Alea jacta est crashing password errors11/20/2022 ![]() ![]() (US President Donald Trump might be tempted to try the same thing, but he hasn’t learned the art of getting people to laugh in complicity, only to cheer at his impudence).īoris the penitent will not change his ways. Only Boris could affirm in public that an obvious racist insult was an act of cross-cultural love. This last remark, despite - or rather thanks to - his deliberately confused and confusing hesitations, drew peals of what some might interpret as cynical and complicit laughter from his partisan audience. When challenged on his abusive, racist-tinged, culturally patronizing language, such as his remark that Muslim women wearing burkas “look like letterboxes,” Johnson summoned the deepest resources of his natural humility to reply: “I’m sorry for the offence I’ve caused but I will continue to speak as directly as I can because that’s what I think the British public want.” That was days before explaining that his remarks consisted of “a strong liberal defense of women’s right to wear the burka,” while affirming it’s all about the fact that “we love each other in a Christian spirit … or a non-Christian spirit … whatever.” Instead of judging them for the destruction they inevitably perpetrate, the god of history can put the blame on the people whose sovereign will they have democratically agreed to serve. It conveniently removes direct responsibility from the politicians who know how to respect (and then hide behind) the clamor of the mob. Like Donald Trump, Rodrigo Duterte, Jair Bolsonaro, Victor Orban and Matteo Salvini, Johnson sees the anger of the people ( ira populi or democratic retribution) as the safer and reassuringly secular equivalent of divine justice. Vengeance, after all, is the kind of emotion that motivates people to come out and vote without being troubled by nuance. This means his whole philosophy is founded on what is increasingly emerging as the central principle for modern Western democracies, the key to getting elected and holding onto power: understanding and exploiting the undifferentiated mob’s spiteful thirst for vengeance and retribution, even when there is nothing in particular to avenge. Johnson steers clear of explicit theology, preferring to let the (whirl)wind of popular opinion guide his political thinking.Īs a populist (i.e., narcissistic) leader, Johnson has committed himself to a unique cause: using his declared service to his voters to serve himself. ![]() It also contrasts with Bush’s ever accommodating and perennially moralizing sidekick, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who, guided by his Christian faith, never believed in the outdated nonsense of turning the other cheek ( Matthew 5:38-40). Bush, the former US president, who claimed to follow vox dei (the voice of God) in his acts of retribution against real and imaginary evildoers. This contrasts refreshingly with the theocratic George W. The whirlwind of mortality he mentions is simply a future election, not an act of God. Referring to the impending initiative of the Tory dissidents who seek to mobilize Parliament to ban a no-deal Brexit - in which the UK would crash out of the EU - the prophet Boris drew on a Biblical metaphor to illustrate his personal reading of one of the great principles of democracy: “I think if we now block it as parliamentarians we will reap the whirlwind and face mortal retribution from the electorate.” Boris Johnson’s Political Theologyĭespite his nod to the Bible ( Hosea 8.7), Johnson defines himself as a secular democrat ever attentive to vox populi (the voice of the people). This should serve to neutralize all other outcomes and secure the power that Johnson needs to be free to act in the only way he knows how: with no sense of accountability. This consists of emulating the current US president by fomenting chaos and exploiting it as his trump card (pun intended). Like a 14th-century monk troubled by the arrival of the plague that had suddenly thrown Europe into a panic, the former journalist and current politician, preacher and occasional snake-oil salesman offered us the macabre fruit of his meditation, not just on Britain’s fate, but also on the cruel inevitability of death that looms over politicians who sin against the logic of history - a logic that he, the seer and visionary, alone understands.Ī growing faction of Tory remainers - those who voted to stay inside the European Union in the 2016 Brexit referendum - appears to be plotting to thwart Johnson’s grand plan. Adept at multiple roles to keep his audience entertained, in a recent performance he even donned the mantle of a contemplative spiritual leader preoccupied with the notion of mortality. Boris Johnson, the former UK foreign secretary who is expected to replace Prime Minister Theresa May, earned his right to reign over the presumably final act of Brexit by becoming a media superstar. ![]()
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