The Final Chapter

 

"One of the jobs of a father is to get out of the way." 

Christopher Hitchens (b. 1949, d. 2011) 

I might not have associated the name - or the work of - old Hitch, now about to see his first ten-year anniversary (I'm sorry to say, for many reasons) with his greater and perhaps more outrageous contemporary James Bond - but apart from the subjects of booze, empire, masculinity and the unrestrained self struggling against a wanton world steadfastly revolving around me. His own father's sentiment, that sinking a Nazi convoy was the best thing - if not the only thing - he'd felt certainly and positively good about, echoes as well with a forceful and somber tone. 

Both these anecdotes, and not only because of the upcoming decennial, came back to me in the much-delayed (or perhaps too early to mark yet another decennial, even as we hold our hands and quake that the box office will not be too governing, or even appointing in itself) premiere of the long-awaited "next" Bond film, the longest-parted from its preceding one and in this case without a change of actor, a tightly connected to its fault prequel, the end of the Cold War (and, for a time, history) or the echoing debate, apart from that heralding our time, if our audiences need or should identify with the gritty, post-Second World War British agent, if somewhat boosted by the "merely" untimely and global release of a viral agent both echoing the themes and parodying them, 

The plot, again heralding the times, displays an intense meditation on the personal and greater-than-geopolitical: A hero grounded to pulps and groans and only the superhuman instincts and talents best put to the test by daring adventures, his once promise of family life and oblivion thrown against and fed into a chemise of the grand work - a Heracles for our time, if you will - but never, and here I grant my first praise, with the opening sequence, even as that downbeat ending of the misnamed Quantum of Solace suggested, overcome. His moment now salvaged and again afforded, as presented in the previous Spectre (without a cat-wielding Mr. Gardell, even if the cat, alongside many tokens and attitudes) a future with a potential mate for life juxtaposed to an enemy, 

The Good Constituent

 

When the memorable, if not for the reasons that typically nor ideally mark the passing of a represenative of the people, Jo Cox became the first Member of the House of Commons in a quarter of a century (the last case, Ian Gow, occurring just into the 1990s and the post-Cold War period and then as never obliviated into the very-long ago) and the first of her sex to suffer death at the hands of a political foe, constituent or not. Afterwards, in an undignified and haphazard celebration of a temporary one-party state, or status, the alternative Liberal and Conservative candidates obviated their candidacies in order to hand a seat lost back to its Labour "owner" (by-elections, being by nature held to ascertain who the proper owner, or rather member, is). Now, five years and only one more by-election in Batley and Spen, noteworthy on its own merit, a hypothetical imbalance was adjusted when MP David Amess, near 70, stubborn withdrawal Tory was stabbed without the smell of cordite, and without mercy, at a constituency surgery (a peculiar phrase) in his native city. Before dusk, he was passed beyond this imperfect world of parliaments and the House had lost yet another member to this peril, as I hope he would not mind me saying. 

Now, aside from the question of whether Labour and LibDem will, or ought to file candidates in the Tory heartland - which they should, or else cease to do so altogether - there is the question of what offence this does pose to democracy itself, or parliamentary rule and supremacy, as it ought be called, for all its recognised (including by Churchill, for many years the hind-est of backbenchers) flaws.  

I would like to support that sentiment, and in particular, the notion of a representative which (deliberately not "who") is just that: A representative, not of every constituent in spirit or opinion - likely not half, most of the time - but in the sense of putting constituents, as an entirety, beyond and before the prospects of advancement in the halls to where they, once upon a time, selected (from a slate of imperfect men, and, yes, imperfect women) to send him. 

For David Amess' positions were perhaps never fashionable, and a heterodox - not least in the time of Johnson and his Tories, if they can still be called that, except in the original invective - 

The pettiness of the act, smaller yet than the rather obliquely justified (compared to her, back then, male progenitors) assassination of Cox, somehow makes the sacrifice seem so meaningless as not befitting the term. Sacrifice, yes, over decades on the backbenches, never asking for higher office, making clear his duty was first, and second, to last, to his constituents, with his competence and, mayhap, family as only limitation. 

The Two-China Problem

 

After many decades of stern, stiff, sometimes very heavy-handed rhetoric backed by naval and aerial flexing of naval and aerial bi- and triceps, and the responsive and consequential shrugs, the vox of media descended into frenzy regarding a not exactly imminent, but decisively final once-it-occurs assault by mainland China, the proverbial "people's republic", against the remnants of the Chiang Kai-shek system and Guomindang rule, if not exactly in Guomindang's safekeeping, with Chairman Xi's speech 

And consequential as never, President Tsai - the most underrated president anywhere whether regarding handling of the Covid-19 crisis in face of overt sabotage attempts, salvaging a constantly besieged economy, or the unpredictable identitarian praise for a lesbian in a domain reserved for straight white (sorry, yellow...?) males not interested in gender-corrective surgery - stood firm and, in the name of the people of Taiwan, now all that but in recognition, and the green streak of her movement - also under siege, one should point out - by holding that, under no circumstances, would the republic having achieved not only independence but that most precious prizes of all, of liberty, usher in an era of Hong Kong-esque descent in barbarity and rule under the Zhongnanhai's boot. Surely any Western liberal enamoured by these questions over all else should draw their swords at the very disturbance in sleep that the China of old, fervently patriotic, militaristic authority waved its nails at the small, free, independent-in-all-but-name republic? If not for, say it, their pocket books and bloody ignorance? 

I use strong phrases here; indeed, this defiance may be held as the great prize, if one could call it that, from China's clumsily effective destruction of never perfected but long-lasting liberty in Hong Kong, from the closing of uncomfortable shops, a symtom frightfully recognisable in other parts of the free world, to outright , to the symbolic and seemingly needless gesture of removing a statue of indignity (again, signs...) commemorating the massacre, please don't call it thus, from the campus of Hong Kong University. Whether these gestures will have eradicated liberty or the idea of it from the Dragon City we shall not know for a long time, but my personal desires to visit (as I almost did in 2014, the dread of a comparison never made unnerving now, although comfortably at least there are braver souls out there to make it for me) and attend the merry mixture of Chinese legal traditions and Anglo-Saxon common law, with the strange spice of colonial overreach in the blend, may now have faded into unlikelihood beyond even the faintest hope. 

Could this have been averted? Well, likely not. But the sealing of the fate of Hong Kong, as it was or perhaps "as it ought have been" (or at least "as Chris Patten would have us believe it ought to have been", his wit and undeniably Cassandric qualities being greatly compensated by his lack of using them even to demonstrate, at the critical moment, his revulsion until fear had become reality) has certainly sealed another path, that of the republic being abolished in full, and the polity known to the world as "Taiwan" (and the Pescadores, and so on) until the point of combat and invasion being the all-expected path to such an outcome. The Taiwanese will never surrender, will never walk the Hong Kong dao (no one bothers to mention Macau, demonstrating; at least unintentionally their greater devotion to British norms) into the jaws of Xi. This posits, as it did in 1949 and perhaps more dramatically, the two-China problem. 

Both exist, both have wide recognition, of different sorts, and the undeniable retrocession question - not really a question, had not Chiang chosen and managed to salvage his "revolution" and "government" by absconding with its best resources and best men here, of all places - is a key factor in denying to Red China that which they, in all honestly, could otherwise take or "pacify" by force. Yet, Taiwan is not a country, the republic is dead, or so Sweden has held it to be since 1950, the United Kingdom even longer, France and particularly the United States, not quite so long. How is this to be reconciled, with an ever-belligerent, and ever-stronger, Red China, the China of the CCP, the people's republic, putting its hooves across the Pacific, and then opening his maw to roar his desires. The inevitable Hitler analogy is of course spurious, but not quite distasteful, at least not for anyone swift to throw it at elected politicians in France, the Netherlands or Finland, or indeed the United States, quite incapable of building or even having the designs to build a concentration camp. In Xinjiang, and of course Tibet, this is not quite so, and whatever the regime's lackeys would tell you, this is the great fake news, if there is any "narrative" worthy of this self-insulting label. 

How then, if this is again the object, and if this object is seriously taken, is the republic to be used against the "Red" China, resurrected wrothful China, the China which seeks to dominate, expand and aggrieve the world? And how, which would be the presumed solution, should they move about? These considerations, which should have been considered with Xi's rise in 2012, if not already around 1992, with Jiang, is what now clouds the minds of these Western advocates, who must now so cynically - if not wrongly - do this volte-face and manage to explain it properly.