Irony is not enough

Blame is like a drug that promises so much and delivers so little.

As someone who enjoys every instance of irony that comes his way, I have been savouring the ramifications of the cash for confessions affair in Britain. How is it that the illegal detention of British sailors by a regime headed by a president who is a holocaust denier has resulted in the denigration of the Senior Service, the humiliation of a country and the near resignation of a minister?

The low comedy of the interviews of the returning sailors and their descriptions of their ‘hardships’ have given an air of unreality to the whole experience. One can well imagine the desperation of a group of Brits who find themselves in the disturbing position of being held by a government which regularly calls for the destruction of Israel and whose descriptions of our government do nothing to help one sleep at night. But their seemingly cheerful complicity in the audacious propaganda coup which the Iranians pulled off was, to put it mildly, depressing.

One could, of course, push the irony a little further by pottering back into the history of the relationship between Great Britain and Iran. Our complicity in ensuring the stability of the government of the Shah and our earlier cavalier behaviour in the modern re-establishment of the country ensure that an observer taking a dispassionate assessment of the country could point an accusatory finger at the high handed approach of Britain and the west. How fitting then that a country historically manipulated to serve the best interests of a country far away should now return the compliment.

How ironic too that that bastion of western idealism should now be rocked by a tragedy which surely must make that country question its very identity. The blood drenched campus in Virginia is an obscenity and the pictures we have seen can only remind us of the horror we felt when death came to another campus in Kent State. Leave aside for a moment that similar senseless slaughter is a daily occurrence in the land liberated from the bloody grip of a dictator by US forces, with the admitted complicity of other countries. Although 30 people dead is a starkly unpalatable statistic, if we are talking numbers then it pales into insignificance when compared with the relentless death toll from conflict throughout the world.

The images of the Vietnam War, thanks to the miracles of modern communication, enabled coverage of American soldiers’ deaths beamed directly into the houses of parents who could watch their sons die on live TV. In Virginia today we have the rough Cinéma Vérité of myriads of mobile phones taking their jerky pictures of an event whose horror can hardly be grasped. The internet was talking to the world from the dorms in the university to the world as the tragedy was unfolding. Students were calling electronically to find an explanation for their world being turned upside-down.

The ironies of this event happening in Virginia today stream from the tragedy like some obscene slinky effortlessly and jauntily flowing from step to step.

I’d just highlight two aspects which strike me at times like this. Gun control in the USA is a problem which for bemused observers in the UK seem to be rooted in the soul of the American people. I have never forgotten the American TV advert which showed national flags being shot through by the number of bullets which corresponded to the number of gun deaths in the respective countries. When it came to the American flag it was totally destroyed by the barrage that represented the appalling statistics which are associated with gun crime in that gun crazy nation.

It has been estimated that there are more guns in the country than there are inhabitants. That is a problem. But we can still expect the apologists to troop out the ever youthful Charlton Heston to voice the platitudes which seem to convince the population to keep their amazingly self deluding belief in the safety which the gun apparently bestows on America. The guns, we are told, are not dangerous; it’s the people who use them.

We can also expect the reiteration of the misreading of the ‘constitutional’ right to carry a gun. Perhaps that is reasonable in a country whose more extreme Christians like to parade their faith by insisting on a literal interpretation of the words of the Bible - leaving aside, of course, some of the more tricky prohibitions in the Book of Leviticus! How often the militant anti-abortionists look to the gun as a natural part of their unnatural world.

It is difficult not to look at the situation with a bitter grimace and realise, as the final irony, that the multiplicity of images held in memory, sound, tape, phone and god knows what other forms of recording material will provide conspiracy theorists enough raw material for generations.

Welcome to information overload where, as in the library which is the Bible, you will be able to pick and choose, cut and paste, and be satisfied with your belief in the Answer.