Now that the Mueller Report is out, I believe it should be safe to publish this. I wrote it a couple of months ago and filed it away for future reference. The future is now and I feel ever so slightly vindicated because I think I have already heard one or two mea culpas . Read on to find out what this is all about.
Alright blog, what do you think of this? The Spectator magazine is running an essay competition and the topic is “The Next Great Hashtag”. I’d love to enter. I’ve been threatening to submit something or other to one of these competitions or to a magazine for ages but it’s unlikely to happen here sadly because I’m not familiar with the mythical (to me) power of the hashtag or indeed why it isn’t still just that little sign you put in front of a number to indicate that it is a number, as in #3 or “number three”. There’s a degree of redundancy there you’d have to admit so someone somewhere has decided that # is being grossly under-utilised so is in need of a higher purpose. So dear blog, to continue concealing my hipness ignorance (“hignorance’ or “hipnorance” – could have invented a new word there) from the rest of the world because only three people regularly read you, I’ll subject you to a discourse on the topic at hand.
I’m a child mostly of the previous century so the significance or indeed the aforementioned power of a hashtag eludes me. My football mad relatives write comments on Facebook followed by #ManU #Football #SirAlex or such like. Why? What’s the point? Does this magically transport the comment to …..somewhere or someone? That Twitter thing uses them a lot but I don’t wallow in that sewer so am none the wiser there. I remember a picture of a pouting, frowny faced Michelle Obama holding up a sign with “#Bring Back Our Girls” written on it. The parodies were hilarious which just goes to show that unless you can genuinely fake sincerity then forget success (attrib. George Burns or someone called Jean Giraudoux or someone else). Come to think of it, Michelle Obama’s fake sincerity doesn’t seem to have held her back. Neither has Bill Shorten’s for that matter – once more with feeling Bill, the director might shout. But why is that noughts and crosses thing needed at the start of the comment?
So not understanding the authority of a hashtag makes me eminently qualified to expound prophetically on the next “big thing”. If it’s okay for humanities professors to lecture me on climate change and get away with it, then cop this.
No, I can’t do it. My curiosity has got the better of me and I’m going to have to do a bit of research.
Later that day……………..
Apparently, according to that fount of all knowledge Wikipedia, a hashtag links messages with a common theme, much like a common theme used to. During my in-depth research I went onto Facebook and clicked on a hashtag to see what would happen and bugger me, all of these Facebook entries appeared and all were related to the same, wait for it, theme. So there’s the clue. The Next Great Hashtag has to be linked to today’s most ubiquitous, prevailing (“trending”?) theme. And what might that be, said he, asking the most obvious question in the world?
Before I answer that question, let me say that I follow American politics reasonably closely. Closely enough to not have to read the numerous articles written by the work experience kids who populate some of our online “news” websites. You know the ones – they regularly point out where Donald Trump continues to go wrong or expound on the five reasons he will be impeached or resign or somehow or other be kicked out of office in the next three or six or nine months. This has been going on for more than two years. Predictions of his downfall or at least that he would achieve nothing and be the worst president since the last one have come and gone like so many climate tipping points.
Consequently I’m predicting that The Next Great Hashtag will be #Iwaswrong as in I was wrong to underestimate, demonise, mock (pick any number of abusive adjectives) Donald Trump and not give any credit where credit is due, which is all Donald Trump (and the rest of us for that matter) can ask for. I accept that this will be a stretch for those suffering the most chronic, incurable strains of Trump Derangement Syndrome, because let’s face it, there’s a lot of face to lose here. Mea culpa’s of the “It’s a fair cop, Your Honour; guilty as charged. I was wrong” type, will need to be levered out of CNN for example, with a crowbar.
In a parallel universe a casual observer might feel sympathy for someone who has put the bank account, the house, the car, the wife, the kids, the credibility and the beer can collection on a sure bet like Hillary Clinton who then rather unsportingly loses. If not for the billions squirrelled away in the Clinton Foundation, you’d almost believe that the fix was in. And the flashing red lights were there for everyone to see. Fortunately the “someones” in question in our universe are celebrities lite, 90% of the media, the self proclaimed elites of the bureaucracy and academia plus random undergraduates with nothing to lose and as would have happened with a different election result, nothing to gain. So they get no sympathy.
These clowns (for want of a better word) painted themselves into such a tight corner with their samurai-like commitment to Hillary, the only way out for some of them if she lost was the Hollywood version of hara-kiri – moving to Canada. When this level of devotion takes you to your own version of Jonestown, there is no backing down. The only way out, up to now, has been to totally discredit everything Donald Trump said, says, did and does, past present and future, so that upon his downfall they can say “See, I was right all along. It just took a bit longer than I thought to play out.”
Sadly for them, it’s not playing out. Consequently we have the tragically pathetic sight (and sound) of an actor at the top of his game (debatable, I know), Robert De Niro contributing a philosophical “F…Trump” to the discourse thereby proving that even the most inspirational actors are orally vacuous unless someone else puts words into their mouths. In fact the two years of Trump’s presidency have played out like the speeded up versions of left-slanting news shows on CNN and MSNBC on election night which are preserved for posterity on YouTube – initially euphoria but morphing into equal parts feral aggression and despair. If the leader of the free world didn’t have such a profound and ongoing impact on global machinations, those shows would have represented the pinnacle of Trump’s presidency before it even started.
Now we know most of the Trump opposition is of the left; not exclusively but predominantly. And we know that leftists like collectives because, let’s face it, most of them don’t have the courage of their convictions when confronted by arguments which rely on facts, logic, common sense and human nature. They need a protective outer cloak of like minded automatons. Watching Ben Shapiro or Brendan O’Neill or Jordan Petersen or the late Christopher Hitchens skewer emotive half-baked arguments with these axioms, even though a couple of those people mentioned would not necessarily consider themselves to be of the right (socially and/or economically), is a latter day version of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, such is the mirth-making.
Returning to the hashtag, the aforementioned emotive collective (“emective” perhaps – I’m on a roll with these new words) has nowhere to go especially if the Mueller probe into God knows what turns up nothing of significance and the now Democrat dominated House of Representatives turns out to be, as expected, all piss and wind. I’m predicting that the dam will break when one prominent leftist admits they erred in condemning everything Trumpian and tweets #Iwaswrong. Collectivists being what they are will initially try to isolate this clearly deranged outlier until someone else realises that maybe he/she is right. Then other collectivists, because they are, will want to join the party to show how woke they are and hey presto, the trend is on its way.
Incidentally I was torn between #Iwaswrong and #Wewerewrong but such is the power of #, I have found, it doesn’t matter because in social media world # is the great gatherer or more appropriately collector, if we want to stick to our leftist shtick. It turns out the armour provided by “we” won’t be required.
Now I’d love to do a piece on the “Green New Deal” but it would look something like this byooooootvglsek5bvdktgb,bsc after I fall face first into the keyboard laughing like a drain.