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People are doing it for themselves

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So the Canadian senate has finally passed a bill to alter the words of their National Anthem O Canada.
Removing the words ‘In all thy sons command’ and replacing with the gender neutral ‘ In all of us command’. Someone wrote that song, who has the right to change the words?

Shall we change the words of every gender specific song while we are at it?
How about My Sibling Jake for starters?

The World gets more bonkers by the day. No doubt someone will be on here to defend this piece of crap.

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Comments

  3. For those of us who were previously unaware the lyric is as follows

    O Canada!
    Our home and native land!
    True patriot love in all thy sons command.
    With glowing hearts we see thee rise,
    The True North strong and free!
    From far and wide,
    O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.
    God keep our land glorious and free!
    O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.
    O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.

    I can think of better things to get annoyed about than minor changes to of doggerel, and arguably the ‘us’ alteration fits the ‘our’ in the receding line and them ‘we’ in the next line better. I’m more bothered by the exclamation marks, but I’m neither Canadian nor am I a theist so my opinion is irrelevant.

    • Someone wrote that song, who has the right to change the words?”

      I imagine the early 20th century version of Steve T was similarly outraged when they added the reference to ‘sons’ to the original gender neutral version in 1913.

  4. @Gatz not getting annoyed about it at all – just surprised the Canadian senate hasn’t got better things to debate than this. Where would it end?
    Ships are referred to as She and their passengers sail in her. Should we debate why a vessel is female for example?

  5. I’ll defend the change. It’s an anthem, for all Canadian citizens, not just half of them, no longer the property of the original writer.
    Mind you, to show what I think of anthems generally, I think this song would be a pretty good alternative – from one of Canada’s own:

  6. Very different, but: a gender change that bugged me was Lyndsey Buckingham’s appallingly crap version of Donovan’s excellent Try For The Sun. Although it was about his early days on the road with his friend Gypsy Dave, it certainly lent itself to the interpretation of being about a gay couple (We huddled in a derelict building / And when he thought I was asleep / He laid his poor coat round my shoulder / And shivered there beside me in a heap / And who’s going to be the one / To say it was no good what we done? / I dare a man to say I’m too young / For I’m going to try for the sun). Lyndsey changed the lyrics to cut out any possibility of that interpretation and make it an ode to a gypsy girl. I can only assume he was worried his fans might question his sexuality. The big ponce.

  7. I just sang it for the first time (with others) in my Canadian Citizenship ceremony. Do I now have to do it again?

    ( and the change is, of course, completely correct)

  8. It seems fair enough to me. The words were written in the early 20th Century and are significantly different from the French original, so I wouldn’t be too worried about their being sacrosant. And the words of a national anthem which is supposed to bring a whole country together are manifestly different in significance from a normal song. I agree with Gary though – it always jars for me when the gender of a subject of a song is changed purely because of the gender of the singer – thankfully the trend seems to be against this.

  10. Whilst I can privately raise my eyebrows about such changes to an anthem I really do think us males just have to suck this kind of thing up. I was disgusted at the President’s Ball horror-show, stupidly imagining that kind of macho dickheads had trundled off with the dinosaurs. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg, the kind of shit women have to put up with every day just has to be addressed and addressed now.
    I’ll put up with any apparent over-zealous correcting whether that relates to changing words of songs or, far more importantly , us males being ultra cautious re every, that’s every, interaction with a woman if that’s what it takes to get anywhere near gender equality.

    • Knowing who would go to that kind of thing is very useful. It’s a kind of hygiene.

      Gino De Campo opened one of his franchise restaurants in Hull recently, and told the local newspaper that we needed it because “The city doesn’t have an Italian restaurant”.

      Well, in the first place, as he would know if he’d ever been here, or could even find it on a fucking map, there are several excellent Italian restaurants in the city – run and owned by Italian people. Two of them I can walk to from my house, and I don’t live in the centre. In the second place, as someone pointed out below the line in the same article, his restaurants “are about as Italian as Pizza Hut”.

      … and then I discover that in any case, this sunglasses-wearing-indoors narcissistic spunkbubble was at The Presidents Club event…. so I think, “Well that invalidates absolutely everything you say. For ever”

    • Once again, Lodey belies his name. You are handsomely right, sir. The only point I’d add is that in this case, and in so many others that excite the “PC gone mad” bampots, men haven’t lost anything. They haven’t been removed from the song, haven’t had anything taken away. It’s just opened up its scope to include the other half of the population. It’s nice to share.

  11. The simple test in this case and other similar cases of discrimination is to imagine it affecting you and how you would feel about that. So, in this particular case, imagine you’re a man living in a world controlled by women, you live in Canada and the National Anthem has the line ‘True patriot love in all thy daughters command.’
    How do you feel?

  12. It is nice to share Kid. However the point I made was haven’t the Canadian senate got anything better to do? Apparently this has gone before them about a dozen times. Canadian taxpayers are funding this kind of crap.
    Secondly how many Canadian ladies complained about the original national anthem in the first place? Not many I would think. I have been to numerous events in Canada where the national anthem was sung with gusto by men and women alike.
    I would think there are more serious matters to get our teeth stuck into.

  13. @H.P. Saucecraft did this sort of thing rather well. That arch, provocateur stuff. Oh well.

    Here’s a Canadian anthem

    Joni Mitchell
    A Case Of You

    • That’s just offensive Baron on 2 levels. Why do you need to post it here ?

      As to the anthem of all Canadians are supposed to / encouraged to sing it then it should address all Canadians.

      • Advance Australia Fair was tweaked to make it more inclusive when it became the national anthem, from “Australia’s sons let us rejoice” to “Australians all let us rejoice”.

        Not a lot in it for Aboriginals, though. Apparently angelic-voiced popstrel Judith Durham* has written new Aboriginal-friendly lyrics, but nobody in high places seems very interested.

        *Things I didn’t know until today: she was born Judith Mavis Cock.

          • The root of quite a high proportion of the world’s evil. More than Fascism, State Communism and rampant Capitalism, almost certainly, but not all of it, no.
            Feudalism in it’s various manifestations might have been just a tad more evil.

              • I will give you this. I’m atheist, and not a huge fan of religion. But I’ll give Quakers a pass every time.

                One of the best books I’ve read in a while was The World Turned Upside Down by Christopher Hill. A Marxist historian writing about the religious and political turmoil in the 1640s. Your lot get a good mention in it.

                  • Mostly blameless. Sri Lankan Buddhists did get caught up in the civil war there, but then it’s hard in many societies to separate out religious identity from ethnic identity and it’s the latter that tends to dominate in civil conflicts, while the religious persuasion is a handy (lazy) label to distinguish groups by.

  18. To reply to the OP, if it’s a National Anthem – then the words can change to whatever is deemed right at the time. The change seems fair enough to me.

    It’s a bit of a leap to then say ‘why not change ALL gender-specific songs – the world’s going mad’. No-one at all is saying that. This is a National Anthem, not a Men Without Hats single.

    • What about Women Without Hats? Typically, you just ignore them. Women have the right to eschew headgear as well, you know – or do you think they should be covered up at all times? And what about all those women who tragically, thanks to society’s deeply-engrained patriarchal millinery, do not have access to these hats that you men so casually cast aside? Check your privilege, BC!

      And we don’t say ‘single’ any more. It’s insulting to lonely sadsacks. We say “non-dependent’.

    • Couldn’t agree more MC – Nail on the head. Waste of time.
      There are people dying out there from starvation, disease, war etc and we have multiple discussions on words in a National Anthem.
      I really doubt many people complained about the words other than the senators who wanted the debate to justify their existence.

      • Dismissing the change as a waste of time just supports the dinosaurs that won’t accept the change. No time would be wasted if they wound their privilege in and agreed that it was a basic and necessary change.

  21. So the yard stick for whether something is worthy of debate in a country (one that most of us mostly middle aged men don’t live in) should be judged by us?

    I would have thought the fact that the democratically elected government of Canada thought it worthy of debate and change is the answer to your question or whether its a good use of their time. You want them to check with you before they discuss stuff?

    If this wasn’t about gender then no one would be getting their boxers in a twist. It wouldn’t even be noticed.

  24. I agree with the OP. Humanity wastes its time sorting stupid things that don’t matter. Solve poverty? Global warming? Terrorism? No, let’s spend time and money debating whether to change a word in a national anthem to inch a micro step closer to some impossible ideal utopia where both sexes are completely equal. It’s horse shit.

    You can’t balance the sexes. It’s impossible. It’s stupid. It’s playground logic where you want everything to be fair for everyone equally all the time. Life isn’t fair! It’s imbalanced! That’s kind of what makes it interesting! Would I (a man) care if things like national anthems were weighed in favour of women? No I honest to god wouldnt. There are bigger things to care a bout.

    And for those who say, well it’s the dinosaurs trying to block this that are causing the debate to be dragged out, fuck right off. Maybe these dinosaurs are the ones who are being properly pragmatic here and trying to move on to what actually matters.

    And I’m not Canadian so i can’t have a view on this?? You can also fuck right off. I think this is a deeply stupid waste of time by people in authority who should know better, and I call bullshit.

    Sorry for the rant but that’s how I feel.

    And – horror of horrors – I know actual real women who feel the same way.

    • “And for those who say, well it’s the dinosaurs trying to block this that are causing the debate to be dragged out, fuck right off. Maybe these dinosaurs are the ones who are being properly pragmatic here and trying to move on to what actually matters.”

      So, blocking an amendment is pragmatic on what grounds? All they had to do was say “yes” and the whole issues was settled.

      Also, you may want to check guidelines around here about profanity.

      • Ok ok ok, fair point about the swearing, I’m sorry. My bad. But I do get annoyed at this stuff.

        ‘All they had to do was say yes’… well to illustrate how I feel about that let me take a hypothetical parallel example. Let’s say someone in the U.K. notices that God in the official version of the bible is gender-specific (‘He’) so lobbies parliament to get this changed, and attracts the support of a vocal group who successfully gain the support of a handful of MPs, to have the wording of the bible officially changed.

        Do I kind of agree that making God non gender specific is on balance a good idea? Well I suppose yes.

        Would I therefore (if I was an MP) vote in favour of changing this? No! The time and effort and debate involved is not worth it! I would vote no in the hope of nipping a stupid and time wasting campaign in the bud.

        • There are plenty of women who have always thought that God is a woman anyway. There are plenty of women who think God must be a man because he’s such a prick. Either way, bit of a straw person in this context, I think.

          • People actually believe there is a God???

            With regard to the OP, I can’t see why the politicians didn’t simply say ‘that’s fine’ and move on to the next topic (who’s button is biggest? probably).

            • “Australia turns out to be a sensational place, albeit one of the most comfortably racist places I’ve ever been in. They’ve really settled into their intolerance like an old resentful slipper.”

              John Oliver on “a coastal paradise surrounding a rocky hell”

    • Thanks Joshua for clarifying my argument far better than I did myself. Also something that kind of pisses me off – everyone on here can have a negative view of Trump but not of faceless Canadian senators?

      • You can take any view you like on Canadian senators, Steve, but as Joshua says, there are bigger things to care about. Trump being one of the biggest.

        • Surely is wasting our time and energy debating this minor thing is the same issue? And yet we’re debating it.

          My conclusion to the OP’s question of shouldn’t they be debating more important things is no as this is clearly something that people have strong views on.

          • @Leedsboy I started debating it on here – a site I come to for a bit pf recreational fun in my own time.
            If however I wasted time on a side issue in my employers time they wouldn’t be happy with me. I guess the question is whether you think it is a side issue or not.
            Not many if any of my female friends would be upset enough about this matter for it to pass any muster with them. Their interest is in pay equality and being treated with respect. Subjects that I would staunchly support them with – not this bullshit cosmetic issue. Its almost like let ‘lets change the words of the National Anthem to make it more inclusive` then we can duck the real issues that are pissing women off.

            • My point (complete with typos that made my point a bit unclear) was that the Canadian parliament decide what is important. That is their job. They then focus on what they think is important. So by definition, it is important enough.

              This thread also suggests enough people have differing views on it which therefore suggests there is a debate to be had.

              My personal view is that there are so many small things that create a world where women are discriminated against. Some small, some large. Changing them all is the right answer. Especially the small, easy ones like this. Because it probably didn’t take that much time to debate really and it has a guaranteed positive outcome.

              On that basis, it’s really hard to not support it however trivial it appears to be.

  26. The move toward gender equality is painfully slow – it needs to happen at every level no matter how trivial you think that is SteveT and no matter how outraged you may be Joshua Van Brass (and the women you claim agree with you) – the small stuff matters too and people like you are holding things up with your desire to keep things a certain way that you’re comfortable with. You know what? You need to back down, shut up and let this happen – it really won’t hurt you will it? – and it might just make the world a better place.

        • No, but seriously. I remember the fights at out local folk club when Billy Bragg took the ‘boys’ out of Pete Seeger’s version of Which Side Are You On. The traditionalists rebelled – arran sweaters got ripped, tin whistle flew like darts, pint tankards were torn from belts – and we modernisers told then to back down, shut up and let it happen.

          Actually, no, I made all that up. Me, in a folk club? Fuck off. It was such an obvious anachronism that as far as I remember, no one opposed it at all. That was thirty years ago. It’s hard to believe we’re still having the same debate now.

          On the wider point of influencing beliefs and behaviour, there are very few occasions where telling someone “You know what? You need to back down, shut up and let this happen” leads to a shift in their position. It always looks like that approach is taken more for the benefit of the people who already agree with you than the ones you’re trying to influence. It’s part of the Twitterisation of debate, unfortunately.

          • The genius of this post is it does all the things you accuse the good Dr. of doing. But in a passive aggressive way. Which is probably worse because at least the Dr. was being straightforward with his argument.

            • I’d be interested to know what you think the value of parent to child, Do As I Say language is, if your intention is to get the other person to agree with you. It only makes sense as a strategy if your intention is something less straightforward.

              • I don’t think it works. But then, I don’t think the Dr. used it in that way. It was more a rhetorical question expressing frustration than a genuine instruction to follow his exact requirements. That’s how I read it.

                The internet is the best place in the world to lose the nuances of a comment and grab the interpretation that best suits the reader. This thread is a good Example if that from both sides.

                • If someone gets the wrong end of the stick it’s worth having a look at the angle at which you offered the stick. As you say there’s little nuance in internet transactions but we’ve all been around it long enough to know that using phrases like ‘You need to shut up” can’t really be excused as frustration or rhetoric. We can take it as read that people are passionate about what they believe in, but it sometimes looks like they’re more concerned about expressing that passion than moving the debate forward.

                  • Even if that’s true (and I don’t think the Dr. meant it that way but he can clarify it if he wants to), it doesn’t stop the point being true. And if the only thing you can find to disagree with the message is the way it was expressed, then surely the correct response is “I agree but you should learn some manners” rather than the posts above which don’t address the point but rather look to get some moral high ground because of the hectoring. Which is pretty ironic given the fundamental subject matter.

    • The women you ‘claim’ agree with you totally sums this up. Not every woman feels hard done by, victimised, short changed, inferior.

      For example my wife earns more than I do for more or less the same job. Has never been subjected to sexual harassment and doesn’t give a shit about this (national anthem) kind of nonsense that frankly is absurd. And for what it is worth we have had the conversation with female friends, my sister in law and women in my office – there is not a feeling amongst any of them that they have a problem with their lot. Yes there is some absolutely ghastly stuff that has gone on in Hollywood and other highly publicised situations but I really don’t think it is as widespread as to need the measures adopted by the Canadian Senate.
      The problem now though if you question anything like this you get pigeonholed as sexist or stuck in the dark ages which is complete bollocks. Is no one allowed to think for themselves any more? Having a contrary view on something shouldnt be a crime. Unfortunately its a case these days that free thinking should be consigned to history.

      I virtually can guarantee what will wind people up on here. It is laughably predictable.

      The problem is

        • Sorry Bingo that last message was typed from my phone. I had deleted the last paragraph but clearly not the first two words of it. Cant even remember what it was now but will try and offer my view on the gender issue in the wider context of the points that have been raised on here. Before I do so however it may be important to
          clarify that my original post was more an affront at a debate to change the lyrics of the anthem rather than any comment on gender equality. I possibly should have realised the shit storm that would ensue but hey ho I am not an academic merely a man on the Street that doesn’t always believe everything that is presented to me as being gospel.

          I strongly uphold the view that all women should be treated equally and there is no argument from me on this nor will there ever be. However emotionally the two sexes are poles apart and that for me is the attraction of the opposite sex and if there is an attempt to make us the same then apart from the fact that it will be doomed to failure I would also oppose it. For example and this may sound trivial but it is something I think is worth raising – if you held a door open for a lady if she was a feminist she would maintain that you didn’t need to open the door for her, she could do it herself. My wife on the other hand and most other women I know would berate me for not being gentlemanly for not opening the door.
          I think there is genuine differences of opinion from a female perspective of how they want to be treated and from a male perspective as to how we behave.

          The sexual harassment/abuse incidents that we are hearing about are absolutely appalling but not really connected to how the relationship between men and women evolves which is a different issue in my mind.

          My experience in nearly 44 years of working life is that the sexual harassment/abuse aspect is not anywhere near as widespread as being reported in the press. In that time and with 6 different employers I have known of one sexual predator and one person who made inappropriate comments to some young trainees. Both were dismissed instantly as was only right.
          Outside of work I have tended to have more female friends than male friends – I know of one that faced sexual abuse as a child from another member of her own family. I know many have had unwanted approaches but they don’t class those approaches as sexual abuse.
          On the other hand improvements to working conditions for women have been much slower to manifest themselves and it is only in recent years that in my industry we have seen a notable increase in women taking the top jobs. Things are moving, just not quickly enough.
          So far from being angry my original post merely suggested that the World is going slightly bonkers if something like this needs repeated debate in the Canadian Senate. A view I still maintain.

          • Thanks, Steve – that makes sense.

            One day, I would like to live in a world where we don’t spend quite so much time putting people into boxes. There are three billion men and women on the planet, all different, all with different views. Generalising about such an enormous cohort is and has always been counter-productive. Take people as you find them, I say.

            Similarly, we’re too keen to label and define those who disagree with us. It gets us nowhere – discussion and an exchange of views is what moves us forward, and we won’t move forward at all if we lose that art.

            I don’t care about the Canadian National Anthem. I think it’s preferable that it’s gender neutral, but I don’t think it was causing much damage as was. I’m a raging Republican and I still get through the day even though our anthem is what it is.

            I’m still glad they’ve changed it though – I don’t care how Canadian parliamentarians spend their time and I’m willing to bet they exert their efforts on subjects even more trivial. In a choice between an anthem that reflects only men, and an anthem that reflects everyone, it’s a pretty simple choice – so it’s the right outcome, just a question of how we got there.

            Ultimately, the words of a song are a sideshow. I do think that sexual harassment and assault are far, far too common. Partly because of the stats, partly because – anecdotally – I know a lot of women (and indeed men) who have experienced these things, sometimes on multiple occasions, including people I love very dearly. I can’t believe there’s any sane person out there who doesn’t consider that regrettable, so what we’re left with is a furious argument about how best to fix it. Depending on your tolerance, that may include a consideration of some of the messages that our wider culture sends about women and how they should be treated. Equally, it may involve resisting the temptation to consign women to a perpetual victim state.

            There is no right answer on this stuff. There’s just good or bad intentions, and then the application of logic, ideally with a touch of grace along the way.

            Personally, I’m not bothered about the moral high ground; I’ll leave that for Twitter to identify, that being the Twitter specialism. My only concern and my only obligation is to live my life as a decent human being, with values that include showing respect to others, regardless of gender, colour or creed, and trying to teach my son and daughter that they were born equal, that what defines them in life will ultimately be their actions rather than their genitals, and that they should extend that same assumption to others around them. Nuance.

            What I will say with some certainty is that a great start in all this would be for men and women to have more friends of the opposite gender. I’m always astounded by quite how many people voluntarily elect to miss out on engaging with fully half the population, and perhaps learning something along the way.

            Peace out.

            BL

      • Are you actually opposed to the measure that was adopted? Or is this a process question?

        If the former, you’re an asshole. If the latter, then there’s room for a discussion.

      • My only question is that if you present an opinion and get a laughably predictable reaction, is that reaction a good thing or a bad thing. If it’s bad and predictable, probably stop posting those kind of views.

        My view is this kind of debate is mostly good. You may think I’m an argumentative lefty but I do genuinely worry that something as reasonable as equality seems to not be the highest priority to some.

  27. I’m with Chiz.

    Don’t understand anyone having a problem with a tiny tweak to a national anthem. Don’t buy that the angry people on this thread are just furious because they really really hate to see parliamentary time wasted. Will never understand how telling people to shut up/stay in their lane/pipe down/fuck off/be quiet and listen achieves anything. Don’t care about the whole thing enough to have an argument.

    I wanted to post this essay (Planet of Cops). Because while I don’t agree with every golden word, or even generally agree with its author, or dislike actual cops, I think it does a really good job of explaining what an absolute bloody nonsense public discourse and culture have become in 2018. Fuck the police.

    http://archive.is/g4mfx

    • Good stuff. I am, by and large, in a big picture sense, on the side of the ‘woke world cops’. But their public personae are so sanctimonious, condescending, and just plain eager to point the finger that they make Mary Whitehouse look like someone who’s just necked a shitload of amyl and is off to a San Franciscan bathhouse for the weekend. I’ve all but given up on social media after getting tired of being hectored about things I agree with.

      Of course, those last few sentences are only a hop, skip and jump away from using the phrase ‘virtue signalling’, which, as everyone knows, is as reliable an indicator of being a bellend as humanity has yet devised, which just brings us back to the point that public discourse is broken. I can’t wait to get on the spaceships.

      • Hugo Rifkind in The Times today:

        “Mr Rees-Mogg and Mr Corbyn are figureheads for an age in which aiming for consensus is a mug’s game. In newspapers, which even at their most partisan still have broad ambitions, they can both sound small and obscure. Where they belong is in the new media landscape of Breitbart, The Canary, Conservative Woman, The Skwawkbox, and so on, where everything is straightforward, and there are right thoughts and wrong thoughts and heroes and bastards and no space in between.”

        https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/rees-mogg-and-corbyn-have-a-lot-in-common-txl3fpkgf

      • “Virtue signalling” is deffo a bit passé as phrases go. “Cognitive dissonance” seems to be the phrase du jour. I first read it here a few weeks ago (Disappointment Bob used it) and I thought “what a groovy little phrase, I wonder what it means”. Now it seems I can’t go a whole day without reading it in some article (or, more precisely, in the comments section).

        • That’s the one that means “I can’t believe people’s heads don’t explode when they say things I don’t agree with”

          It’s pretty much accepted now that there’s only three reasons why someone would have an opinion you don’t share:
          1. They are mentally ill
          2. They are a troll
          3. They are stupid

    • This thread and that ‘Planet of Cops’ piece in particular has reminded me of the German philosopher Theodor Adorno. He was highly critical of modern culture, music in particular, taking aim at both popular culture (e.g. he hated jazz) and high art (Stravinsky was the devil to him). You could say he was a snob. He seems relevant to this thread’s debate because of the way his philosophical critique and sense of the aesthetic reflects our wider society today. His viewpoint, although written half a century or more ago, has a logic that can be used to explain some of the issues addressed on this blog.

      Adorno thought society was steadily regressing – no surprise when you’re fleeing 1930’s Germany – and that popular culture in particular reflected and, more significantly, enabled that regression. He argued that popular culture actually trapped us in rather then freed us from the grindstone of work and/or the hardships of the real world. For Adorno our desire to discuss the value of one piece of music over another or the merits of one artist over an another provides us an escape from the political and social problems we are powerless to ameliorate or argue for or against in a meaningful and life-changing way.

      As our individual and collective stock in popular culture rises (“Where are my up arrows?”) so our investment in the real world of politics and societal issues of the day weakens. As individuals we seek out the familiar in art or music, we look for moments of pleasure and sweet spots that affirm what we know and enjoy immediately rather than invest time and effort in embracing the unfamiliar, the unpredictable, the alien and the uncomfortable. Through popular culture and music we are increasingly hard-wired to appease ourselves with similarity and familiarity, not difference. This affects and informs our choices in the real world.

      To Adorno continually chasing the tropes and themes in popular culture we know as as result of repeated exposure to them is a form of mass self-deception that ultimately instils a false sense of freedom in society. The same process hoodwinks us to the ‘real’ freedoms we are losing by neither engaging with nor challenging the political consensus being reached and decisions being enacted in our name. The logical consequence of this self-deception is to make our sense of reason irrational. It’s irrational because we are making choices based on a reason or rationale borne of delusion. By way of example of this irrationality we believe ourselves rebellious by buying and listening to The Sex Pistols while happily handing over our money to the major corporation that owns their music. In the bubble of popular culture even our rebelliousness is manufactured to keep us subjugated while the machinery of the commercial realpolitik grinds on.

      The ‘Planet of Cops’ and their favourite weapon of choice, social media, are following the same popular cultural patterns identified by Adorno, stamping their authority on sameness, treating any divergence from the path of correctness (as evidenced by popular opinion borne of popular culture) as a moral transgression, playing hardball in the bubble of virtual populism. It’s a dangerous game though because the level of regression now reached is such that the vacuity of many forms of popular opinion is affecting change in the real world (see the Russian interference in the US election). We have all sleepwalked into this cesspit of false consensus and opinion making, preferring the comfort of gathering around a popular opinion and shutting down dissent rather than actively engaging with opposing viewpoints.

      There is a simple, logical and reasonable argument to be made for changing the lyrics to the Canadian national anthem. It is rational to do so in an age where wider Western society is finally moving at a more urgent pace towards a world of gender equality. Genuine gender equality is potentially the greatest liberation of our modern age and for anecdotal evidence I need only look at my 2 daughters and how they perceive the world around them. Imagine a world where 50% of the population ha, on an individual and a collective level, the freedom to achieve their true potential. Amazing.

      (As an aside it’s interesting to read how the online argument between Mary Beard and Priyamvada Gopal about the fallout from Oxfam’s role in the developing world has led to the two women agreeing to meet up and properly get to grips with each other’s opinion in a frank but polite and respectful manner!)

      Against this backdrop of making changes in the real world changing the lyric of a National Anthem is powerful and symbolic for the right reasons, rather than an empty gesture. It feels important even if the importance is hard to make tangible or doesn’t represent some monumental change in policy.

      But the frustration of the OP is, I think, understandable in the context of Adorno’s worldview. Yes, there are other things our politicians could be getting on with. But are they really more important? We shouldn’t see the relative importance of political and societal issues as a zero-sum game; that’s the Trump way of politics (see his latest comments about the FBI and the latest mass shooting).

      Unfortunately politicians too are increasingly agents of popular culture, chasing plaudits and easy wins over hard choices and hard decisions. One need only look at their utter failure in the UK – on both sides of the argument – to provide anything resembling leadership and political nous over Brexit. Brexit often plays out more like Play Your Cards Right with both sides of the argument shouting out ‘Higher’ and ‘Lower’ before they even know or understand what the next card represents. They should have an idea though even if it’s difficult; it’s difficult but not impossible to plan ahead, there is only one deck and only 52 cards after all. Brexit should be being discussed by politicians from all sides as the serious and highly consequential choice it is that will affect us all for generations to come but collectively, politicians and populace alike, we seem incapable of addressing it on that level.

      Increasingly so much of what occupies our minds – Brexit, the Canadian national anthem, the Planet of Cops, Trump’s presidency – is played out using the tropes of popular culture as the benchmark rather than real world thought and deed. Our genuine anger and frustration is subsumed in the online vacuum of meaningless (in real terms) discourse and our genuine grievances appeased by the relief of a familiar chord progression and a perusal of our vinyl collection.

      It’s Adorno’s prediction of regression and loss of freedom writ large.

      • Great post!

        My only qualm would be whether Priyamvada Gopal’s contribution to the Mary Beard discussion was truly polite and respectful. Gopal may well be correct on the subject, but I found the tone of her rebuttal essay impossibly condescending and self-righteous. It seemed to me to have been written far more with an eye on eliciting garlands from its broader audience than on truly influencing Beard herself.

        It’s quite possible to sit down for coffee with another human being and still be incredibly rude and insulting to them without raising your voice, or effing and blinding. Accusing the other side of a “genteel patrician racist manner” and operating from a “context of entrenched denial” is a textbook example of how to do so, in fact.

        The essay attacks the validity of Beard’s views not because of their actual content, but because of their source. That, to me, is not respectful at all.

  32. Have all the nits been picked out of this yet?
    Or there nits as yet unseen, to be hunted, trapped and picked, without any thought that nits too have a right to roam this Afterword sector of the blogosphere unmolested?

  33. Well, I’m waiting for someone to comment on Premier Trudeau insisting that we should use the word personkind and not mankind.

    Is that like lighting the blue touchpaper or is this a damp squib?

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