Conservatism is a Cargo Cult

A cargo cult is an occurrence of an increase in religious fervour and change in iconography due to an outside influence. The arrival of technology that has not been possible because the minds and generations that developed and innovated were cut off from the populations. Geography usually plays a big part, cults occur on remote islands. During war time machinery was stored on islands of the south pacific by soldiers and contractors. Their symbology provoked questions from natives and their ignorance left them open to be exploited by contractors and soldiers. The men and equipment would be redeployed and the natives, stuck by ignorance to religious explanation of phenomena, will put their ritual efforts into recreating the perceived prosperity of the meeting of the soldiers. The most obvious cargo cult that I have witnessed is the Christianity brought by Romans to the shores of Britain. The cargo cults most closely studied by academics are from the most remote points of the British empire. Many of them even hold up members of the British royal family as sacred icons. Just like my dear old Granny.

The modern conservative party of Great Britain was the party in power when I came into this world, along with all other awful toxic things like search under suspicion laws and U2’s Joshua Tree album. The modern party was founded by Robert Peel in 1834. The current party has roots not just from its aristocratic and party history, there is also a considerable nationalist presence within the present party, that if conservatives were better people, there would be a lot more embarrassment and scandal over. That is a story for another day though.

The UK is a great distance from USA in many ways but we do end up taking in a lot of their news and politics. A lot more than those of our real neighbours Ireland and France. It seems surprising that a cult like qanon that is built upon mystifying politics in the USA. Like the cargo cults of old being impressed by medicine and combustion engines, now we have people impressed by belligerent trolling and red baseball caps. Twenty first century progress! Here we are though, in December a survey was made that found one in four of the people interviewed were believers in qanon related conspiracy. We could be in for the long haul on this, we have a large Mormon and scientologist population in the UK who seem to make equally less sense outside of USA borders and politics. Just as the Celts turned their noses up at Christianity until the sword was brought to them, we need to keep our guard up around the shit people want to put in our heads. So many of us manage to stay away from illegal drugs apparently so we have the practice.

Speaking of shit. There are two kinds of conservatism. Bad and worse. Conservatism that is concerned with the conservation of economies, particularly the interests of landlords and military industrialists, the second kind is social conservatism. Social conservatism is concerned with a return to traditional values. Well, some peoples tradition is Christian, not most of us but you get what I mean. These are the conservatives who have used political power to create theocratic laws like anti abortion laws, lacklustre slavery laws and confusing patriotism with nationalism. All that wholesome Christian shit. In my lifetime I have seen the pendulum of American politics make its laboured yet short swings between the Republican party and the Liberal party a fair few times. People cry at these election results in the thousands, they are a sweet and sentimental people after all. The nation that gave us Bambi. All they really achieve by voting and parading like this is a change in the brand of conservatism that they put a tremendous amount of effort and labour into. Americans are never lazy but when it comes to priorities they really take the biscuit. Or cookie?

We are at risk of becoming the same way. We have more than one generation of comfortable adults who are politically illiterate because of anti communist propaganda being shoved down their throats. So much so that they are unable to grasp the concept of a more immediate and local threat, fascism. They didn’t vote fascism (this year!) but when a chance came to decry fascism they were much more angered by thievery and vandalism. Purposely misunderstanding the Black Lives Matter movement and political statement. They were all so sure that there are no issues of race in the united kingdom that they believed a movement like black lives matter was a racist movement. Made to create the kind of division and problems that America faces. As if those problems were created by African Americans! Racist groups rebranded as White Lives Matter, enablers of racists were unable to visit social media without saying all lives matter and so called Lads made a point of their side being a patriarchal choice and made the illusion that political flexibility through understanding issues as they are presented to you as being unmanly, unbritish and untrustworthy. Thanks for protecting those statues that no one had any interest in harming lads. Shows the lads have really looked at the history, emotion and political meaning of tearing down statues of slavers and imperialists. Nothing like protecting history with ignorance, so far so good!

The Labour party in the UK was built up from an alliance of trade unions and socialist parties. This is what it should always continue to be made of. Instead it has recognized the overwhelming voting power of the rural middle class and has developed into the world’s most palatable opposition. Palatable for the conservative party. A push towards socialism was attempted and the party made great headways amongst younger people in the UK. Since that loss it has walked a path of compromise and appeasement. Labour didn’t effectively stand up to the press’ campaign of slander. Mystifying the public into misunderstanding the difference between anti Zionist or anti capitalist beliefs and statements for anti semitism. It would have been less than half the work to expose the anti islamic core of the conservative party but half the amount of people would have cared and the press would have been paid half as much. Keir Starmer is now attempting to heal the rift by recruiting Mossad agents (Think Israeli KGB or CIA) into government jobs. That is a job that could have been fulfilled by a British Islamophobe who has been trained in deception and murder. Taking our jobs! 

The ground work on a political pendulum that creaks between two kinds of conservatism has been laid. If you don’t want to clap for the NHS or Stasi like immigration forces in the UK then it is time to wash the scales from your eyes. I am done pandering for concessions. We need to work on being ungovernable. We need to experience real democracy from the ground up in our own communities. Otherwise we will continue to suffer the injustices of sub living wages, unfit benefits systems, murders on our borders and individual rights not granted. All for the sake of the rural middle class. Let them experience British life and call themselves patriots, rather than live as gentry and control our choices. Let’s get over whatever marvels the Romans came to offer us, let’s look at who lives in and for Britain now. Let's look at the future because we can either choose change or wait for change from our next imperial masters, and we are not so far from Washington, most of us are a bus ride away from American military property.