It's a clap trap Billy - and you've been caught!
The (now almost compulsory) communal clap-along in support of our NHS heroes and other key workers (since when did locksmiths become so essential?) is a form of collective virtue signalling almost designed to irritate those of us who hate public displays of sentiment and moral correctness as well as the sight of people applauding like well-trained seals hoping to be thrown a fish.
Doubtless, many clap with naive sincerity and a sense of civic duty and are not just showing off with their saucepans and fireworks, but the entire performance is being cynically orchestrated by politicians and the media and I would rather have a dose of the clap than stand on my doorstep and join in with this depressing (and sinister) display of solidarity.
Like James Delingpole, though I'm never entirely certain what I'll be doing at 8pm on a Thursday evening, there's one thing I know for sure I won't be doing; for like Lionel Shriver, I've always had immunity to the herd. [1]
And if my non-participation annoys the neighbours and marks me out in their eyes as some kind of anti-social ingrate who wouldn't deserve treatment in the event of falling ill with coronavirus, that's unfortunate, but fuck 'em. This is still - despite the hysteria and lockdown - a free country: and freedom is often best expressed as refusal and not-doing, because as Barthes powerfully reminds us: fascism is the power to compel activity.
It's precisely because I'm not a citizen of the People's Republic of China that I don't have to enthusiastically join in with ritualised adoration of the State and its institutions. Happily, even some healthcare workers are beginning to feel uncomfortable with where all this is going and "don’t care if people clap until their hands bleed with rainbows tattooed on their faces" [2].
They recognise that the NHS shouldn't be transformed into a sacred cow and that the people working within it shouldn't be exempt from criticism; nurses aren't angels and doctors aren't saints or miracle workers and, in fact, to insist otherwise is ultimately insulting to the (all too human and thus sometimes fallible) men and women who perform these roles.
Notes
[1] See: James Delingpole, 'No, I Won't Clap "Our NHS"', Breitbart, (14 May 2020) and Lionel Shriver, 'I have herd immunity', The Spectator, (18 April 2020).
[2] 'I'm an NHS doctor - and I've had enough of people clapping for me', anonymous letter in The Guardian, (21 May 2020): click here.
For a related post to this one - on protecting the NHS - please click here.
[2] 'I'm an NHS doctor - and I've had enough of people clapping for me', anonymous letter in The Guardian, (21 May 2020): click here.
For a related post to this one - on protecting the NHS - please click here.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/may/21/nhs-doctor-enough-people-clapping
ReplyDeleteGood to see at least one NHS doctor leading the fightback, adding to those one or two liberty-loving literati like the sharp-nosed Lionel Shriver, who can sniff out political bullshit at a hundred yards! Of course, the rhetoric of likening health workers to hero(in)es, martyrs or even angels that sponsors these acts of 'virtue signalling', as Stephen points it out, is all of a piece with the weaponisation of the political field in a way that persuades the anxiety-led portions of the population that we are indeed on a 'war-footing', rather than dealing with a moderately dangerous virus. Indeed, it could be argued that this poisoning of the body politic is even more toxic and virulent than Covid-19 and its 35,000 casualties, since it paralyses - as it is doubtless designed to - thinking, clarity and political imaginaion, and with it the potential for properly considered responses to the pandemic. What is taken down here is critical thinking, civic empowerment and, with it, the socicultural machinery essential to any self-respecting democracy. (Which, in the UK at least, appears a contradiction in terms - many people and politicans, it increasingly seems, would be more than happy with government by diktat/press conference.)
In the meantime, here's a perfect parallel from the world of Larry David:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPquarz16wQ