the defaith in democracy, but the sanctamonious reaction of the public that's doing all the damage. FTW.
Few here at REL even want to adhere to the argument, put forward by some on the left, that even if this current sty of MP's are gobshites, we should defend the institutional aspects of our current system against toff attack, nor even that we should use this situation to advance reforms like PR. (Things have gone a bit too far for that sop now haven't they?).
What this storm in an HP bottle shows is that the establishment and the ruling classes can create PR and media diversions to obscure past deeds and prepare the ground for the next step. This propaganda campaign is no small matter. Somebody leaked all the details to the Telegraph. Howcome there's been no prosecution? The Wretchograph is effectively given a 'Sword of Dameclese' for each grasping MP and has the Governments bollocks in it hands. For how can a regime govern when the political life of its ministers are in this amount of doubt? This little affair has sent the government reeling whilst the bigger crime, the free money for the upper class establishment, has all but effectively dematerialized, and passed by even as a success (I saved the world!) - given what the IMF said of it (see below).
The disproportionate response can only signal that this whole affair has a wider purpose. We cannot be expected to believe that all this accusation has any moral or principled stand behind it. The owners of all the MSM nozzles are tax evading criminal whores. They just don't do ethics. The scandal is just the dirt and ashes thrown over the crime scene we lived through from October to February.
So, in the last three weeks or so, the 'bail-out' has slipped from the headlines to the by-lines in the Business section to the footnotes. When did you last hear the term 'bail-out' 'billion', 'trillion'? Before this current crisis, that's for sure. The government is to blame for this 'caught with the knob in the jam' farce (in so far as it acts independently of course) but the expenses fluff hides a greater responsibility.

The rest is speculation it is speculated.

The wider purpose of the expenses row, essentially quite boring and prosaic, is to discredit, in the eyes of 'significant voters' not only the government, but the entire facade of liberal democracy and the 'consensus'. The lesser purpose is to ideologically flood the political terrain with the debate about cleanling up British politics, PR constitutional change, holidays...and other all too late ideas in order to somehow 'reform' the British system. But it didn't need dodgy accounts about swimming pools, cleaners and porn films to tell some of us that the British system was rotten. It's been rotten as long at least we've been political consciousness. The big wheeze here is that, in the run up to the GE a nice eleven months or so away - plently of time to change people's voting intentions and guarantee a large swing - a new political narrative is to be thrashed out.
The Conservatives, clearly, are going to come out of this mess looking better than the Labour Party. The polls show it and so too will the European results, already written off long ago by Downing Street. Part of the reason for the Tory's long political exile was their association with sleaze, in fact their total immersion in the slimey stuff. Labour was elected, in part, on the 'Breath of Fresh Air', 'Change' 'Things will get better' 'Honest Tony' ticket (when in fact it would have taken some extraordinary mismanagement to have actually lost in 97). This ideological appearance allowed many of these floating voters to rationalise voting Labour despite their instinctual mistrust of any redistribution politics, unions and 'the left'. But all that has now slipped into the unreality of the past. For the reality of their voting Blair was their assurance that, economically, they would continue to benefit from the system. Blair was on their side and extremely relaxed about being filthy rich. It was reassuring stuff. And everyone else was doing it the floaters must have thought. So they played an important role in bequeathing a huge three term sustaining 200 seat majority. Now, the wider economic crisis cannot be allowed to impinge on political debate any longer. In bare knuckle terms, (the fist is clearly visible under the Tory's bony gloved hand), one cannot ask sensitive middle class types to vote for you by saying "We'll make the oiks pay for it all don't worry just vote for us!" It would be more honest, but more vulgar and so risky. Thus this scandal is a heaven sent opportunity (or a plot...) for the Tories to appear the Rent-o-Kill of British politics and come and clean things up. But once the vampire is allowed in, the real cleaning up will get a lot uglier.
The MSM has used this opportunity and served its masters by deflecting attention from the shifted ground beneath our feet. The bankers have had a fright, but they have been given public money to maintain the status quo and are now pretty much in the clear. But someone has to pay. The only way the capitalist system can maintain profit is to squeeze labour costs. That means the likes of us. Our money and stuff. This means the masses making 'sacrificies' and 'tightening belts' and 'putting up with it' and, who knows, even calling on patriotism to muddle us through. Could a Brown government do the 'necessary' measures? If you were a cigar smoking piggy fat cat, you'd be forgiven for having your doubts. At some point, patience within the party and government might snap, a discredited government limping on for another half-term would lose legitimacy and just one more serious economic shock (as the IMF states) and the whole thing might, just might deteriorate.
Brown has proved to be the dunce all expected and a new leader would just look desperate. Winning the floaters over doesn't take much. Again, the opposition are pushing at an open door. but it needs cover, a story a bait that comes before the switch. Brute fact will scare the horses. (Rather than try to blow peoples' coats off, like the wind in the bet with the sun, the media will turn up the heat and make people take their own coats off. Not that the Tories are representatives of the Enlightenment, it's just an allegory). The MSM will continue to feed us the idea that the government and all it has done (the little it has done for us, though) has also been corrupt and that the country needs 'modernizing' (again). Tha, we think here at REL, is the idea.
Ideas do not affect history as such. But the 200 000 swing voters (maybe they are mythical - all the better) were outside and at the end of history in those postmodern Tony Blair days. Their leader was illusory, their Millenium was illusory, their WMD's were illusory, their wealth was illusory and though naturally born conservative political consciousnesses, they were happy enough to see of the miserable corrupt shower of Major's men and even learnt to love Tony. (The rest of us can either grin and bear it and vote Labour anyway, or abstain). It'll take about a year to convince these, now worried, w/hinge voters to return to their natural constituency and put a cross by the blue flame next year. This sliver of political motivation, was a significant factor in determining the voting behaviour of that section of middle England that maitained Labour in power. Now, with the economic argument quietly buried, a more flamboyant rationale for voting for the stupid party is needed. This fake crisis does the trick.
The rest of us, unfloating useless voters can point all we like at the elephant in the room, but its the flea circus that everyone else is interested in. They know the elephant's there, of course, but they are sure that it's not them who's going to have to deal with it. Postcapitalist capitalism will be brutish, next year and the next, when it rampages over us poor list types.

But who knows, things might turn unexpected.