New Normal Sucks, Old Normal Was Much Better

Two examples in one Post

The gentle persuasion of the unelected Davosite fanatic

This is a word-for-word extract from WordPress’s tear-jerking “oh how Holy are we” reaction to Twitter’s sharing service being discontinued:

‘Twitter recently notified Automattic that it was dramatically changing the terms and pricing of the Twitter API. The cost increase is prohibitive for us to absorb without passing a significant price increase along to you, and we don’t see that as an option. We have attempted to negotiate a path forward, but haven’t been able to reach an agreement in time for Twitter’s May 1 cutoff’

Most of us on WordPress couldn’t resist a snigger on hearing this news, having been aware for years that Twitter shares almost none of our posts, so one is forced to tag people manually at Twitter….and there’s no way that Wokepress and Big T don’t know that.

But Twitter’s business model being what it is, the decision to up prices for doing little or nothing they promise (aka, fraud) is a cast-iron case of aiming a blunderbuss at one’s feet, but pointing it at the head. I’m not even remotely surprised, given that from the get-go I was convinced as to the nature of Elon Musk’s real mission in “buying” Twitter: this from last January at The Slog:

‘In-Q-Tel – [one of many vehicles used by Musk to buy Twitter] is completely owned and funded by the CIA….His technique is to disguise nefarious things cleverly in full view…As his own tax returns demonstrate, Elon Musk is a fully paid-up member of the US Deep State’

Musk was and is a front-man whose mission was to destroy Twitter by pissing off the advertisers…who have predictably voted with their feet…a desertion now running at 43%. Time now for Elon to step aside and appoint a new CEO, who starts out with a handicap of millstone proportions.

Not that you should shed so much as a crocodile tear for the lady concerned. She’s on several steering committees at WEF, and partnered with the Biden administration in 2021 to create a coronavirus vaccine campaign that featured Pope Francis. You really couldn’t make it up. Her name is Linda Yaccorino, and as her previous job was to persuade bigtime advertisers that traditional TV commercials are more effective than grubby fantasies about hits in the online theatre, it’ll be interesting to see how she tries to claim a Saul at Tarsus enlightenment in going out to bat for The Other Side.

Logic suggests that she is up there with a carte blanche to fail. She will try to turn Twitter into the go-to place for big business looking for a safe haven of gently inoffensive comment. Exit by default one more social medium with potential to question the Establishment’s 24/7 cover-up of everything from Anti-liberty green imposter Al Gore to Zero-brain Zelenskyy.

(New Normal obfuscation to justify New World goals)

The second half of today’s piece is yet another attempt to defend the past and kick-start a regular feature that may seem at first sight to be self-indulgent nostalgia, but is an empirical account – minus rose-coloured spectacles – to prove that Schlaphead von Davos is talking through his capacious anus when he suggests that total dependence upon the State because we no longer have any money will make us “happy”. I shrink from imagining what makes Onkel Klaus happy, but I and millions like me vastly prefer the Old Normal where the State was largely invisible, and its citizens (not serfs) made choices for themselves.

At the end of the last episode, your correspondent from 1957 – aged nine – had been demonstrating his Far Right anti-social behaviour by chucking dangerous fireworks in all directions. Now read on….

From 1958 onwards for nearly six years, pretty much everyone that teenagers liked died an unpleasant early death. Eight Manchester United footballers were killed in a take-off failure at Munich Airport; Buddy Holly and the Big Bopper also died in a plane crash, Eddie Cochrane and James Dean wrote themselves off in fast cars, and in a suspiciously slow-moving motorcade, John F Kennedy was shot dead in Dallas.

But none of it seemed to dent the belief widely held in the Anglophone world that this was indeed The New Frontier of space travel, advancing medical science, full employment, floodlit soccer, plastic records turning at 45 rpm, whitewall tyres and fins (on cars painted other than black) and of course, new dance crazes like the Twist, the Locomotion, the Monkey and the Mashed Potato. Elvis had come out of the army looking less of a threat to morality, Bobby Vee was topping the charts, Tommy Steele was moving into musicals and rock n roll was dead. This was going to be a future of Italian suits, shortie raincoats, the Peppermint Lounge, floor shows, Telstar, astronauts and The Jet Set.

But then in October 1962, the Beatles changed everything, and – once the Vietnam War got into its stride – soft drugs became hip, everyone was either a student or a draft dodger or both, men got hairier, and Hippies put a flower behind one ear. Peace, Love, Tune in, turn on and drop out.

But in the 1963 to 1965 interim, the Manchester scene became an epicentre for pop-rock-to-Motown, quickly outstripping Liverpool as a venue at its myriad live and DJ clubs like the Jungfrau, Oasis, Twisted Wheel, Top of the Town, the Heaven & Hell and Beat City: for this was the March of the Mods. In these clubs you could see The Hollies, Herman’s Hermits, The Mindbenders, Spencer Davis, Stevie Wonder, The Animals and yes, even Johnny B. Good himself, Chuck Berry.

In the summer of 1965, best friend Shaun and I went to stay in West Berlin (deep inside East Germany) to take part in a three-month living history seminar based in Glieneker Park. We did three hours labouring work in the mornings, had a lecture about life under the Nazis in the early evening, and spent every evening investigating Sin City.

A club often frequented was The Big Apple, where they played Anglo-American pop. One night myself and a cockney bloke called Del tumbled out of there slightly the worse for wear, and went on the U-bahn Underground in search of we weren’t sure what. But we went in the wrong direction and wound up in East Berlin. The Communist civil police (or Vopos) marched us off to a seedy copshop and we were dumped into a cell. I was, shall we say, scared. Del was too drunk to know either way. The next morning they marched us back to the U-bahn and we were sent back to the West.

It was fairly easy to get a six hour visa to East Berlin via Checkpoint Charlie, so I made several visits. The shops were dirty and grey, the pubs were nice enough but the beer was awful. There were no newspapers scattered in the bars – a common sight in the West. When I asked why, the locals told me, “It’s all lies anyway, so why pay to read lies?” When any Vopos came into a public bar anywhere, all conversation stopped.

Back in Glieneker, we often went to the brow of a steep escarpment overlooking the River Havel – the border with East Germany. Every night, dozens of people tried to swim across to freedom. Most made it, some didn’t. One afternoon towards the end of our stay, we were taken to the river resort of Wannsee. This was where the Final Solution against the Jews was “signed off” by top Nazis led by Heinrich Himmler. I was privileged to read the preparations – how many trains, who was going to make them, the number of camps, rules about night-time journeys, suppliers of the poison gas…..every least detail was written down as if it might be a factory outing. All very German: alles klar und alles in Ordnung.

The trip to Berlin informed me as never before about the two main aspects of life under a totalitarian régime of either Left or Right: fear stalks two steps behind the populace, and there is nothing – no matter how unthinkably ghastly – fanatics given absolute power will shrink from doing.

And now here we are – nearly eighty years after the Second World War, and sixty years after Dallas – with the two main power blocs in the world having established (or in the hurried process of establishing) technocracies with a shared interest in the sort of genocide to make the Holocaust look like a Punch and Judy Show.

This is why age, experience and their proximity to great events make wrinklies like me worth listening to. Perhaps even more relevant, the most informative way to realise when you’re dealing with evil is that Tony Blair (only five years younger than me) was a witness to history’s darkest outcomes, but – like Klaus Schwab – he still doesn’t shrink from being a prime mover in bringing all that horror back again in the form of World Government. Nor does the CIA, the US Democratic Party, the Pentagon, NATO, the EU or the People’s Republic of China.

Hold that final thought. I shall be returning to it.

(Old Normal learnings that show One World fanaticism hiding behind the dry ice)