Gordon Brown's soul

"We must have more than a set of policies - we must have a soul", says Gordon Brown in his first speech as Labour Party leader.

And all to general jeering (so soon!) about what 'a soul' might possibly mean for a political party.

Are we, for example, talking 'soul' as in 'immortal soul', the essence that remains behind when the body is dead?

Dead body? The Labour Party? Surely not?

Do we mean the spirit that flies off, freed from earthly toils?

The only thing that's just left the Labour government is Tony Blair, flying away like a Roman comet after the death of Julius Caesar.

I don't think that the TB shooting-star is quite the 'soul' that GB has in mind.

When Britain's next Prime Minister was reading Homer in his Scottish childhood, he will have learn that 'souls', while identifiable down and around in Hades, were well and truly dead, flitting about even more powerlessly than Mr Blair now is.

That sort of 'dead soul' is presumably not what Gordon wants to put beside his 'set of policies' to make the perfect election-winning party.

Nor inded Gogol's other kind of 'dead soul'.

Fake statistics like those satirised by the great Russian master are just so 'old Blairite'.  We won't be wanting any of that.

Perhaps Gordon Brown wants to rebalance the roles of reason and passion among his comrades. 'Injustice of the soul' is what happens when one consistently overrules the other. Or so Plato thought.

Any political activist  who wants to read more about that might try a new book by Drew Weston called 'The Political Brain: the role of emotion in deciding the fate of the nation'. The connection between Plato's 'injustices of the soul' and  'injustices of the state' and the Bush family's election-winning advertising strategies is at the end of Chapter Three.

Of course, what Gordon Brown really wants is to be the 'life and soul of the party' himself.

But that won't happen until he has actually won the general election - whose long campaign season has now begun.

Comments

[Judith Fitzgerald]

What an unusual combo, Tony, Japanese and Latin. Your Latin comprehension suffers not at all; I remember you saying it wasn't part of your job description (although, in your current work, you'd no doubt confront a lot of Latin/ate Legalese). Are you Tony, Antony, or Anthony?

Of course, since you know its Greekological derivations, I had rather half-hoped you'd reconsider "dame" (which is perfectly acceptable); yet, "dame" always puts me in a Chandler / Hammett / Leonard / Selby / O'Brien (O'Nolan) frame of noir name.

That's why I did my best MacCruiskeen imitation vis-à-vis meeting you for a hand or two at the holy game of poker. Dearest Beloved I knew (and happily accept, no prob, none at all, nope); but, I guess I was agreedily angling for something like, oh, I don't know . . . Does Goddess work for you, Darling Divinest Tonaroo?

[Tony Francis]

Judith: Thanks for the shout out! Actually, optanda is Latin for "dearest", "beloved" etc. It means nothing more than that. You may be be "dame", but that doesn't necessarily mean you are an "empress". Maybe my Latin is incorrect. It is all self-taught. My old editor used to send me letters in mixed Japanese and Latin, which meant I spent a lot of time trying to decipher them. Some are enigmas to this day! My dad always liked Hank Williams, Sr.

[Judith Fitzgerald]

Had to think about what I might dictatorially decide to do with disgraced global-village idiots in this new-world ordered; and, then?

Bingot it! Erase their memory sticks; if you cannot exile them physically, given mind-control experiments we know are have said to have happened (CIA, MKULTRA, CHATTER, BLUEBIRD, ARTICHOKE, etc.), I'd turn 'em into zombies and put us all out of their misery completely.

Good thing I'm only "Dame-Optanda-Judith," eh? What's that? Which cards do I need to play right? Oh, I hear you. K. Right. Yes. I got the directions. Three sets of traffic lights, hang a left, park behind the Chinese Souvenir Shop, take the back stairs, second floor, Code-Word Chandler? Half-blast Ultimate Midnight? Bring my own blue chips? Got it. I'll be there (or be square).

Geez, if only I'd known how easy it really is to become Empress-Optanda-Judith; I'd done it years agoon.

You can keep your Ship of Fools, though, bark or canoodlian.

Ten-four, Big Buddy. Over and out, Antonio; now, unlike James Joyce's version, you'll never be on your ownio (since no clone's alonio).

LMAO! (SU adored Joyce, too.)

Ackshurlly, Tony, when you mentioned Hank Sr, I went and found an old review I'd written on a quite extraordinary book concerning the icon so, I uploaded it for you; I think you'll see my reverence shines through (and raise me one):

http://www.judithfitzgerald.ca/hankwilliams.html

I've been meaning to get around to updating my website since 2003 . . .

[Tony Francis]

Dame-Optanda-Judith, If one is the village idiot in the global village, just where do they send one into exile? And where does the ship of fools embark and debark? As Stanley Unwin might say: "Once upon a polly tito, 'A Soul?' for a politico party? Terribold! Horribold! Definitely Nockers!"

[Candadai Tirumalai]

When Plato declared that the body is the tomb of the soul, he engaged in a serious play of words: "soma" (body) and "seme (tomb). The Fabians (Shaw, Attlee, and others), with whom Gordon Brown may have some affintiy, got away from the soul in the religious sense and probably in the philosophical one as well. But as the son of a Church of Scotland minister, Gordon Brown is not immune to the claims of soul in the modern or poetic sense.

[Tony Francis]

From Will Rogers:

"There's no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government working for you."

"I belong to no organized party. I am a Democrat."

"Be thankful we're not getting all the government we are paying for."

"There ought to be one day a year when it is open season on Senators."

"The more you learn about politics, you got to admit that each party is worse than the other. The one that's out always looks better."

[Judith Fitzgerald]

Devil in a blue dress or angel in a brown fog? Take your picket elsewhere. The real challenge is to check one's pulse to see if one is still alive to shape any future when one begins to look more and more like the be-all bend-all global-village idiot.

[Judith Fitzgerald]

Never mind, Sir Peter? Too droll. Surely, you're not suggesting your Brown Funk's just a body? No. 'Course not. But, wait till he decides his party will be better served by sponsoring a race car (since he's got to wave the chequered flag sooner or later, given the fact he's a soul man). That's what our PM, our Harpoon Buffoon, did for our great country. I kid you not. Coolness itself, I'd say. (Consider the way he threw our role in the Kyoto away.)

What I don't understand is why Brown Boy didn't bring a harmonica (or, at the least, a tambourine to bang his point home). One would think he'd know enough Dante to know about the shady side of the street. Oh, well. I think it's a case of sour gripes. He's always secretly harboured a desire to be one of the Blues Brothers but his name stopped him in his tracks:

Comin' to ya on a crusty road
Good guvvin' I got a muck load
And when you get it you got something
So don't worry cause I'm coming

I'm a soul man
I'm a soul man
I'm a soul man
I'm a soul man

Got what I got the hard way
And I'll make it better each and every day
So, Voters, don't you fret
'Cause you ain't seen nothing yet

I was brought up on an e-stream street
I learned how to blather before I could eat
I was educated from good stock
When I'm in a brown study, I just cant stop

Actually, if he'd done his homework, he'd know the great urban legend concerning the weight of a human soul. To be exact, sort of? Twenty-one grams in the twenty-worst century; the following squeaks for itself:

"Those who believe that the body becomes lighter seem to think that the soul has weight, weight that must of necessity depart with it, and — with that brisk disregard of strict veracity which so frequently marks discussions of this nature — have claimed that dying men, at the very moment of their decease, have been placed on delicate scales that have recorded their mortuary degravitation. But these persons have never been able to specify in just what ghoulish laboratory this took place, or what private home was so interestingly equipped, or the names and addresses of the relatives who so commendably placed scientific and religious curiosity before sentimental concern for the patient's comfort."
— Bergen Evans, The Natural History of Nonsense (1946)

Light headed? Following in Blairhead's footprints?

Never mind . . .

[Tony Francis]

Here is one more from Hillary, concerning Eleanor Roosevelt (who was married to her 5th cousin FDR): "Eleanor Roosevelt understood that every one of us every day has choices to make about the kind of person we are and what we wish to become. You can decide to be someone who brings people together, or you can fall prey to those who wish to divide us. You can be someone who educates yourself, or you can believe that being negative is clever and being cynical is fashionable. You have a choice."
Eleanor Roosevelt said of the US Marine Corp, in 1945: "The marines I have seen around the world have the cleanest bodies, the filthiest minds, the highest morale, and the lowest morals of any group of animals I have ever seen. Thank God for the United States Marine Corps!" Even so, she was shocked by films of the Marines in the Pacific. She worked to have them disbanded. They were permnently installed by the National Security Act of 1947.

[Tony Francis]

It sounds like Mr. Brown is practiced at saying a lot while saying nothing. It is the mark of a gifted politician. In the US, all these phrases are "tested" in front of focus groups. Her are some of Hillary's best:
1.) "The challenges of change are always hard. It is important that we begin to unpack those challenges that confront this nation, and realize that we each have a role that requires us to change and become more responsible for shaping our own future."
2.) "The challenge now is to practice politics as the art of making what appears to be impossilbe, possible."
3.) "When I am talking about "It Takes A Village", I'm obviously not talking about or even primarily about geographic villages, but about the network of relationships and values that do connect us and binds us together."
I have no idea what any of this means. Mr. Brown? Could you decipher for us?

[Tony Francis]

Simon Hoggart called Mr. Brown's utterance of "...the better angels of our nature" an odd, clunky phrase. This actually comes from Abraham Lincoln's first inaugural address in 1861. It concluded: "The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the union when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature." For many years, this was considered great oratory. It came on the eve of the Civil War when 600,000 Americans would die. Lincoln was reviled by many in his time. Now he is one of the most beloved Presidents. It is the passage of time that did it.