Yet another unfillable hole has been punched in our firmament – or rather 15 holes, one for every bullet and knife thrust that killed Jo Cox, MP.
Her political talent, integrity, passionate commitment to every good cause (such as destroying our ancient constitution and turning Britain into a province of Germany, or of the EU if you want to be a stickler), intellectual depth and moral virtue are extolled in every medium with nothing short of hysterical fervour.
Her murder, we’ve found out, deprived us of a future great minister definitely, the best prime minister Britain has ever had quite possibly, or even, dare I say it, our future queen, an ascendancy that possibly would have had too many divorces in its way but would have been eminently desirable anyway.
I’d go even further than that, and in fact some newspapers have done so, and suggest that Miss Cox transcended humanity and approached the semi-divine status reached before her only by Diana, the people’s princess, in Tony Blair’s immoral… sorry, I meant immortal, words.
It’s not blood that flowed out of her mutilated body, but ichor, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if she now resided at the very top of the celebrity Olympus, sharing its summit with Diana and looking down on the occupants of the marginally lower tiers, such as Amy Winehouse, David Bowie and Prince. Two supreme goddesses lording it over mere demiurges.
This may sound as if I’m crassly mocking the victim of that horrific crime. I am not. In fact, I don’t care what objectionable or noble causes Miss Cox supported, what kind of politician she was or wasn’t, what her career might or might not have held in store for her.
When a young woman in the prime of her life is butchered by a lunatic degenerate, when she dies with the last words “My pain is too much”, when she leaves a bereaved husband and two orphaned children behind, I can feel the tragedy of it all as much as anyone. I pray for her soul and for her family; I hope God will judge her with kindness and she’ll rest in peace. And, as an unwavering supporter of the death penalty, I’d happily administer it to her murderer, by whatever means, quick or slow.
But I wasn’t related to Miss Cox. Nor, and I know this is an unforgivable omission on my part, did I ever meet her. To be brutally honest, until her tragic demise I hadn’t even heard of her. So yes, I mourn her death, but not as much as I mourned the death of my parents, some close friends or such people as Glenn Gould, whom I didn’t know personally but who had deeply affected my life. I keep my grief in perspective and, in the best traditions of Englishness, I tried not to show it too conspicuously even with those very tangible losses.
I share that tradition only vicariously, but those born to it are dropping it like a bad habit. At some point, Englishmen decided – or someone else decided it for them – that a modern person must wear his heart on his sleeve. Alas, when one does that, the heart gets caked in grime, the emotional air pollution being what it is.
Anyone with any understanding of musical performance, or indeed composition, will know that feelings are at their most poignant when expressed with noble restraint. In music, any other art or – most definitely and relevantly – life, emotional incontinence doesn’t add but subtracts. It sounds vulgar even when the feelings are real, rather than manufactured to order – as, I’m afraid, they are every time the Dianification of England strikes again.
The order has been issued by a victorious modernity, that tyrannical rule by simulacrum. It has effectively replaced real feelings with the virtual, ersatz variety, and it has done this so successfully that we no longer know the difference.
When in the wake of Diana’s death that disorderly mob bearing flowers and fluffy toys descended on Buckingham Palace, the brainwashed asses brayed “Your Majesty, show us you care!!!” They felt it was more important for the Queen to show she was a brainless vulgarian like them than to take care of her grandchildren, which she was doing at the time.
To their credit, the Tories have already said they wouldn’t contest the seat vacated by the deceased, and the referendum campaigns have been suspended. That isn’t to say that the Remain campaign isn’t trying to sneak in some emotional blackmail through the back door. The implication is that the tragedy of Miss Cox’s death can only be exacerbated by Britain leaving the EU.
This resembles the standard communist eulogy of my Soviet youth: “Our comrade is dead, but his cause lives on.” Then too we were supposed to show grief whenever yet another communist chieftain pegged it. So the hysteria over the death of Miss Cox, who, unlike those communist chieftains, must have been a decent person, nonetheless has a familiar ring to it – except that I thought I now lived in a free country.
Thank you