NO IS NOT ENOUGH

Living in the Catalan Pyrenees, it is easy to forget about the outside world. The seasons come and go. Wildlife is very evident. Beauty and peace are ever-present. And people here in the country go about their lives, peaceably, more or less as they always have. All feels well with the world.

Of course, all is not well with the world. A greedy, amoral narcissist occupies the Oval Office. That alone is serious cause for concern. To make it worse, he has surrounded himself with very rich men who see it as their mission to undo much of the genuine progress made in the last 100 years or so. As Naomi Klein says…

"The goal is all-out war on the public sphere and the public interest…In their place will be unfettered power and freedom for corporations…The people who already possess an absolutely obscene share of the planet's wealth are determined to grab still more."

The situation is so serious that Noam Chomsky has started referring to the Republican Party as "the most dangerous organisation in human history", because it is recklessly, but deliberately, bringing the world closer to nuclear war and environmental disaster. One way or another, this is going to affect you and me, even if we live in isolated places. Trump and his cronies have just made it very personal.

In her latest book, Naomi explains why Trump is in the White House, and she then goes into detail on the great damage that neoconservatives and neoliberalism are doing to the world. Although it can be depressing read at times, because the damage is so deep and widespread, the book keeps holding out hope in the form of the many local and international initiatives being taken to counter Trump and all that he stands for. That said, there were moments when I wondered whether the book's title should have been "Will it be Enough?" I will return to this theme shortly.

It is important to note, as the author points out, that Trump is not an aberration. On the contrary, he is the ideal figurehead for the corporations and the elite. He provides false hope for one half of the population and a convenient target for the other half. Indeed, Trump is the logical culmination of three important trends – neoliberalism, brands, and reality television. The first of these should need no explanation. Suffice to say that it can summarised (in the style of Orwell) as "private good, public bad". The other two trends may need a little explanation.

Although Nike and Apple and other big companies sell things, much of their value is in their brands. Thus, when people buy their products, they are to some extent buying into a fantasy. This is why, for example, Nike is able to sell very ordinary trainers for up to $300. Naomi goes into some detail about the way Trump is using the Presidency to continue to promote brand Trump (as well as those of his family). This partly explains the Trump phenomenon. Another part of the explanation is reality television. If you know anything about The Apprentice, the TV programme that Trump hosted, you will know that it was largely about humiliating the "losers", of which there were many, and glorifying the one "winner".

There were no rules - the norms of decent discourse were nowhere to be seen. Insults and lies were the norm. This is exactly how Trump behaved during the election campaign, and how he continues to behave in office. It is the most plausible explanation for his precocious lying, and for the fact that he seems to be able to do this with impunity. Any other President would have been impeached by now. Not Trump, as he continues to entertain his followers and, it has to be said, much of the media. It is no coincidence that he was once involved in professional wrestling, which surely has to rank as one of the most fake activities of all time.

Now, all this would be comical, were it not so serious. And it is very serious indeed. Noam Chomsky is also fond of telling us about the Doomsday Clock, an assessment by some eminent people of how close we are to annihilating ourselves. The Clock has never been so close to midnight. What makes the situation even more urgent is that we have "a parcel of rogues" in the world's most powerful rogue state pushing the minute hand ever closer. So, what do we do? Many of us feel impotent, given the scale of the problems and given the quantity of money and power ranged against us. One thing is clear, as the book's title suggests – just protesting is not sufficient. In Naomi's view "two crucial things have to happen. First, we need a firm grasp on how shock politics work and whose interests they serve…Second, we have to tell a different story from the one the shock doctors are peddling."

It was at this point in the book that I began to have doubts. A lot of people have been telling different stories for a long time. To give just one example, the New Economics Foundation has been describing and promoting a different kind of economics and a different kind of society since its inception at the end of the 80s. There are countless other examples of "different stories". All of us can think of many. Yet the fact is that inequality continues to grow, materialism is as rampant as ever, military spending is huge while welfare is cut and, to crown it all, the biosphere is more threatened than ever. This is not a counsel of despair, but one does wonder at the combined effect of the many different stories. Are they making sufficient impact? One, not unreasonable, ray of hope is that this latest power grab by the elite is so naked that the small boy will not be alone in noticing that the Emperor has forgotten to dress himself. Perhaps the Trump phenomenon is so outrageous that it will cause many to wake up. I hope so, and perhaps they will, but people tend to fall asleep again rather too quickly.

Much of the book is an uncomfortable narrative on how those in power are damaging individuals, societies and this planet. Many of you will be familiar with this narrative. The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina is just one of hundreds of horror stories – incidentally involving the current Vice-President - in which the insatiable greed of the rich caused untold misery for the poor and the vulnerable. In my view, Naomi really gets to the point when, talking about the 2008 financial crash, she says:

"When the failures of the current model revealed themselves in a manner more spectacular than at any point since the Great Depression, we did not collectively seize that moment to grasp the whole of history and swerve…The bottom line is that in 2009 too many of us were waiting for change to be delivered from on high. And by the time most of realised how inadequate that change was, the window had closed."

And the remedy? Short of a miracle, in which humanity as a whole suddenly becomes wise and intelligent, there is no magic cure. Naomi describes some of the many initiatives that have taken place since the WTO protests in Seattle in 1999. Some of these have been successful within their own limits. However, the fact remains that there has, to date, been no massive supervening movement on the scale required to stop neoliberalism and neoconservatives in their tracks, and replace them with something that reflects our true humanity. Perhaps the Leap Manifesto (https://leapmanifesto.org/en/the-leap-manifesto/) described towards the end of the book will the new beginning that we all long for. One can only wish.

Although Naomi writes well, is a powerful campaigner, and makes some compelling arguments, I remain doubtful. The bottom line for me is: do we have the will, and do we have the strength? Speaking personally, I am not sure. Would I give my life, literally, for this cause – the survival of humanity? I suspect that things would have to feel even more desperate. All of us have our breaking point. That much is clear. But few of us have been put to that ultimate test. If we hope to reverse the damage and create a better world, what we do will have to be unprecedented, given the unprecedented nature and scale of the challenges. This almost certainly means that we will have to be stronger and more determined than we have ever been. All this puts me in mind of some lines from one of my favourite poems, "On A Raised Beach", by Hugh MacDiarmid… "Let men find the faith that builds mountains Before they seek the faith that moves them. Men cannot hope to survive the fall of the mountains Which they will no more see that they saw their rise Unless they are more concentrated and determined, Truer to themselves and with more to be true to, Than these stones, and as inerrable as they are."