Easter's Fresh Start: Simple, easy and meaningful social debate.
I find myself discovering, paradoxically, humanist qualities in Christ's message of love, duty, compassion, acceptance and forgiveness. He should have been a poet…yet, when I think about it, he was a poet, artist, philosopher, intellectual, politician, joiner, leader of social change, reformer, vessel and conduit of tradition, traveller, priest, prophet, miracle worker, social worker, psychologist et cetera… What wasn't he?
Well what we know for sure is that he forgave, didn't judge and gave us a fresh start which we celebrate at Easter because of his Resurrection. But he also showed us that the political hack like me could be given a fresh start even if it causes me such inner-conflict of pride, the ego etc.
Perhaps this is the best time to be out of my comfort zone, writing positively about political debate without 'comfortable cynicism' that can be personally so destructive. But how can one reject cynicism as it is a 'large part of my life'? Could it be that everyone in politics are all entitled to a fresh start?
Things tend to get stretched when income, postal code and family history are concerned. But I believe that this opens-up possibilities to avoid political dogma, ideology, overheated blind idealism, and overexposure to demagoguery. How? A fresh start. One can avoid compartmentalisation and demographic determinism for a start. So who in British politics abandoned the political Handbook? It was Thatcher and Blair. From here we can question the excepted 'wisdom' of those to castigate both these well-intended hard nuts, and admit that both became unpopular warlords of success but both started the firing pistols of new and exciting times for their respective parties. A fresh start? Both economies prospered in mind expanding possibilities to reward the game in a purposive, progressive way that unlocked the potential of Capitalism. All the negativity that had divided society had the potential of being ignored, leaving Capitalism as transformative and restorative to Britons. A fresh start. Even Thatcher's petit bourgeois spite and Blair's smug smirk couldn't confound that a true and free economy could resemble more than just a self-indulgent greed of city men bearing their testosterone like the film the Wolf of Wall Street. A fresh start. Something genuine had been discovered: the idealism of the free market for all, not the half capacity or unproductive waste of the unemployed, unable to share in all the wealth at their fingertips to flourish, but a human interaction, inclusive and a mutual meritocracy that sharpened one's wit and accelerated one's instincts rather than flatten or degrade and exploit. A fresh start. Capitalism had emerged as more than a profitable transaction, it could be economic but also social dynamite that released all creative energy-it's just a shame that Thatcher was not an appealing person and a shame that Blair was. The wrong personalities for the job of PM had almost completely overshadowed the social economies of the ideal in Capitalism.
This Easter is the moment of all fresh starts. I feel that positive values can shape the freedom of debate without fear of reprisal. It is because I was brought up in a Socialist household that I can admire its qualities of humility, kindness and faith, it's just that it is susceptible to such corruption that it is denigrates the very qualities of the individual that it's trying to save. In fact I would like to offer the aggregate political knowledge that I have and share them in any way I can to demystify what has become a test of boredom rather than a test of interest.