A World in Denial of What It Knows

Sunday, January 1, 2012 by the New York Times
by Geoffrey Wheatcroft

COULD there be a single phrase that explains the woes of our time, this dismal age of political miscalculations and deceptions, of reckless and disastrous wars, of financial boom and bust and downright criminality? Maybe there is, and we owe it to Fintan O’Toole. That trenchant Irish commentator is a biographer and theater critic, and a critic also of his country’s crimes and follies, as in his gripping if horrifying book, Ship of Fools: How Stupidity and Corruption Sank the Celtic Tiger.

He reminds us of the famous if gnomic saying by Donald H. Rumsfeld, then the United States secretary of defense, that “There are known knowns... there are known unknowns ... there are also unknown unknowns.” But the Irish problem, says Mr. O’Toole, was none of the above. It was “unknown knowns.”

What he means is something different from denial, or evasion, irrational exuberance or excess optimism. Unknown knowns were things that were not at all inevitable, and were easily knowable, or indeed known, but which people chose to “unknow.”

Unknown knowns were everywhere, from Wall Street to Brussels, from the Pentagon to Penn State. Ireland merely happened to offer an extreme case, where “everyone knew.”

They just chose to forget that they knew — about the way that Irish banks ran wild, how easy credit fueled a monstrous explosion of property prices and speculative house-building. Bertie Ahern, the Irish prime minister at the time of the rapid economic growth, merely boasted, “The boom is getting boomier,” preferring to unknow the truth that booms always go bust.

Beginning in 2008, the skies were lighted up by financial conflagrations, from Lehman Brothers to the Royal Bank of Scotland. These were dramatic enough — but were they unforeseeable or unknowable? What kind of willful obtusity ever suggested that subprime mortgages were a good idea? An intelligent child would have known that there is no good time to lend money to people who obviously can never repay it.

Or recall how we were taken into the Iraq war. That was the origin of Mr. Rumsfeld’s curious words 10 years ago. When he murmured about “things we do not know we don’t know,” he was touching on the unconventional weapons that Saddam Hussein might — or might not — have held.

In a sense, Mr. Rumsfeld was more right than he realized. Those of us who opposed the war may be asked to this day whether we knew what weaponry Iraq possessed, to which the answer is that of course we didn’t. Nor, as it transpired, did President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Mr. Rumsfeld or Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain.

But that was the wrong question. It should have been not “what weaponry does Saddam Hussein possess?” but “Is Saddam Hussein’s weaponry, whatever it may be, the real reason for the war, or is it a pretext confected after a decision for war had already been taken?” The answer to that was obvious and could have been known to all, but too many people chose to unknow it.

Then there was another unknown known: the likely consequences of an invasion. Shortly before it began, Mr. Blair met President Jacques Chirac of France. As well as reiterating his opposition to the coming war, Mr. Chirac offered the prime minister specific warnings. Mr. Blair and his friends in Washington seemed to think that they would be welcomed with open arms in Iraq, Mr. Chirac said, but that they shouldn’t count on it. It was foolish to think of creating a modern democracy in an artificial country with a divided society like Iraq. And Mr. Chirac asked whether Mr. Blair realized that, by invading Iraq, they might yet precipitate a civil war.

This has been described in a BBC documentary by someone present, Sir Stephen Wall, a Foreign Office man then attached to Downing Street. As the British team was leaving, Mr. Blair turned and said, “Poor old Jacques, he just doesn’t get it,” to which Sir Stephen now adds dryly that he turned out to get it rather better than “we” did.

At that time, Mr. Chirac was reviled in America, and his career has just ended in disgrace, with a court conviction for embezzlement. But who was right about Iraq? All the calamities that followed the invasion were not only foreseeable, they were foreseen. And yet for Mr. Blair, as well as Washington, they were unknown knowns.

One more such, bitter as it is to say so when many people have been ruined, was the Bernard L. Madoff fraud. For years, his investors gratefully and unquestioningly accepted returns that were strictly incredible. Loud warning voices sounded. Harry Markopolos, a former investment officer, exhaustively back-analyzed Mr. Madoff’s supposed figures by computer. He spent nearly nine years repeatedly trying to explain to the Securities and Exchange Commission that these figures were not merely incredible but mathematically impossible. And still the SEC chose to unknow it. Leos Janacek wrote a harrowing opera called “The Makropulos Affair”; Peter Gelb at the Met should commission someone to write “The Markopolos Affair” as a fable for our times.

In a very different kind of scandal, not everyone at Penn State, and certainly not every fan, knew what had happened in the showers. But quite enough was known by people who could have acted. They chose instead to unknow. And so to another classic unknown known, the euro. The recent summit in Brussels turned into a silly melodrama, with a British prime minister, David Cameron this time, once more playing the pantomime villain. But Mr. Cameron was right, if for the wrong reasons, to oppose the European Union’s latest frantic (and doomed) plan to prop up the euro.

If truth be told (but it so rarely is!), the euro cannot work and could never have worked. That is, a single currency embracing countries as diverse in social culture, productivity, work practices and taxation as Germany and Greece, or the Netherlands and Portugal, is economically impossible without much closer fiscal and financial union — which is politically impossible. Anyone could have known that at the time the euro was introduced, but for the rulers of the European Union it was their very own unknown known.

“The Cloud of Unknowing” is a medieval classic of mystical writing, and unknowing still hangs over us. It will be a happier new year if we can dispel some of that cloud, try to unknow less, and know a little more.

The False Equation: Religion Equals Morality

Monday, December 19, 2011 by CommonDreams.org
by Gwynne Dyer

In the United States, where it is almost impossible to get elected unless you profess a strong religious faith, it would have passed completely unnoticed. Not one of the hundred US senators ticks the "No Religion/Atheist/Agnostic" box, for example, although 16 percent of the American population do. But it was quite remarkable in Britain.

Last Friday, UK Prime Minister David Cameron urged the Church of England to lead a revival of traditional Christian values to counter the country’s “moral collapse”. Last Friday, in Oxford, Prime Minister David Cameron declared that the United Kingdom is a Christian country “and we should not be afraid to say so.” He was speaking on the 400th anniversary of the King James translation of the Bible, so he had to say something positive about religion – but he went far beyond that.

“The Bible has helped to give Britain a set of values and morals which make Britain what it is today,” he said. “Values and morals we should actively stand up and defend.”

Where to start? The King James Bible was published at the start of a century in which millions of Europeans were killed in religious wars over minor differences of doctrine. Thousands of “witches” were burned at the stake during the 16th century, as were thousands of “heretics”. They have stopped doing that sort of thing in Britain now – but they’ve also stopped reading the Bible. Might there be a connection here?

Besides, what Cameron said is just not true. In last year’s British Social Attitudes Survey, conducted annually by the National Center for Social Research, only 43 percent of 4,000 British people interviewed said they were Christian, while 51 percent said they had “no religion.” Among young people, some two-thirds are non-believers.

Mind you, the official census numbers from 2001 say that 73 percent of British people identify themselves as “Christian”. However, this is probably due to a leading question on the census form. “What is your religion?” it asks, which seems to assume that you must have one – especially since it follows a section on ethnic origins, and we all have those.

So a lot of people put down Christian just because that is the ancestral religion of their family. Make the question more neutral – “Are you religious? If so, what is your religion?” –and the result would probably be very different. There were attempts to get that more neutral question onto the 2011 census form, but the churches lobbied frantically against it. They are feeling marginalized enough as it is.

Why would David Cameron proclaim the virtues of a Christian Britain that no longer exists? He is no religious fanatic; he describes himself as a “committed” but only “vaguely practicing” Christian.

You’d think that if he really believed in a God who scrutinizes his every thought and deed, and will condemn him to eternal torture in Hell if he doesn’t meet the standard of behavior required, he might be a little less vague about it all. But he doesn’t really believe that he needs religion HIMSELF; he thinks it is a necessary instrument of social control for keeping the lower orders in check.

This is a common belief among those who rule, because they confuse morality with religion. If the common folk do not fear some god (any old god will do), social discipline will collapse and the streets will run with blood. Our homes, our children, even our domestic animals will be violated. Thank god for God.

Just listen to Cameron: “The alternative of moral neutrality should not be an option. You can’t fight something with nothing. If we don’t stand for something, we can’t stand against anything.” The “alternative of moral neutrality”? What he means is that there cannot be moral behavior without religion – so you proles had better go on believing, or we privileged people will be in trouble.

But Cameron already lives in a post-religious country. Half its people say outright that they have no religion, two-thirds of them never attend a religious service, and a mere 8 percent go to church, mosque, synagogue or temple on a weekly basis. Yet the streets are not running with blood.

Indeed, religion may actually be bad for morality. In 2005 Paul Gregory made the case for this in a research paper in the Journal of Religion and Society entitled “Cross-National Correlations of Quantifiable Societal Health with Popular Religiosity and Secularism in the Prosperous Democracies: A First Look.”

Sociological gobbledygook, but in a statistical survey of 18 developed democracies, Gregory showed that “In general, higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, (venereal disease), teen pregnancy, and abortion.”

Even within the United States, Gregory reported, “the strongly theistic, anti-evolution South and Midwest" have markedly worse crime rates and social problems than the relatively secular North-East. Of course, the deeply religious areas are also poorer, so it might just be poverty making people behave so badly. On the other hand, maybe religion causes poverty.

Whatever. The point is that David Cameron, and thousands of other politicians, religious leaders and generals in every country, are effectively saying that my children, and those of all the other millions who have no religion, are morally inferior to those who do. It is insulting and untrue.

US & UK: Next Phase of World Domination?

Tuesday, May 24, 2011 – by Staff Report | The Daily Bell Newswire

US, UK form joint security council. Obama will announce on his first state visit to Britain this week that the White House is to open up its highly secretive National Security Council to Downing Street. The move aims to show the US still values the trans-Atlantic 'special relationship." A joint National Security Strategy Board will be established to co-ordinate senior officials on both sides in dealing with challenges such as terrorism and rogue states. – Sydney Morning Herald

Dominant Social Theme: England and America, perfect together ...

Free-Market Analysis: The British-American relationship is deepening again, or so it is reported. According to the Herald (see above) President Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron will formally present to the press and public a new Service Personnel Joint Task Force when Obama is in Britain on his latest whirlwind, European trip. As of yesterday, he was still in Ireland proclaiming Irish roots.

Obama will also visit Warsaw and then attend a G8 summit in Deauville, France. But the big deal in London is the new Joint Task Force, which we figure isn't exactly what it's being portrayed as. For one thing, the talks between Obama and Cameron supposedly will deal mainly with Afghanistan. As the article tells us: "The main discussions between Mr. Obama and Mr. Cameron will focus on Afghanistan, on which they have a similar outlook. They both aim to reduce combat troops and recognize that elements of the Taliban will have to be involved in a political settlement."

In fact, Obama told the BBC's Andrew Marr Show bluntly, 'We're not going to militarily solve this problem ... What we can do, I think, is use the efforts that we've made militarily to broker a political settlement that ensures the Afghanistan constitution is abided by, that elections remain free and fair, that human rights including women's rights are respected.'

The Pentagon is alarmed by Cameron's stated intention to draw down British troops, which number about 10,000. About 400, or four percent, are scheduled to leave soon, which is causing the Pentagon anguish. But Obama doesn't appear to have any intention of talking Cameron out of it. The Afghan war, as we have pointed out previously, is increasingly being seen as something of a lost cause.

Anglo-American elites behind the war, having failed for a second time in 100 years to beat the stubborn Pashtun Afghan-Pak nation into a bloody pulp, are apparently regrouping for other fights. Bin Laden's non/death (we believe he probably died 10 years ago) is useful in this regard. We are now detecting at least two ways it is being manipulated. It is allowing the US and NATO to declared victory in order to reduce forces, and it is also putting significant additional pressure on Pakistan's leaders.

This can either lead to an invasion in Pakistan to route out the Taliban, a general war with Pakistan, or even an international realignment in which Pakistan seeks to ally itself with China against the US. This latter evolution would begin to set up China as a military opponent of the US – which the US corporate military-industrial complex may be seeking in order to keep orders moving. As we have pointed out in the past, the war on terror is simply not compelling enough. Something on the scale of a Cold War is necessary to keep the big money flowing to America's military providers.

Of course, Obama is sticking close to the Pentagon line as he always does. He was asked, according to the article, whether the US has plans to speak directly to the Taliban (apparently the US already is) and he replied in the cautious affirmative as follows: 'Ultimately, it means talking to the Taliban, although we've been very clear about the requirements for any kind of serious reconciliation. The Taliban would have to cut all ties to al-Qaeda, renounce violence, and they would have to respect the Afghan constitution. Now those are some fairly bare-bones requirements.'

Obama needs to say something like this because the American generals are having trouble giving up the fight and Obama doesn't really want to get on the wrong side of the US military. But from what we can tell the game is pretty much over. The US may make all sorts of public preconditions about talking to the Taliban, but the war is costing US$100 billion a year and every day more and more hearts and minds are being lost – not won. There is no reason for the US to stay in Afghanistan any longer or at least not from the point of view of a full-fledged military operation. There are other wars to fight.

Yes, the playing field has enlarged considerably. The Anglo-American axis has done some of what it needed to do in Iraq and Iran and now the battles must be waged elsewhere. As we state every now and again, the goal is world domination and has nothing (primarily) to do with oil, gas, pipelines, currency or any other kind of raw material. Those are secondary reasons.

Primarily, Anglosphere elites are intent on influencing CULTURE. The first thing Western occupying forces do when they enter a nation is set up a central bank. The next thing they do (mostly the Americans) is to begin to set up military bases. The central bank secures the ultimate control of the business environment and the bases secure some (enough) control of the political process – which is also reconfigured into a regulatory democracy.

In the case of Afghanistan, the Western elites have not entirely secured their goals, nor will they. The Pashtuns will survive as an independent entity as they have before. In Iraq, the process is more advanced. The government itself is somewhat dependent on the Americans and the political class generally may not want the Americans to leave. But there is a significant Shia population that wants nothing to do with the US. Bombs are beginning to go off in Iraq again and the only group besides a handful of political leaders that wants the Americans to stay is a small, northern Kurdish population.

What will happen to the Afghan and Iraq troops that are drawn down? Well, from our point of view, the Anglosphere has made a tactical decision to use freed-up resources to intimidate the larger Middle East and parts of Africa since it cannot finish the job in Iraq and Afghanistan. Additional troops may be deployed for maximum effect in and around countries such as Syria, Jordan, Egypt and Libya.

The idea is to spread Anglo-American influence throughout the region in order to bring it under far firmer control of the West. Iran and the Palestinians are additional logical additional targets for this next chapter of Western world domination; Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates are already Western proxies. The West even has a compliant media outlet in the Middle East in Al Jazeera from what we can tell, as Al Jazeera was funded by the Western puppet state of Qatar and staffed initially with BBC reporters.

Hillary Clinton held a news conference with her British counterpart yesterday. Much of the news conference consisted of Ms. Clinton warning the leaders of Libya, Syria and other countries that their time was basically up and that the US and Britain were going to dictate the nature and shape of future governments in the region. "Leaders," Ms. Clinton intimated in her droning monotone, "do not step out of line or the UN will sanction you and NATO will invade you."

None of this is preordained in the era of the Internet. The CIA-sponsored youth movements in Egypt and Tunisia have already spiraled out of control. As we have stated many times, the broad manipulations of Money Power in the 20th century are not so effective in the 21st as in the 20th. The West has apparently absorbed a defeat in Afghanistan and Iraq has not been properly reconfigured either.

Conclusion: It is the masses themselves, informed by the 'Net' that will provide the most formidable pushback to the West's Middle Eastern and African consolidation – a process we refer to as the Internet Reformation. The elites know this of course, and are doing what they can to diminish such pushback by imposing economic chaos, high food prices, etc. But understanding the process and doing something to effectively halt it are two different things. History itself may be conspiring against fuller, Western elite control in the 21st century.

Musical Patriot

The Smiths, Radiohead, the Gorillaz and Other Favs of the the New Brit PM

By DAVID YEARSLEY

There’s a new top ten at no. 10. Top eight, actually, since the BBC’s long-running Desert Island Discs radio broadcast only allows this many selections in its three-quarters-of-an-hour duration. The musical tastes of the newly-elected British Prime Minister David Cameron—he appeared on the show in 2006, a year after gaining the Tory leadership—are worth a closer look and listen.

I’m all for the introduction of musical litmus tests. Let’s dispense with all the Judiciary Committee grandstanding and instead adopt a different kind of hearing—of music. In these confirmation proceedings the Senators and Elena Kagan would break out their iPods and get right to the heart of the things.

The same goes for campaigns. McCain was not undone by his politics, so indistinguishable from those of his opponent, but by his professed love of ABBA. There was something so pathetic and unbelievable about a gammy veteran, who had been well into middle when disco arrived on the scene, claiming “Dancing Queen” as a favorite. Two out of his top three were ABBA hits. While many politicians gauge their playlists—and one suspected McCain was trying to capitalize on the appeal of Mamma Mia and the ABBA revival or had just been to the movie and couldn’t think of any other music—to appeal to voters, the power of music renders such ploys transparent. Gordon Brown’s opportunistic affection for the Arctic Monkeys—a Sheffield band that vaulted to sudden, internet-aided popularity in 2006—was utterly fake; when asked to be more specific, he couldn’t name a single track, then clumsily retreated to higher moral ground by claiming that he was more interested in the fate of the Arctic Circle than of the shivering simians of Sheffield. Brown wasn’t spinning discs, he was spin-doctoring. The expiration date of his political career was stamped on his lease at 10 Downing Street long before he left that microphone on in the northern town of Rochdale.

No less a political pundit than Plato understood the power of music to mold the man and impress the populace. Anything but a dancing queen, Plato spends many pages of the Republic arguing for the central importance of music in the training of his soldier-statesmen. He banishes panharmonic flute playing, effeminate modes, and lascivious songs, leaving behind the most boring playlist in political history: manly songs.

Brown had possibly thumbed through the Republic before his infamous 1996 appearance on Desert Island Discs. His list is dominated by robust, masculine hymns and classics. Given that posturing, it was perhaps no surprise that the host Sue Lawley asked the then-bachelor Brown if he were gay. As far as the musical choices, Plato would have loved them, though he might have raised an eyebrow at the Gaelic pipers in Brown’s favored rendition of the 23rd Psalm. Brown’s devotion to Jerusalem, that Battleship of Britishness heard late each summer as the rousing sing-a-long finale of the Proms, raised everyone else’s eyebrows. I suppose it could have been comforting after being marooned on that Desert Island to hear the swells of C. H. Parry’s patriotic hymn bouncing off the palms and out over the azure waters of the lagoon, while the stranded politician sips coconut milk and recalls Blake’s evocation of “England’s green and pleasant land.” But this choice, too, seemed calculated, aimed at convincing anti-Euro Middle Englanders of Brown’s nationalistic credibility. Wherever he ventured musically—to the polar ice cape, the desert island, or along the Thames—Brown was found out by the very songs he caddishly courted.

Inevitably, Desert Island lists are shrouded in nostalgia; if Frith is right, it could be no other way, this harking back to the promise and alienation of adolescence. Cameron’s top choice of Bob Dylan’s “Tangled Up in Blue” reflects a fascination of typically British hue with the expanse of America, the lure of the road: “We drove that car as far as we could / Abandoned it out West.” The hypnotic guitar chords, like the wheels on that car, and the plaintive call of Dylan’s voice drifting out over the continent after a woman: this is music of possibility, not such much of being, but of becoming. It is also music of the school years at Eton, of Cameron’s puffs of marijuana—a recreation that got him punished by having to write out of 500 lines of Latin. In response to later allegations that he had smoked pot and coke. Cameron responded that all had done regrettable things before entering politics. Dylan remains.

Strummed yearning fills up Cameron’s list, an accurate thermometer of the low-grade fever that is Conservative Party sentimentality. Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here,” is from the mid-Seventies, done not too long before Cameron arrived atEton. It summons the same “green fields” of Blake’s Jerusalem, and the guitar interludes encourage a reverie that oscillates between fondness and disdain for both the past and future.

One can try to push such interpretations in more literal direction. Does the line about “Hot air for a cool breeze? Cold comfort for change?” presage, or even inspire, Cameron’s supposed crusade against climate change, cycling to Westminster during his years as a mere MP with his clothes and belongings being transported behind him in a carbon-spewing automobile? And then there is the song’s excellent diagnosis of the new Prime Minister’s predicament, stepping in to oversee yet another British adventure in Afghanistan: “And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage?” The answer to that question is: “Yes!”

In the middle of the PM’s list, Radiohead’s “Fake Plastic Trees” jumps forward to the 1990s with Cameron on the cusp of his thirties. Here is more plaintive dreaminess: the final line captures a syntactically indeterminate longing that pervades Cameron’s musical choices: “And if I could be who you wanted / All the time, all the time.” Next on the list comes “This Charming Man” of The Smiths. This came out during Cameron’s Oxford years of the early Eighties, when he was at Brasenose College and in the Bullingdon Club, where Tory toffs gather in hot pursuit of drunkenness and broken glass—presumably to a soundtrack of the kind of music Cameron liked, or learned to like. This track represents the real contemporary music of Cameron’s youth. Here in The Smiths front man Morrissey’s lyric is a sprightly portrait of the politician as a young man, and, indeed, of a new prime minister: “A punctured bicycle / On a hillside desolate / Will nature make a man of me yet?” That’s real rugged, life-changing adventure: a ride through Hampstead Heath on a fully-loaded mountain bike.

The search for endless possibility extends to Cameron’s final choice, updating his play-list with The Killers and their “All These Things That I’ve Done,” which came out not long before Cameron appeared on Desert Island Discs in 2006: “I wanna shine on in the hearts of men / I want a meaning from the back of my broken hand.”

It’s also all white. At least Tony Blair had one black musician on his Desert Island—Robert Johnson’s“Cross Road Blues” tucked in beneath Samuel Barber’s hoary Adagio for String.

Two miscellaneous items are thrown in among Cameron’s surprisingly coherent commitment to progressive rock. The second entry is Benny Hill’s “The Fastest Milk Man in The West”—a knee-slapping proto-rap song that chronicles the duel between a milkman and the driver of a bread van over a sexy widow. Who am I to deny Cameron his pre-teen bun, but hauling this bottle of curdled milk onto the Desert Island? Cameron may well enjoy a bit of Benny now and again, but its inclusion here is pure opportunism to show him as a fun-loving, regular guy.

The other oddity is Kiri Te Kanawa singing that overroasted Schubert chestnut “On Wings of Song.” With this choice, Cameron, perched on his shooting stick with his tartan-covered iPod tucked into his Burberry, kills at least three birds with one blast from his Italian shotgun: classical music; a performer of color; who also happens to be female. Without this trifecta payoff, the ethnic and sexual, if not the socio-economic makeup, of Cameron’s list looks very Etonian indeed. Sadly, he found the track on a classic CD entitled “The Essential Wedding Collection” with Dame Kiri accompanied by the Utah Symphony. The Conservative Party’s classical chops have fallen a long way down since former organ scholar and avid amateur conductor Edward Heath was in Downing Street. Margaret Thatcher’s number one on Desert Island Discs was the unbearably cloying “Two Little Boys,” an old music hall song that makes Cameron’s sentimentality seem utterly anemic by comparison. Winston Churchill also favored the music hall. Atop John Major’s Desert Island list was the mad scene from Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor sung by Joan Sutherland, though I’ll wager that Major, himself the son of a famous music hall performer, still enjoys imagining a deranged Thatcher in that role with the malign Denis as Enrico.

Two years after Cameron’s visit to Desert Island Discs candidate Obama passed through England on his way to the continent. It was reported that Cameron presented CDs by The Smiths, Radiohead, and Gorillaz to the presidential candidate. The Tory ladies would have been shocked by this music had any of them done a bit of useful digging. The hanky of “On Wings of Song” would hardly have been enough to wipe away their tears of disgust or to muffle the derisive shouts of the hunting-and-shooting set. Did Cameron give Obama Meat is Murder by The Smiths? “Heifer whines could be human cries / closer comes the screaming knife/ this beautiful creature must die … and death for no reason is MURDER.” There goes the vote from the Countryside.

And how about Gorillaz, a “virtual” band made up of animated musicians projected on screen at their “live” concerts.” Here’s a scrap from their commentary on terrorism in the song 911 from 2001, a collaboration with the hip hop group, D12:

Derelict Arabic terrorists in the air
Shit arrogant apparent to punish people by their heritage
NATO barriers, the embarrassed the is the fait to cherish
In your room face to face with race awareness.

I’m a nitwit with a big dick, and big balls /
I don’t miss shit, I hit all
Whoever that did this, we gonna getch y’all

There is no clearer explication of Anglo-American foreign policy than this.
And what of the coalition now forming at the edge of the dance floor in Westminster, with Cameron set to lead his junior partner Liberal Democrat Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg? Perhaps Clegg’s beloved Chopin Waltz in A Minor—a posthumous work that goes about its business with unusual matter-of-factness—will serve to break the musical ice.

Clegg appeared on the highbrow answer to Desert Island Discs on BBC 4. He goes for German Lieder and 19th-century piano music, for Fischer-Dieskau and Brendel, not Morrissey and Benny Hill. One point of contact between the two playlists is the same Kiri Te Kanawa singing Mozart’s Laudate Dominum. Kiri is the thin bit of sonic glue keeping this Tory-Lib Dem musical union together.

None of Clegg’s choices stray from the beaten track of classical music favorites; in an odd way, Cameron’s list is more adventurous. Among Clegg’s other choices are Richard Strauss’s “Beim Schlafengehen” from the Four Last Songs and Fischer-Dieskau singing Schubert’s ”Erlkönig,” pieces that rapture not in the open road but in death’s embrace, be it luxurious or ice cold. Whether these seemingly incompatible play-lists will combine to produce a political Totentanz for the pair remains to be seen—and heard.