New Year; nothing’s normal – part 3

Part 1 of New Year; nothing’s normal can be read here and part 2 can be read here.

What was seen as ‘political correctness’ gone mad, as the saying went in the 90s, slowly transformed into the various forms of ‘woke’ (try explaining ‘woke’ to the more traditionally-minded over-60s person and see how far you get), is now seen as the norm and in fact a requirement of the new culture that has been embraced by the media in general and the BBC in particular, as witnessed on New Year’s Eve and also, interestingly, by the new filmmakers churning out endless what a generation ago would have been called ‘B’ movies which make up so much of the ‘new’ woke content on movie and tv streaming internet services. So much so, that to a critical adult viewer, much of it is so ‘nice’ and ‘woke’ as to be unwatchable, which the BBC, like much of the print media, theatre and arts, is about to find out to their cost.

People are turning away from traditional news outlets, movies, magazines and newspapers, as they become more and more irritated by having the opinions of some journalist, television personality or writer foisted on them when all they actually wanted was a streaming service, book or magazine for entertainment or information.

Not what is currently gossip around the dinner tables of the pointless chattering classes of North London, or the manicured gardens of middle-income earners residing in Audi Avenue.

You could say that many people do not know what they like, but they sure as anything know what they do not like and that includes lectures on equality, racism, climate change, transgenderism, the EU or why we should dislike President Trump, when they have settled down to watch a film, read a magazine, a book or their local ‘rag’.

This attack – because that is what it is – to force-feed the majority into accepting the views and opinions of a vocal and well-funded minority, be it climate change, the EU, transgenderism, feminism, green politics, nationalism and wokeism is relentless. We’ve seen the manifestation of all this over the New Year, the London fireworks display for example which was transformed into an illuminated political statement. What next? Will we see something similar to displays in dictatorships when a likeness of some political leader illuminates the sky.

This year we have witnessed the attacks and desecration of the national symbol of remembrance, the Cenotaph, damage and destruction of public statues and buildings, and name changes on publicly funded buildings, along with the re-evaluation of street names, and our history, by self-appointed guardians of our ‘nice woke’ 21st Century morals as decided either by activists, or worse, decided by unelected officials in organisations supported by the public purse following their own political ideology.

It’s difficult to get away from all the propaganda, so much so that one wonders why the Prime Minister, vocal and flamboyant with rhetoric that often means very little and nothing at all to the ever-patient taxpayer, has been so silent on this. Why, for instance, was the attack on the Cenotaph met with silence from him and the establishment or for that matter the overtly political statement lighting up the London sky on New Years Eve? Condemnation of the event, and there has been plenty, was left mostly to what the media patronisingly calls ‘citizen journalists’ and bloggers. You may well ask.

During the last few months and with more time on my hands than usual, and I suspect along with many others, have spent more time reading. As it happens, I enjoy – for that is why I read them, books written in the 1930s and 40s, mostly beautifully written by long since forgotten writers and authors whose works I first found in one of those bookshops usually found in university towns and obviously catering for middle England.

Staff were knowledgeable, friendly and helpful, and the clientele more or less the type of people you would expect to see in such an establishment, but over the last two or three years staff changed almost overnight and so did the clientele.

Books on display and featured became more leftish and overtly political – I’m sure you get the picture. I eventually stopped visiting when they featured the life and thoughts of yet another pointless celebrity, and so as I’ve noticed did other regular clients who I now see buying books from one of the more popular down-market booksellers, where I’ve found books by the same authors and others to be much less expensive, often cheaper than your once favourite magazine and a much better read.

Now, I’ve tried reading some of the lesser-known authors on display and some are very good indeed.  They capture the imagination and have a plot, a beginning and an end, but over the last few months they have been overtaken by the latest breed of woke storyteller.

A Christmas gift was discarded after the first three chapters, written by a well-known author, and published by a well-known publishing house. In this detective story, the senior detectives were lesbian, another male had lost his wife in tragic circumstances, a uniformed constable was a wife-beater, two of the witnesses were German, worried that because of this ‘Brexit nonsense‘ the anti-EU voters didn’t want them here and they would be forced to leave the UK and so it went on, until I finally lost my patience and in the bin it went.

None of the characterisations added anything to the story, which it seems to me were added to burnish the woke credentials of the author. Written in 2018/19 this over political activism is becoming more and more evident and this novel was found in one of those bookshops that purchase stock by the yard as shelf fillers.  That is why, perhaps, it illustrates a new maxim for the new normal – ‘go woke, go broke’. Older business heads would counsel, give your customers what they want, not what you like them to want, but as we are all constantly told these days of the ‘new normal‘, age and experience counts for little.