Ambiguous headlines and the revolt of the masses

In this morning's Sunday Times (UK) there is a headline that is an example of how important is context for understanding a statement.

For a variety of reasons, including the cult of multiculturalism in the eighties and nineties and a deliberate policy of open borders in order to change the electorate in the nineties and aughts, Britain has had a rising crime rate in the past couple of decades and in particular, a rapid rise in knife crimes and acid attacks in the past decade.

In the past couple of weeks there have been multiple horrific knife attacks for days in a row, including a disemboweling.

In this context, there is an obvious interpretation to the following headline:

Apparently, one police officer attacked two others with a knife.

Except, that is not what happened.

There is a parallel story over the past month, more substantive perhaps, but less headline worthy than the rash of knife attacks. Britain, despite the good economy, is in a budgetary crisis; a very European one. As with most nations in Europe over the past several decades, the state has been centralizing power and economic control in the center and then ceding much of that power into the European center, a governance amoeba with few boundaries and even less accountability. The democracy deficit is very real there. Citizens have lost control of their governments, and are administered by unaccountable establishment insiders, independent of party label.

While there is a hierarchical structure of power, there is no real federal structure. All decisions, policy, operational and financial, are made at the center. At the same time, all these highly centralized governments with low accountability have succumbed to the bane of unbounded democratic institutions, they keep increasing taxes, borrow more money, and print more money in order to increase consumption today at the expense of inflation, debt and penury tomorrow.

But eventually you run out of other people's money.

In Britain, they are about at the end of the financial charade. Cities and counties have very limited taxing authority, therefore no real decision-making power. The great bulk of taxes are raised centrally and then disbursed back out to the provinces as the centralized establishment deems fit. With the center's ephemeral consumption polices in full flood, there is simply not enough money to go around. The center cannot hold as Yeats said.

Defense spending has been cut to the bone so that military capacity is minuscule. Essential infrastructure spending has disappeared, resulting in collapsing infrastructure and rutted roads. Now, even basic services are being slashed. Local councils have had their distributions from the center gutted. There is no money for local citizens, it all disappears into the center, never to be seen again.

And that is the second context for interpreting this headline.

Click to enlarge.

Police are not stabbing one another, there has been a reduction of police forces of 33% while multiculturalism and open boarders come to fruit with rising violence and crime. Citizens are left to wither while the establishment members luxuriate in security and prosperity.

The situation is made worse by the establishment indulging it's ideological whims. In Britain this means that, while violent crime is rising rapidly, police forces are slashed and of those which remain, they are tasked with policing the internet for people posting rude things about the government and the government's favored groups.

It is this disengagement of the establishment from the care and concern for the well-being of the masses of its citizens which I think explains the revolt across the developed world of citizens against the establishment.

Confusing headlines are a symptom of the underlying pathology.