I was struggling with a blog concerning the General Flynn case in the  US, the main problem being, how do you encapsulate this complex story and convey the absolute scandal that it is. It is basically a story that contrast the naive but honourable soldier with the actions of a political class who corrupted the organs of the State to ‘nail’ their man. This feeds into the whole Russiagate story which was unbelievable from it’s beginning and became more sinister as it played out, driven by a compliant press and desperate opposition. The trouble is that if you control the establishment media then any criticism is treated as a conspiracy  but any conspiracy imagined by the media is impartial reporting. So for three years we were told that Meuller will expose the conspiracy and Adam Schiff claimed that he had confidential information that will sink Trump. Well we all know where that went! However, there are still those that believe the lie, how can that be? The answer is that if you control the mainstream media you can follow the advice of someone else who also wanted to promote an ideology that changed the culture of his day, Joseph Goebbels.

“If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it, and you will even come to believe it yourself.” ~ Joseph Goebbels

Still trying to find a way of telling the Flynn story I read two articles in the Times which might bring  together the title of this essay, Goebbels, General Flynn and the full stop.

The first piece was by Deborah Ross, entitled ‘I’m writing this with no full stops so as not to seem aggressive.’  It does what it says on the tin, a humorous piece written with only one full stop at the end. Apparently,  she was responding to a new wave of protest that determined that the full stop was, “‘aggressive‘ …’not sincere and marked you out as ‘old‘”. Quite a lot of sub text for such a small piece of punctuation. The criticism appears to be from the young to the old and I can see that it reflects the change in technology, over time. We don’t write letters anymore but text abbreviated messages in a constant stream of the mundane. In business, we rarely write full reports but substitute with visual aids and bullet points. I personally think that we have lost something on the way  but can accept that if you are sending a one line text, then if you don’t want to finish with a full stop, then don’t. Having said that I must pause for a second and listen. Do I hear the world collapsing, rioting in the streets (If you are reading this in the US, you can skip this one) sounds of old ladies and gentlemen expiring? Nothing, …. nobody cares. I think that this lack of response prompted the addition of  aggression and lack of sincerity to the offense. I haven’t seen the logic behind this but I think that there are those who are determined to be offended and an attack on the poor full stop means that they are really scraping the barrel.

Do you sense a theme yet? Perhaps if I say that the second article is by Matthew  Moore and entitled Rule, Britannia! row: Proms decision a ghastly error, says former BBC chairman (sic)  you will start to see the connection. Poor old Aunty BBC is all about  providing what the BBC thinks is good for the populous and rushing to ensure that no minority can be offended by anything it produces. In doing this it tramples on the culture,  history and identity of the majority without a second thought and is constantly surprised by the reaction it provokes. The latest tangle was the suggestion that they were going to drop Rule Britannia and Land of Hope and Glory from the final night of the Proms this year. Their reason for doing this was the difficulty of staging them and meeting the challenges of COVID 19 in performance and if it was anyone other than Aunty I would cut them some slack. However, I think that in the recent past the top floor has been uneasy about all the flag waving and expressions of joyful nationalism  that didn’t fit into their view of Britain as a European country. What is more likely to have happened is as reported in the Sunday Times. “They have been meeting regularly over Zoom but have yet to agree the Last Night programme, which is on September 12. They are also concerned about how to strike a sombre tone during a global pandemic and how to respond to the ongoing debates over race equality.” (The Sunday Times, 23/08/20) This is more the BBC I know that spends it’s time deciding how I should deal with the virus and what my position should be on the racial controversy which they are promoting.  I take a different view on the words and sentiment of the songs. I think that those who sang Rule Britania in 1807 and 1833 would have a different take on them than post Brexit BBC Management. I think that my parents generation singing the words of Land of Hope and Glory, as they stood alone in 1940 would have had another interpretation and the fact that the Vera Lynn versions sits at the top of the itunes charts, speak to this. I think that the modern promenaders would take their own message of joy and inspiration from the songs focussing on the present and the future.

I think that the 2019 General Election was less about the economic arguments about membership of the EU and more about a clash of cultures. It revealed a political class that knew what was best for everyone else and a large section of the community that was just tired of the constant attacks on normal life. Both sides crossed traditional political and class divides but the extent to which the old voting blocks were upended came as a big surprise to the progressive elites. People were frustrated by the Parliamentary games that were being played to defeat the Brexit vote and in the US to corrupt the FBI and Justice system. They are tired of hearing endless lectures about how a man can become a woman and how they want to be addressed. As referred to above, even punctuation becomes fraught with meaning and consequences if you make the wrong choice. As for the BBC,  we need only to look at the following extract of the Mission part of the BBC Charter to question how far they have drifted from the original promise.

The Mission of the BBC is to act in the public interest, serving all audiences through the provision of impartial, high-quality and distinctive output and services which inform, educate and entertain. extract from the BBC Charter

In the case of the two songs, we understand the technical problems and perhaps Gareth Malone could have done something imaginative to raise spirits during the Covid crisis. Instead of lifting spirits Aunty chose to look for the dark side to reflect the virus and the progressive obsession with race. It seems that the strategy of these elites are to wear the rest of us down, They took a bloody nose in the last election  but using the loose confederation of sympathetic causes they are prepared to push progressivism at every level, every minute. So from corrupting the organs of state, to politicising the language and trying to rewrite history you can see how they work against us. On that note i think that I just about linked General Flynn, Goebbels, punctuation and patriotic songs in a theme that reflected the title of this piece, Land of Hope and Glory … are we sure?

References 

https://www.azquotes.com/author/5626-Joseph_Goebbels

The Times, 27/08/20, Deborah Ross, I’m writing this with no full stops so as not to seem aggressive. 

The Times, 27/08/20, Matthew  Moore , Rule, Britannia! row: Proms decision a ghastly error, says former BBC chairman 

The Times, 23/08/20, Grant Tucker/ Rosamund Urwin, Rule Britannia faces axe in BBC’s ‘Black Lives Matter Proms.