Humanity in Public Faces Unmasked in Alice in Wonderland Politics

 Watching and listening to RTE presenters give heartfelt apologies for their lapse in attention to maintaining social distance at a small gathering we seemed to have moved from the tragic to the ridiculous. Alice in Wonderland came to mind as possibly the best read. It was bizarre to see some of them photographed in small groups, arms around their retiring colleague when, shortly before, attendees had been standing several steps apart and leaning against bannisters on curving stairs in a large vestibule with an apparently harmless drink in hand while listening to a colleague honour a departing colleague, 

How could they have forgotten or, as the daily faces of the international news, been so naïve as to believe someone wouldn’t try to make hay with the images?

That, even they, did let their guard down affirms the importance of what the Professor of Health Psychology and member of the UK Sage committer, Lucy Yardley, had to say about the importance of recognising how well people are doing at keeping the virus under control and the need to offer solutions to the problems they experience that have them lapse. To offer solutions to the difficulties that lead them to drop their guard instead of chastising the outriders breaking the rules. 

(see my blog of Oct, 18^th https://susanlindsayauthor.blogspot.com/2020/10/could-lives-be-saved-by-asking-and.html)

The RTE lapse beautifully demonstrates the difficulties inherent in meeting each other. I’d imagine the urge to let go, for a brief moment to be human again and respond as such to moments in a real and genuine way will become more and more prevalent. 

We have a profound need to demonstrate that our current strange behaviour is temporary and aberrant and that, despite all the horror of the apparent cold-shouldering in socially-distanced attempts to avert the spread of a potentially killing virus, we do actually care and want to be close again and demonstrate affection and appreciation in a real way. We want to keep ourselves human, remind each other of how difficult this is, that we desperately need human contact and to overcome the inhumanity in withholding it – if only for the brief moment it appears possible and is relatively safe. In that moment the virus is something to be briefly ignored. Of course health professionals will rightly remind us that that is the moment the virus would be waiting for, if it was actually of a waiting-for kind of species which it isn’t, but it is the moment it can cross from one to another. They’re right and we need to hold firm.

Arguably it is also essential though, perhaps even more essential for the long term, that we don’t become so adapted to distancing that we forget what it is to be human and to care and to reach out to touch each other in ways that have been demonstrated in the past to be as necessary, and possibly more necessary, than food and drink for our survival. 

If we don’t recognise this and find solutions for the medium term, psychology and mental health and wellbeing  may have its own way of demonstrating that far from being the poor relation of medicine it can take centre stage when ignored too long.

It’s been a bizarre week.

Debates continued about the need to further enforce lockdown in this horribly serious international game with so much to play for or, as the DCU Professor reminded us is more important, on how to keep each other onside, given that all the research has shown that it is only the onside public who will win the war in the long-term. Debate which culminated in this cameo moment in RTE.

This with a back-drop of intense media support for opposition ‘scrutiny’ of the appointment of a supreme court judge who dropped his guard and then stupidly tried to blag it out instead of immediately offering his resignation (at that stage a few months or a year’s deferral of taking up his appointment would have been fine) suggesting he is indeed not the judge we’d wish him to be but who nevertheless has not done anything worthy of the initiating of impeachment procedures that opposition self-promotion has brought to be considered.

Brexit deadlines appear to come and go like streams that emerge from the mountains when there’s heavy rainfall.

Where once they would have had us glued to our screens they get minimum ‘scrutiny’ now. Further evidence too, of the determination of Fianna Fail members of the Dail to do everything possible to undermine their leader, finally Taoiseach, in their attempts to appease their lobbying constituents or further their own end games.

I’ve never felt as much wish that someone would get behind Michael Martin and give him a chance. 

Same goes for the rest of the government. The Greens were probably right. This is a time we’d have been better to have a National Government but we are where we are as we horribly say as in ‘if it was there I was going it wouldn’t be here I’d be starting from’. This is the place we have to travel on from.

If even his own team won’t back Martin in the face of world pandemic and Brexit as the country faces the worst financial and social challenge of a lifetime when would anyone?

Everyone in government are doing a great job, as in probably the best they can, with the dogs baying at their heels and so are the rest of us – most of the time. It would be just great if the begrudgers – albeit desperate in their own particular circumstances – would catch on and start playing for the home team to the greater good of not only everyone else but, ultimately, themselves too.

The public have never yearned more for – or appreciated more when it is seen - inspiring, coherent leaders who keep them informed, whether the news is palatable or not.

As my daughter said, even on public transport when the announcements started telling you why you were delayed or how long the delay is expected to last and promise regular updates, everyone relaxes and gets on with doing what they can. Why can’t utility companies, businesses, the government, back-benchers and the media learn this lesson too? Thank-you to every one of you who are doing exactly that and trying to do it better.

Language is power.

 
The importance of language is particularly striking me this morning as votes are counted in the US election. Trump's language. His tone, simplicity and evangelical delivery - if only in the way he delivers promises he seems to imagine are reassuring, and maybe they are, for his fans. Have we heard as regularly about other White House incumbents, those who actually deliver on their promises - if/when they do? 

A master at managing the media story and speaking the language of his could-be and actual followers. Now, when he has ‘promised’ to fight in the courts if results don’t go his way, it seems we'll spend today speculating as much on whether/when he'll go to the Supreme Court as on the likely outcome of the US election. What will we talk about in the months to come if Bidon wins? 

One thing you can say about Trump, hate him or love him, a lot of people have voted, even if they haven't for a good while. Sexism, racism, hell-raising, content...? Yes, but if he speaks your language....