Living in a Kingdom of Fear?

In 2003 Hunter S Thompson published one of his last semi-autobiographical books - Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-Crossed Child In the Final Days of the American Century. Which was his attempt to translate the political mindset of America in the aftermath of the September 11 2001 terrorist attacks and explain the role of 9/11 as a catalyst for heightened police and military operations both at home and overseas. In hindsight those immediately post 9/11 years were crazy days of shock and awe where the mass instilling of fear amongst the population was firmly on government agendas (and being constantly driven in the media) as various fake wars were waged in response to attacks by dangerous but shadowy and often invisible enemies.

Our favourite quote from the book is as follows:

Fear is a healthy instinct, not a sign of weakness. It is a natural self-defence mechanism that is common to felines, wolves, hyenas, and most humans. Even fruit bats know fear, and I salute them for it. If you think the world is weird now, imagine how weird it would be if wild beasts had no fear.

Which is something we’ve been thinking a lot about this week as yet another fear event has unravelled to destabilise our Island and by extension our lives. As the quote suggests fear is a natural human instinct and we should all probably welcome a degree of fear in our lives in order to keep us sharp and to spur us on as fear isn’t by default intrinsically bad. Fear is uncertain of course and fear creates the risk of unknown outcomes - but the unknown can often lead to good outcomes happening as well as bad. And having said this in order to confront our own fear of a backlash we swore months ago not to do a government pandemic write-up as it’s almost impossible to cover such a polarised situation in a non-polarised objective way. But after the last two weeks this probably needs to be said. And if some find the views expressed unpopular - we'll just have to take it on the chin like the Never Trust a Hippie write-up.

So how has our government done?

Well for one the writers of this blog are happy that we live here. Which is very different to what could be said for many who were still largely cut off from the outside world at this time last year we would wager. Our healthcare system has coped with COVID-19 adequately (not so with most other illnesses which we’ll move on to shortly), and outside of certain sectors our economy is relatively stable when compared to many other places in the world. We have rolled out a relatively effective vaccination programme which after several major procedural failures (which largely appear to involve civil servants reluctant to go down the route of automation as a job protection mechanism) now seems to be largely effective. Our previous government didn’t ultimately stick to earlier stated ideology in relation to an eradication strategy and surprisingly actually changed its mind at roundabout the right time driven by changes happening in the outside world. Which must be the first time an IOM Government strategically changed its mind about anything ever. So bar the usual instruments of state pursuing despicable, petty, and highly personal vendettas - which as a helpful byproduct exposed some of the thoroughly venal types who [still] walk the [un-elected] corridors of power - things now seem to have settled back into the default Manx morass of Traa Dy Liooar politics and economic policy (the Manx equivalent of Adam Smith’s subscribed policy of Laissez Faire).

But we ask because of this are we perhaps now in danger of a continued pandemic focus becoming a distraction to most of the things that are still wrong underneath the surface? As a reminder we’re nearly two years into this now so we also ask why are we still accepting second best day-to-day solutions like they’re the only thing we now expect because of the distraction of COVID-19? And in comparison we ask our readers - is your employer, or are your customers, still expecting second best solutions from you two years in?

Unlikely we’d suggest.

So while you’re getting angry at your child’s school for teaching them in a freezing cold classroom with a mask on and the windows wide open with the sharp winter winds howling round their necks - just think on that perhaps you’re being distracted about the current lack of focus being put on your child’s examination readiness and their future educational or workplace needs. You’re potentially accepting failure to deliver as an integral part of your child’s future education - which should be about dispensing appropriate education not about meeting the contrived demands of a union which has simply found something else to use as leverage for its next pay negotiations.

Remember too while you were obeying the rules and home working or claiming MERA or other support for a few months the Department of Infrastructure still managed to keep on paying all its staff and consultants who have ripped through the best part of £100 million now drawing up plans for a disastrous ferry terminal in Liverpool that we’ll all be paying for over the next 50 years, and continued to spend well over £20 million on a promenade scheme which looks like one of those Congolese motorway projects where the developer secretly moved all the money to a shell company in the Cayman Islands well before all the materials were bought and finished it by employing the homeless to shovel warm tar out of wheelbarrows. It simply isn’t good enough after the uncertainty and insecurity that everyone else has had to tolerate since March 2020. Neither have many of us stopped paying taxes throughout the pandemic either - therefore in many cases we’re actively paying for third rate and willingly accepting it as the new normal.

So having established that fear is often good and a millennia old deep-rooted human process that keeps us sharp and alert to danger we'd suggest that if you’re going to be fearful ..

Maybe be mindful that because of all this we should all fear being diagnosed with cancer or heart disease right now. Or of receiving unnecessarily delayed cancer or heart treatment. We might perhaps also fear how our heart attack is going to be dealt with if we collapse in the street. Or what might happen when we can’t get a face-to-face appointment with our GP or a hospital appointment in relation to a major health issue. Or how our kids might be missing out on their education and not getting on the right career pathway. Or how our government may well be in danger of disproportionately focusing on COVID-19 for the next few years while our baseline health services (which were not that good before any of this happened) get even worse simply because that is the focus that a hardcore of people are still demanding.

So just as a reminder - the pandemic response is important and we all need to be cognisant of that and to take steps to protect each other as Islanders with a vested interest in our collective future. But in creating this focus don’t be fooled that the real underlying problems of the Isle of Man have gone away. And in fact have not got worse as the focus on COVID-19 has forced us to take our eye off the ball. This sole focus on the pandemic response has been a distraction. Just like the post 9/11 environment - the fear instilled and the constant media focus has effectively polarised our views so that many of the real issues that still exist can hide in plain sight as everyone is now looking at them through some sort of weird psychological tunnel-vision. So moving forward when you’re criticising government it’s also helpful to focus on criticising them for the right issues and mistakes. Not exclusively focusing on that one off event that the rest of the world has also found so difficult to cope with - but on the day to day failures and the lack of oversight and governance that have been going on for decades and which will, in the years to come, be exacerbated many times over by the lack of funding that is going to be coming out of this whole pandemic situation

There are polarised views on both sides of the pandemic debate and neither is helpful as they act as a distraction from so many day to day failures that continue to happen. We are being failed on a daily basis by people we still employ and politicians we still fund. So don’t let a focus on a one-off event that most other countries in the world have also failed to adequately deal with detract from that. And some of the politicians who still seek to perpetuate that sort of polarised pandemic tunnel-vision in order to try to make a name for themselves, or to distract from their own clear lack of substance (or ability), will be shown in time to be little short of narcissists and confidence tricksters. Politically we all expect a future that's better and which moves away from the last two years - not to actively perpetuate more of the same.

Kingdom of Fear ..