Unbeknown to most readers Alistair Cook ( without an e) was also captain of the English test X1
Alistair Cook
For those old enough to remember Alistair Cooke,(with an ‘e’) this one is compelling because Alistair was in the US for so long he lost his sense of “English-ness”. So rather than project an english perspective on American politics to a non american audience, he began to increasingly project an American perspective to an American audience and members of that audience who might have harboured an English accent. In accent we refer to ‘Nuance’, the cultural underpinning that is characteristically ‘ English”. ‘What difference’? we hear you say. It’s all in nuance and language, which is what makes this reply to Franks recent dispatch all the more interesting.
Dominc Cummings, all ambition and zero empathy
In as much as Australian actors lose their idiom as they morph into fully fledged Hollywood stars, this instance outlines the peculiar and intense desiccated, sun drenched quality in Australian observation upon American culture. What is American culture ? Australian culture with confidence? Has this anything to do with America’s overt republicanism, fostered since 1776? Possibly but more-so the unshakeable, (until recently) belief in themselves, and a belief, (very Un- Australian) belief in God. And of course the spiritual splendour of Hollywood. And of Dominic Cumings, a sociopath? Not really, just a very twenty-first century figure.
Cecil writes….
Howdy Pardner, or G’day Frank
I did find this dispatch (as with most of the others) thought provoking. It brought to mind Eisenhower’s 1961 warning of the threat of the rise of the Military Industrial complex and it is quite clear that he saw that as a direct threat to democracy. I think that my father was totally committed to democracy, and its inherent aim of diffusing power. My fear is that democracy is all bet dead. We are bound for a period of totalitarian, autocratic and fascist rule. Michael Sandel’s “Tyranny of Merit” and Nancy MacLeans “Democracy in Chains” indicate to me that this is both the unintended consequence in the former and the absolute intention in the latter. I’ve just read a commentary on Dominic Cummings which offers me little hope:
Ike
Lee
How exactly the British democratic state could be modelled on organisations which are anything but democratic is not something that much troubles Cummings. The fact that Singapore, hardly a bastion of freedom, is probably the most democratic of the ones on his list tells you all you need to know. Many of the alternative thinkers Cummings likes to cite are explicit in their contempt for democracy, which they consider close to obsolete. The world has moved on; asking whether something would be “undemocratic” is just sentimental attachment to a passing phase in human history. As elite technical expertise, both machine and human, becomes paramount, the idea of having to wait on public opinion to work out what to do starts to look absurd.
Dominics alter ego? Peter Lorre in Fritz Lang’s “M”
