Sunday, March 21, 2021

It's never really over

 

 In communication with a friend  about knowing people who have succumbed to Covid virus, a local busker who I was on nodding acquaintance with got (and died)  he was late 50’s and probably underlying health conditions also watched Michael Rosen (mid 70’s) speaking about his time in hospital (an RSA talk) and it seems he still has plenty of ongoing issues (not sure if this is the  ‘long Covid’?) 

The point of where the numbers impact the majority of people know a death is I guess some way off and perhaps these will be in what might be described as  ‘marginal groups’.


 Political Philosophy 


Getting towards the end of class (CityLit via Zoom) on Philosophy ....

I am not certain that ‘Populism’ belongs to the left or the right, as you can imagine when a group of people who give themselves the highfalutin’ ambition to look at something that incorporates philosophy in it  they’ll spend quite a bit of time trying to define a term which they’ll then feel even less sure about.

 

Most of the group I am  part of on a Tuesday evening see Trump as the embodiment of Populism and I would tend to describe the group as largely towards the left - Recep Tayyip Erdogan is another who gets a regular namecheck, I can see that Corbyn (actually both of them!)  could be described as sharing some Populism characteristics but Boris Johnson far more so. I guess a positive spin could be that Populism has tendencies of re-invigorating the debates on live issues and removing some power from those bogeymen, the non-democratically accountable  elites but on the downside  it seems too often to become entangled with Xenophobia  and dismisses dissenters as non-combatants in whatever the particular skirmish  under consideration is.

Next week is the final ‘Political’ session and we’re majoring on Feminism as a non-combatant and a minority (on the course) I will be mainly in listening mode – I like the approach that course teacher Chris Horner  has used; being open to discussion but having a framework that has caught some of the big themes.

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