The thing with politicians is that it is in their nature to be opportunistic. When their popularity drops, their preparedness to talk out of their backside increases. Quite a simple equation, really.
Then there is that other phenomenon, best characterised by bandwagon-jumping. Once an issue appears to be safe to populate with general outcries of self-righteous babble, myriads of morons join the party and jump up and down like five-year-olds who have discovered the trampoline.
Problem is, that trampolines can be dangerous if the landing occurs at the wrong angle: a heavy bounce is followed by a pretty massive fall. Results are headache, crushed bones – and often, lasting brain damage (which seems to be a precondition for quite a few politicians, especially when it comes to telling the people about their game).
So, there bounces good old Nick Clegg.
Clearly gifted with the superior knowledge of one who not only uses but has apparently invented the crystal ball (just like Gore who told us he invented the internet), good old Clegg – slowly suffocating from ratings that threaten to kick the bottom out from under his political career and his political party – found a bandwagon that appeared to be PC to jump upon.
Just like the somewhat duplicitous mainstream media who, only hours after MH17 was shot down, had already dutifully regurgitated the Obama tale that immediately blamed Putin’s Russia and Putin himself for the horror. Clegg too, and quite senselessly, adopts a position that is not based on fact but useful assumptions: blame Russia and Putin for everything.
Let’s not get the facts in the way. Facts are merely an irritating side-show. Let us – as truly committed cold warriors – immediately dish out a guilty verdict, without any factual evidence, without due process (the pride of western democracies?), without a shred of evidence that could stand up in a court of law. Let us just kick all logic by the wayside and replace it with opportunistic assumptions that are so self-serving that they stink (and probably do more damage than good in the long run).
At a time when – meanwhile – even the US accept the fact that “Russia had nothing to do with it” (US State Department spokeswoman), Clegg is deaf and follows the order of his Murdochian masters: he demands that Russia be punished, just like all of the other idiots who blindly follow the so far unproven tale of Putin’s deliberate and nasty plotting to bring down a Malaysian airliner.
But Clegg is a smart man (you gotta be if you want to make the ultimate difference and the government of the day – and the one to come soon – depends on your ridiculous handful of key votes): he not only copies the other Europhile apes in their nodding action (just like those awful monkeys that used to sit in the back of cars and happily nod out of the rear window for no apparent reason). He is Clegg and he needs to be seen to be setting the tone.
The tone is this: football is a topical theme, a populist issue, an eye-catching totem pole to dance around. Always unpunished. You can claim just about anything in world football and be guaranteed to get away scot-free. No questions asked. No evidence required. No logic necessary. FIFA, for one, is now so messed up in terms of public perception, that anything goes: call them a Mafia, call them criminal, call them thieves, call them anything under the sun: you’ll be certain of resounding applause and everyone’s pet enemy will have been dealt another blow: the Number One Enemy of the State (any state in the west, it seems), Joseph S Blatter is always an enemy worth sticking a knife into to damage further (as if that was possible).
The collective of idiots continues with its attacks on one man, convinced that this despot is in sole control of everything. It is always easier to pin-point one target, visualize it, dehumanise it and focus on it exclusively if the subject matter were to demand a more detailed scrutiny. Like that, an enemy is easily found, the target acquired and an entire organisation composed of 500 hard-working men and women defamed without a problem.
Now add another component to the hated pars-pro-toto-figure Blatter, an apparently equally evil man called Vladimir Putin, and the toxic cocktail seems perfect: world football and nasty politics have been joined at the hip, are both evil and the best possible targets to be attacked jointly.
So thinks Clegg.
He endeared himself to the astonished world by publishing a line of thoughtless rubbish the past weekend (obviously in his favourite paper made in Murdochia, one that seems to have experienced a remarkable revival after all its sisterly scandals of late) when calling for Russia to be stripped of the2018 FIFA World Cup.
Clegg of all people speaks of “insincerity” in his piece – in itself a bit of a hard sell for a party that continues to betray its base by aligning itself with the Tories and breaking just about every promise they had made (yep, students have a vote too, Mr Clegg, and they have to pay their fees that you promised never to introduce). He speaks of Russia’s behavior having reached a “tipping point” and more inane stuff like that.
Whereas we concur with all who consider the war in Ukraine a nasty piece of complicated work, the shooting down of a passenger jet a crime (why a “war crime” though, when the shooters have not as yet been identified, at least not “beyond reasonable doubt”, as Western democracies would usually demand?) and the senseless murdering of Ukrainian citizens by Ukrainian soldiers a genuine war crime, and while we support any and all aggression (be that figurative or actual) against the fascists who took over Ukraine’s fortunes (with the EU’s remarkable involvement), purporting to be acting in the people’s interest (only to resign a couple of days ago when they, too, were left dangling in mid air whilst reaching for the multiple carrots offered by the IMF, US and EU), whereas we are all for measures that protect the civilian population on both sides – what audacity for a Mr Clegg to be shouting for football sanctions when he was very much part of an institution that condoned Tony Blair’s War of Lies?
How seriously can you take a man who never called for sanctions when the Western Alliance destroyed entire countries on dodgy grounds (“Iraq has weapons of mass destruction”) and continues to support the catastrophe that is today’s Libya, the entire Middle East, Syria – you name it?
If something smells of a rat, the rat cannot be far away – and the argument put forward by Mr Clegg that Russia must be stripped of its World Cup, smells of a very big rat. England lost the bid. Miserably. At this rate, England is losing its shirt too, when it starts to offer ill-gotten advice but cannot deliver any evidence. Other than dodgy evidence, obtained by faked Twitter, Facebook and other social media postings. England lost the Bid. Is this the best way to try and get the hosting rights?
Once there is proof, the West must act. But it must also act and seek forgiveness for the secret CIA prisons it quietly condoned in Europe and elsewhere, for Guantanamo where its own citizens are rotting without trial, for murdering thousands of civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan for no reason, for supplying its own enemies with weapons in Syria and for bombing an entire country to bits by claiming it needed to be freed from Ghaddafi – the same man who was Tony Blair’s closest buddy a few years before. And all, or most of those matters, good old Clegg knew all about.
Whilst alliances may change, character shouldn’t. And just because the polls are not showing in Mr Clegg’s favour this isn’t justification for him to talk out of his backside and parrot the clueless nonsense that is generally promoted on Fox News in particular and CNN too often. Deliver proof, Mr Clegg, and then speak. And best stay out of football: some if it is already bad enough without you.
Contact the writer of this column at moc.l1734895485labto1734895485ofdlr1734895485owedi1734895485sni@n1734895485osloh1734895485cin.l1734895485uap1734895485