UK Politics: At the Mountains of Madness
In H.P. Lovecraft's story, At the Mountains of Madness, an expedition to Antarctica in 1930, discovers the remnant's of an alien civilization's history on Earth, both biological, cosmic, geological on a vast unimaginable scale. The book deals in themes of horror of the unknown, of the incomprehensible scale (for example Deep Time in science) and how all these things conspire to produce madness in people not able or equipped to cope with such "traumas to their accepted reality"; as these mountains rise, larger even than Everest in the Himalayas, symbolizes: The walls to what people can comprehend, beyond which our minds would be shattered if we dared to venture, encountering the unfathomable monsters that lurk there.
"the mind seemed to grow giddy by looking so far into the abyss of time". ~ Deep Time: John Playfair, June 1788 on the age of rock strata.
Similar themes shape on a more personal and psychological level, the writing of Philip K. Dick where the veil of reality is lifted and glimpses beyond trigger a chain-reaction of implications for the present reality or else the veil is entirely ripped to shreds irrevocably. In these stories the "veil" either took the form of "altered states of consciousness" or the "machinations of authoritarian governments" on the people.
Previously we looked at in Pattern Recognition "The Bruges Group (see side bar) provides a mountain of quotes supporting The Great Deception is genuinely another pattern..." and before that the "political orthodoxy of our EU Membership from the mouths of our Prime Ministers in their own words.
Scale & Calculation: The virtual reality "code" generated in The Matrix
A similar theme of a "mind-blowing revelation" in it's sheer scale of deception is found in the "cyberpunk sci-fi" movie-story: The Matrix. And here the challenges of "a prison for the mind" are considered, not unlike in a real comparative sense the sheer scale of orthodoxy or dogma on thousands to millions of people. Or perhaps as relevant to our "Representative Democracy" the huge scale of apathy and low-turn out and participation by people who have "better things to do":-
Large crowd of Christmas shoppers enjoying London's Oxford Street festive decorations
And so the extraordinarily interesting question arises: If people have been plied with propaganda
to accept a particular political norm for decades: How do you reverse
some of that process? Political parties in our "Representative
Democracy" are not in the business of training and developing good
arguments in their supporters, they're in the business of recruitment
for millions of people, as per the General Elections results in the UK
for 2015:-
Scale of Recruitment in British Politics per Party: 2015 General Elections
YouGov Poll break-down of Pro-EU vs Anti-EU Support
Dr. RAE North chronicles, EU politics: Barroso's swan song :-
However, at nearly 9,000 words, this is a seriously long speech, almost of the style we'd expect from a Soviet leader, rather than a soon to be ex-Commission president, a man who tells us he has been "actively involved in the process of European integration over the last 30 years". [...]
Barroso then turns to the relationship between the EU and the UK. He "passionately believes" that Europe is stronger with the UK as its member, and that the UK "is stronger as a member of the EU than on its own". But he acknowledges that for historical, geopolitical and economic reasons, "the case of the UK may be seen as a special one".
Precisely because of this, Barroso thinks it would be a mistake to transform an exception for the UK into a rule for everybody else. We can, and should, he says, "Specificity", inasmuch as this does not threaten the Union's overall coherence. But we should not confound this specificity with an overall situation of the Union.
If you remember this was (Summer 2014) and now is after The Greek "Specificity or Crisis". Our own politicians are of a like-mind. They too are wondering how to deal with the UK's "specificity" in the EU. And we come back to our question above, looking at the sheer scale of numbers of voters involved and the "inertia" of thinking that hence arises due to the Status Quo Effect.
In Politicians: No Taste, No Style, So Derivative! we modelled the Political Spectrum as per YouGov's Analysis: EU referendum – the state of public opinion as a Political Prism:-
Red + Violet = GREEN
We've come all the signs that indicate RED = Pro-EU (see Pattern Recognition) support and VIOLET = ANTI-EU (See UKIP + Leave.EU via Fatal Car Crash: Two Dead After Car Accident) support framing the debate in The Westminster Political-Media Bubble and hence reflected across the Legacy News-Media page after page of "Mountains Of Madness":-
- Do David Cameron's EU negotiations really matter at all?
- If this is perfidy, it works for Britain For Janen Ganesh
- Yes, the EU is flawed. That's exactly why we can’t just all walk away
- EU In And Out Campaigns Have Blazing Row On LBC
Frog Fractions: The Boiling Frog: EU Referendum: 51%
"Assuming therefore, for the sake of argument, a turnout of between 65-70%, this would leaves us with between 29.3 million and 31.5 million potential voters. To achieve the magic 51% we would need to convince around 16 million voters."And now the same process is shaping the upcoming Referendum, from Dominic Cummings' blog:
Roughly one third of the British public is very hostile to the EU, one third is pro-EU, a fifth wants to leave but is worried about jobs and living standards, and a fifth doesn’t know (perhaps doesn’t care). In the 1970s, the EEC was seen as a modernising project and connected to Britain’s recovery from basket case status. Echoes of this were still there during the euro battle 1999-2002. This feeling seems to have died. Focus groups strongly support the data above and suggest that the financial crisis, the Greek euro crisis, and the migrant crisis all played an important part in changing sentiment.
If one looks at this crucial ‘swing’ fifth, they now break 59:41 for ‘remain’. This suggests that if the ‘leave’ campaign persuades these people that a ‘leave’ vote will be followed by a free trade deal and friendly cooperation, then the ‘leave’ campaign will win. The ‘remain’ campaign has many advantages, such as its grip on conventional wisdom in institutions such as the BBC and CBI (which were deeply wrong on the euro). Its fundamental position, however, clearly has significant weaknesses.Dr. RAE North notes EU Referendum: a particularly stupid idea that this GREEN = Rebranded Dogma to coral millions along the latest twist in our Argumentum Ad Infinitum aka The Great Deception. As you'd expect this approach is hugely popular with the Westminster Political-Media Bubble as Dr. RAE North once again observes: EU Referendum: when "no" means "yes"
- Matthew Parris in the Spectator
- Simon Jenkins in the Guardian
- James Kirkup in The Daily Telegraph
In the above, there is no definition of The Great Deception (The Cage: Safe but trapped or Free but in danger?); it's replaced by The Mountains Of Madness, how The Referendum (The Cage Door) will be conducted via 2 superficial opposite reflections (Red vs Violet) and no definition of The Positive Vision outside the EU (Beyond The Cage). For this we'd need people to understand that "white light", not this "green light" of deception and self-deception that will be the properties of Campaigns Of Great Concern but little real value. Herding into "The Middle" merely produces the madness in the above picture.
