Sunday e-mail 16th June

Five things Anthony Fauci doesn’t want you to know!

Want your Substack to last? Want your grandchildren and your grandchildren’s grandchildren to read it and tell their friends, ‘Hey, my great-ancestor wrote that fine piece of pristine prose! What have you achieved today?’ Of course you do! Then don’t be too topical.

Perhaps your Substack feed looks like mine: so stuffed with politics it bulges like a sausage dog that’s swallowed a Rubik’s Cube. It’s not just regular politics, either. Identity politics, too, are as pervasive as pollen and sometimes equally irritating to the tear glands. You could be forgiven for thinking that the only value any event, movement, or object has in our postmodern world is the light it sheds on DEI, or systemic racism, or gender identity, or neo-colonialism. Worthy political topics, no doubt, but definitely political topics.

Of course, an eye-catcher of a subheading is worth some clicks. Mention some controversial figure in your headline and you’re bound to bring ‘em in. Divert their attention before they even notice. Bait and switch, it’s called - a tactic much admired in the entertainment industry of late. But isn’t there more to life?

Like you, I’m sure, I think it’s my democratic duty to watch the world’s workings. Like you, I’m sure, I often find it stimulating. And yet…and yet I can’t help feeling that politics stands in relation to real life as soap opera does to art. Politics makes me think of hula hoops and mullets; of Roland Rat and avocado bathroom suites. Merely mutter these magic words: ‘sound and fury’; ‘this too shall pass’; ‘it’ll all be over by Christmas’. By the time you finish saying all that, the bad things will have gone away.

All survives of any culture is, well, its culture. Personally, I know almost nothing about the politics of Renaissance Rome (if you happen to be an expert, please don’t judge me). Yet when I visited the other week, I was more than willing to schlep right across the Eternal City for a brief glimpse of a Bernini. I was willing to slog up all seven hills for a verifiably vivid view of the Vatican. Well, maybe five.

Photo by Mateus Campos Felipe on Unsplash

All those political groups out there? They’re just gonna fight each other. They’re going to do so whether we write about it or not. There will be bickering, faux outrage, triumph, tears, tragedy. A thousand storms will rattle a thousand teapots. Meanwhile, what is really happening at this moment in time, what is truly happening, is not in the Senate or the law courts or the Houses of Parliament. It’s in the studios and studies, the garrets and workshops. Later generations won’t give a damn about Reform or Stormy Daniels or Ibram X Kendi. But maybe they’ll still love your Substack.

This week’s bullet list features five ways to dodge politics in favour of something real.  With reference to my subtitle: I’m quite sure Anthony Fauci doesn’t actively want you to know about any of them. Fact is, I don’t suppose he cares very much. The cold hard truth is that Anthony Fauci isn’t even thinking about either of us right now.

·       Visit a museum. At the weekend I‘m planning to go to an exhibition about kimonos. I’m excited to learn in what way they are ‘symbols of oppression’. Or something to do with the ‘construction of identity’. Oh, wait…

·       Go to a bookshop and buy the first new book that catches your eye. It’s a fine thing, to support a struggling contemporary author. What’s that table over there, with the big display? Looks interesting. Oh, wait…

·       Maybe you could hide from politics in the cinema. Let me check out what the online critics have to say about that old-new prequel, Mad Max No One Cares Any More. Here’s an article entitled ‘How Woke Politics Ruined Hollywood…’ Oh, wait…

·       Go for a nice walk in the countryside. I checked Google. Do you know what was the very first thing I found?: ‘Wildlife and Countryside Link […] has told MPs in the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Race and Community that the British countryside has been influenced by “racist colonial legacies”’. Oh, wait…

·       Read Crime & Psychology! Now, that’s a good idea.

If freedom is a drum, the blue buttons are the drumsticks. Bang out a solo. Let everyone hear how you love liberty:

Alternatively, you could buy me a coffee.