Do we make history or does history make us.

 Subject: Do we make history or does history make us.

Are we, of independent mind, willing to force our way to the front of an issue or are we carried along at the back of the class only able to note events as they happen.

With the cacophony of conflicting views presented on the various media channels by  men and women each prepped with at least one angle on the subject and already tailor-made to suite a perceived predisposition.  Can we see a patten which could be called a popular trend emerging to signify the historical direction along which we travel or has our path been so broken up that we hop from stone to stone in danger of being carried away by the fast flowing stream and the hurdles we encounter on route.  

Of course it's true that leaders make history. From Genghis Khan to Adolf Hitler, from Gandhi to Martin Luther King, each in their different way made history and we the people followed but equally of course it was people who brought those people to prominence and it was with the connivance of the electorate (with the exception of Genghis Khan)that they were given a platform.

Donald Trump in the US continues to divide America into irreconcilable camps, antagonistic and diametrically opposing it’s hard to think their opinions are born to people who were educated in the same educational system. The inward looking mid -westerner (many of them Trump supporters) who's once great cities have become waste land as manufacturing  was given over to the Chinese and their immediate world shrank into one of listless poverty by the demand of market forces (well illustrated in Steinbeck's 'The Grapes of Wrath') and supported by the democrat as well as the Republican. History driven by the Banks and venture capital, is being formed, not by leadership but by the short term gain and the needs of the boardroom to protecting the 'investor class'.

Trump's leadership has the belligerence of a Khan but it's hidden in the courtroom and behind the law and the lawyers who nit-pick the contractual clauses rather than one which  envisages a destination which encompasses us all. Trump is a mixture of a Barnum and Bailey showman, one minute on the high wire the next a clown pretending to throw water over his audience. As Circus it's ok but it's no way to run the most powerful nation on earth. The paucity of thinking beyond the glib catch phrase seems beyond the nation who's collective mind has been stunted by generational advertising and gimmicks and who's capacity to think for itself is buried in the copywriters slick phraseology and the promise of jam today.

We aren't far behind in the U.K. with a parliament packed with conformist propaganda, the truth buried under a fear of losing voters and upsetting people with the reality.

Only yesterday the government had  announced their latest master stroke, the intention to clamping down on the 'sick note' and withdrawing pay from those unwilling to return to work. With millions of people now refusing to rejoin the commute into work after experiencing the governments 'stay at home' directive to cope with Covid 19 people seem to have broken with the conformity of generations and turned their back on work in exchange for unemployed benefit payments. These benefits are designed to cover illness in all its shape and sizes as well as economic hardship but generally required the acknowledgement that you are suffering in some way. With a plethora of newly discovered ailments, some fundamentally mental, it’s easier for the doctor, not wishing to risk misdiagnosis, he/she has little option but to hand over a sick note.

As we all watched the Post Office Inquiry it was easy to see how easily Post Office Branch investigators were able to scare the pants of the Postmaster/mistress to the extent they handed their own cash over to cover shortages. Subsequently much was found to be due to a malfunctioning Horizon Computer system and a back door into the system where corrections could be made but notwithstanding, the shortages were allowed to stand and people sent to prison for it. The Directors at the Post Office seem to be Teflon coated since, other than reputaional damage no director has been kept at his majesty’s pleasure.

The PO enquiry drags on, as did Hillsboro, the Grenfell Tower, the Blood Contamination scandal and  one suspects that ‘enquiries’ are simply a method of kicking an issue into the long grass and protecting that class of person for whom birth  trumps everything.