Programming note: Join me tonight for a rather different installment of Tales for Our Time, and then tomorrow, Saturday, for the latest episode of our Serenade Radio weekend music show, On the Town. The latter starts at 5pm British Summer Time - which is 6pm in Western Europe and 12 noon North American Eastern. You can listen from almost anywhere on the planet by clicking the button at top right here.
~In a shrewd assessment of the current campaign Down Under, Paul Collits cites a certain "niche Canadian"":
Mark Steyn says that we cannot vote our way out of the Western mess. The 2025 Australian election is living proof of the truth of his claim. Whoever wins here will inherit an unholy mess, and will not have the will to address it.
Of course, he could be talking about next week's Canadian election or last month's German election. As we have noted, Fred Merz, the incoming chancellor in Berlin, has yet to take office but what Americans call the honeymoon is over before the coalition has been officially pronounced man and wife. Hermann Binkert, head honcho of Germany's INSA polling agency, says the country has never seen loss of approval on this scale between the election and the formation of the government. The so-called "far-right" AfD is now leading in multiple polls. Which would be super-exciting if voting hadn't already taken place.
In America, the new administration certainly has the "will to address" the "unholy mess" but the Trumpian Gulliver is beset on all sides by District Court Lilliputians whose position is that what a Democrat president has done cannot "lawfully" be undone. This is a pseudo-"constitutional" recognition of the practical reality of electoral politics throughout the west: the choice is between a Leftward Ho! party and a Ratchet party. If the Left wins, they dissolve the border and trannify your kids. If the "Right" wins (Stephen Harper, Scott Morrison), they may pause some of the more obviously crazy stuff but they never actually reverse the direction of travel. Unless they're the UK Tories (Cameron, May, Johnson, Sunak), in which case they stay in the leftie lane without even shifting down to third gear.
So "politics", as increasingly narrowly defined, is less and less likely to save you. Because the gap between "politics" and reality grows ever wider. Consider the instructive example of one Hashem Abedi. Mr Abedi and his brother plotted the Ariana Grande concert bombing in Manchester. It was, from the Abedi viewpoint, a huge success: twenty-two dead, half of them kids, plus a thousand injured. It was a big deal at the time: lots of flowers, teddy bears, and heart-rending renditions of "Don't Look Back in Anger".
So you'd have thought even the British state would have at least pretended to take it seriously. Hashem Abedi was detained at His Majesty's Pleasure, and under one of the three supposedly toughest prison regimes in England and Wales. Nevertheless, on April 12th he put three of his guards in hospital with what were described as "life-threatening injuries". A fortnight later, two are still there. How did a maximum-security prisoner manage to do that? Well, he used boiling cooking oil and weaponised kitchen utensils.
So how did he get hold of boiling cooking oil? Was he a finalist for Maximum Security Masterchef? Ah, well. The details remain vague, and as usual the worthless UK media has shown not the slightest curiosity in how the Ariana Grande perp came close to bulking up his death toll by fifteen per cent.
Half-a-century ago, as a callow adolescent, I read one of the most brilliant novels of the twentieth century, Evelyn Waugh's Decline and Fall. It was written a century ago, but it foresees what happens when a difficult prisoner falls under a progressive prison governor:
'Now I,' he said, 'am of a different opinion. It may surprise you, but I should say that the significant thing about this case was the fact that the prisoner held a piece of the stool.'
'Destruction of prison property,' said the Chief Warder. 'Yes, that's pretty bad.'
'Now what was your profession before conviction?' asked the Governor, turning to the prisoner.
'Carpenter, sir.'
'I knew it,' said the Governor triumphantly. 'We have another case of the frustrated creative urge. Now listen, my man. It is very wrong of you to insult the officer, who is clearly none of the things you mentioned. He symbolizes the just disapproval of society and is, like all the prison staff, a member of the Church of England. But I understand your difficulty. You have been used to creative craftsmanship, have you not, and you find prison life deprives you of the means of self-expression, and your energies find vent in these foolish outbursts? I will see to it that a bench and a set of carpenter's tools are provided for you. The first thing you shall do is to mend the piece of furniture you so wantonly destroyed. After that we will find other work for you in your old trade. You may go.'
The next day the prisoner uses his new tools to behead a fellow inmate.
It is true that Evelyn Waugh did not foresee an England in which the prisons were run by Muslim gangs. Because that would have been too fanciful even for a satirists in 1928. But, other than that, all is obvious, all is known. The solutions are also obvious, although neither politicians nor judges are ninded to address them.
Which means that some other method will have to be found.
We shall have more, on a related theme, on tonight's Tales for Our Time.
~In this eighth year of The Mark Steyn Club, we're very appreciative of all those who signed up in our first flush and are still eager to be here as we cruise on towards our first decade. We thank you all. For more information on the Club, see here.
