Looking back (be the prism micro or macro) involves a degree of nostalgia, but such is only a by-product of comparing history to the present day…the better to inform where on earth we might be going in the future.

The rapidly growing colossal number of Civil rights [I do not believe in human Rights] trampled into the neoliberal economic quicksand over the last fifteen years in the West has reversed every assumed freedom achieved since thirteenth century Knights cornered Prince John at Runnymede in 1215.

Anyone who questions the beastly perfectionism of neoliberal economics – and its application on a planetary scale regardless of local culture and regional needs – is now deemed to be a candidate for re-education on the Solzhenytsin pathway — as in, confinement to a mental institution of the kind to make the Cuckoo’s Nest seem like a paradise of personal liberty and educated choices by comparison.

New Normal cultism is an attempt to depict modern history public-life norms as unfair at best and horrifically obscene at worst. This is a travesty of the Truth…..designed to make the immediate future seem a price worth paying – a guiding light if you will – towards ”temporary” Totalitarianism as a means of reaching the Promised Land. Well, I’m here to tell you that (a) no totalitarian turkey ever voted for Thanksgiving and (b) the last ”temporary” UK tax was the one on Income introduced by William Pitt the Younger in his budget of December 1798 – to pay for weapons and equipment in preparation for the Napoleonic Wars.

Bonaparte left the theatre after 1816. Income Tax has survived unscathed…and, 207 years later, remains linked to inflation.

”New lamps for old”: why would anyone accept this legendary cry as a selling point without the promise of a genie being part of the takeaway? The genie is still there: the only new thing in the New Normal World Order is that every promise has been broken before it got started.

Rather like the Nazis and their Volkswagen, really.

From here on, The Slog will devote most of its time to showing how – from roughly 1953 until 1972 – the West produced high quality goods, better living standards for its citizens and a powerful social glue based on fairly high taxes but also fair rates of pay for most. In that era, such a ”mixed economy” model produced societal debate and briefly violent student demonstrations. But it only came to an end with the question of energy and its prime location in the Middle East.

We have yet to see anything superior to that emerging from neoliberal greed.

Do please stay tuned.