consensus - part 3

This is the final part of a longer short story.
Read part 1 first!

I’ve been meeting up with Dave regularly recently. It’s been good. We’ve been working our way through the years since we were in power, looking at the Consensors’ view of history and how it differs from ours. Well, from mine anyway. Dave seems to have been almost won over.

He thinks we were so locked into conventional ways of thinking and acting that we couldn’t see the wood for the trees.

It was the kids growing up where the big changes happened. The ones who had lived all their lives with PCs in their bedrooms. l’m not sure how or when it started to hit home that they didn’t want things. They lived in their little cells and lived a virtual world and they had a social conscience to boot. They weren’t interested in things like national pride. Like conventional politics. Like fighting wars. They saw the world as one place for the first time in history. Their friends were as likely to be in China or Pakistan or New Zealand as round the corner in Upper Sydenham.

Suddenly the retail sector was failing. This huge demand for designer this and soap-star-endorsed that evaporated. The kids were in grunge — they wanted to dress like their mates in Karachi or Lagos. Suddenly, Versace and Nike and Macdonalds were evil as the kids learned about factory conditions in the third world and the destruction of rain forests to provide beef meat for burgers.

And they started listening to indy bands downloaded for free and — hey, what we were always complaining they never did — making their own entertainment. And developing their own ideas. l remember the shock when l, in my oh so elevated political position, was first in a live debate that was balanced by a ‘youth’ representative. And his line was unanswerable. I still remember his stare, the same keen bright-eyed stare of my consensus guides, as he said: The earth is not yours to use up — you are borrowing it from your children. Your generation doesn’t even begin to understand what a mess you’re leaving us — and we’re not going to take it any more! That was Jake Landry, who became one of the early leaders of the consensus movements of course. All I could do was nod weakly and say I agreed with him.

Dave put it this way to me: ‘There was a change around then. You know, on the telly. In the old days ‘balance‘ was between the likes of you and me and maybe some climate change denier. Suddenly, it was youth against age, the radical against the vanilla incrementalists. Suddenly we seemed like the deniers.’

At exactly the same time there was a series of scandals in the financial services sector that led to house price crashes and pension fund failures and a complete loss of confidence. People started putting their money into non profit credit unions and the old fashioned type of building society.

I met Dave again today, reminiscing about those times.

‘It still astonishes me how quickly it all happened,’ I said. ‘How a Europe that had been prosperous for more than a decade could suddenly go into freefall like that.’

‘We could have seen it coming if we’d chosen to, you know.’

‘Big name companies collapsing almost daily, unemployment...’

‘Well, the consensus generation loved it, didn’t they?,’ said Dave.

I had to agree. ‘It fitted with their theories. They were dancing on the grave of unfettered capitalism.’

‘And it was the first drop in carbon emission since the industrial revolution.’

‘Yes — the blackouts,’ I said.

‘The fighting I remember, and the desperate attempts to keep the hospitals running.’

‘And then the coming together.’

‘The wartime spirit? It was a bit like that, wasn’t it? In the end it did bring out the best in people, you know. Hard times — and the consensus.’

‘Do they talk to you a lot about the war we could have fought?’ Dave said when I met him again today.

‘All the time.’

‘Forget the second world war, the war against terror, the commodity wars. The War of the World was the real one we could have fought and won. That’s what we should have been fighting. The war to defend the planet, to save the millions. A war with a real moral imperative.’

‘We thought the Iraq war had a moral imperative at the time.’

‘Did we?’ Was there something of the consensus glint in his eye? The open stare? Or was it a hint of madness?

We both said nothing for the longest time.

I sighed. ‘That's the nub of the charges against me.’

“There are no charges, my friend,‘ he said.

‘OK, call them whatever you want. Except: they say You will come to your own realisation in time. I will realise that my crimes — failings, they prefer to call them? — were crimes of omission, crimes of distraction, fiddling while the world burned. lnaction when l should have put the country, Europe, the world on a war footing.’

We went quiet again. They don’t actually say this of course, they imply it — or do they? In my quiet moments, I think maybe I am coming to some sort of realisation. When I’m with them, I still defend my record — l still have the twentieth century politician DNA in my blood — but when I’m on my own, well, it makes me think.

‘Perhaps;’ I say tentatively… ‘perhaps we did ignore the bigger picture. Could we have put the world on a war footing and avoided all the horrors we have suffered?’

‘Are you asking me?’ He paused. Well, if you are asking me, I used to think like you that it would have been impossible. But would a Gandhi, a Mandela have found it impossible?’

‘I never claimed to be a Mandela, Dave.’

‘There’s not many of them about. But if you are asking me: it would have been possible, my friend; and we failed the world. The consensus is correct.’

So I said to them today: are you accusing me of crimes against humanity? Is that where this is all going? We are not accusing you of anything, Old Guard. Yawn! You think I should have done something more, or something different, and if I had, millions of lives would have been saved? They just stare for a minute and there’s a kind of glint in their eyes that says, Is this the breakthrough?

Is that what you think?, says one of them.

Suddenly I got angry. It‘s not like me, but... l jumped up and l banged on the screens, I would have hit them if they had been physically there, but of course it was futile. It was primitive. Animal. I don’t know where it came from. They just stared back impassively. I’ve told you: I’ve explained, I shouted. Explained, over and over. I was just doing what was possible. You think I could have done all that stuff, changed the world single-handed? Impossible!

Put the country on a war footing? Power rationing, controlling industrial production, building vast windfarms and wave machines, riding roughshod over planning processes, commandeering property, stopping people using their cars... social control? Taking us back to the second world war? You think I could have done that?

But isn’t that what happened anyway? Just in a much more chaotic, uncontrolled way?

Yes, but I would have been thrown out by my own party, never mind the electorate.

So the alternative was do nothing, and let the situation deteriorate as it did, and distract the people with the war on terror?

I laughed at them being direct for the first time, saying what they think, giving me something to argue against. I looked around the screens to see which of them was speaking. I saw Dave‘s face there. He gave that wry little smile of his. As if to say, They’re right, old chap.

Suddenly the rage evaporated. Have they got you too, Dave?

It’s not a question of getting, my friend, it’s a realisation. We were wrong at the time and they were right and the consensus has prevailed.

l’ve been having some more one-to-ones with Dave. He has totally gone over. The thing is, oh yes I have always had a stubborn streak, l find myself arguing still, always the same issues over and over, but less and less sure of my opinion inside. I have always respected Dave.

Well, this will be my last entry. I see now that I can still make a good if small contribution to the consensus. l have come a long way since the early days of denial and anger. I look back at the me that didn’t understand even after all those years the reality of our world now: still fighting the battles of the twentieth century. l confess to that. Still the twentieth century. Self important, politician.

I can see how I could have done more, working with the Consensus in the early days. I can see now that it could have made a real difference. It could have saved many lives; many millions maybe. Certainly the world has been greatly impoverished as a result of my action and inaction. I know we don’t talk about guilt and we don’t apologise for the past — but I’m an old man. Still Old Guard enough to feel like a criminal, a criminal against this good earth and a criminal against humanity. I never imagined when I set out on my political career, so many years ago, that I would end it being seen as one of history’s worst criminals. Not to others: to myself. Sure, I accept that I was not guilty of deliberately undertaking evil acts. I felt I was acting in the best interests of the world at all times. Most times. But then I suppose all those guilty of crimes against humanity think that.

I haven’t written anything for months because I have been making efforts to persuade some of my colleagues, some of the diehards from the old regime, the old democrats, to lead them on the journey I have been on recently. To understand their errors. Democracy failed, and I was almost too late to see that. You can teach an Old Guard new tricks, eventually, so: whoever reads this, I commend you for your actions and encourage you to keep at it.

My old colleague Dave and l have spent a lot of time recently talking about how we can make some contribution, however small, to the consensus. We believe we know the mind of the consensus now. There is something to be said for redemption, and even today when the collective will is so strong, the idea that redeeming your own personal error still registers.

We have been looking into the resolution of the Dungeness E disaster. Even after all these years and many attempts to solve the problem of leaking radiation, including use of ingeniously designed robots, the radiation leak has not been shut off. We have been told that only human action can close off the leak. Unfortunately, this means entering the central chamber, and only a few seconds exposure is lethal. The consensus is that Dave and I should undertake this task, and we are very happy to do so.

The area around Dungeness will still be uninhabltable for generations, but I hope that today when we go in we can solve the problem and make that a few generations, not hundreds. What Dave and I will do is just a small gesture by two old men near the end of their lives. l hope we can solve what is a problem ultimately of our making. It’s not deserving of thanks, but it may serve as an inspiration to some of my old colleagues.

Well, here I am sounding like an old politician again: please indulge an old man this one last time. Thank you all for rescuing me from my pit of self indulgence and giving me the chance for a short time to join the consensus.

Yours ever,

Tony