The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. Or Happening At All.

 So, Russell Brand thinks, according to his recent interview, that we should all do nothing as a means to affect social change, and that this will somehow lead to some sort of apathy-based revolution.

 The kids seem to like Russell Brand, which is largely because kids are fucking idiots. He's a preening pseud who seems to think he knows what "real life" is like after spending the first half of his smacked out of his tree on heroin, and the second half as a millionaire comedian and actor, just like absolutely none of the real people he claims to champion.

 He is also guilty of spectacular intellectual cowardice, demanding to be heard and then, when questioned, falling back onto his "oh, don't listen to me, I'm only a comedian" defense. He wants us to listen to his opinions, as long as we don't take them seriously. Or maybe we're meant to take them seriously, but only if we blindly agree, and if we question, then it was all a joke. Or was it? He's the socio-political equivalent of the irritating drunk who calls you a cunt and then adds "just kidding" to try to look blameless.

 Also, like a lot of hippy idealists, he's absolutely convinced that there's going to be a revolution, like people were absolutely convinced there was going to be a revolution in the sixties, and in the early eighteen-hundreds, and all the other times that a revolution failed to materialise.

 The truth, sadly, is that whilst Brand may be right that politicians are useless corporate lackeys, he's wrong about everything else. Conditions in this country aren't anywhere near bad enough that people will take to the streets. We are all apathetic, and lazy, and too well fed to rise up from the sofa, let alone rise up against the ruling classes. We are, in the words of another champagne socialist, "doped with religion and sex and TV," and most people are happy about that. Orwell said that if there was hope, it must lie withe the proletariat, and a quick glance at the proletariat proves that we're all conclusively fucked.

 Proof that we'll never cast off our shackles came, oddly, in the form of AMC's The Walking Dead. In the new series of the zombie soap opera*, the main characters are sheltering from the undead in an abandoned prison. According to the writers of the show, they had planned to have the characters dig a moat for safety, but the ground around the prison where the show is filmed was unsuitable and the idea was nixed.

 Meanwhile, on internet message boards, people have reacted to this information by starting long, tedious arguments about the mechanics of digging an anti-zombie moat, the number of workers required to do it, suitable depths, breadths and dimensions, and a hundred other things besides. The arguments dragged on for several pages, proving that most people can't even agree on the best way to dig a hypothetical moat around a fictional prison which the writers have already ruled out. When people can't even organise "imaginary ditch digging" without descending into an arguments and backbiting, there's little hope for a grand social upheaval.

 So Brand's Glorious Revolution won't happen, but this is a good thing. Despite what Russell thinks, it's impossible to teleport ourselves magically out of whatever shit we're in. When asked about any sort of overarching plan for change by Jeremy Paxman, Brand claimed that a brief TV interview was not the correct format for a complicated manifesto, but he also singularly failed to produce any sort of cogent ideological thesis when given an entire issue of the New Statesman in which to do it. Beyond platitudes ("don't destroy the planet") Brand doesn't have much to offer.

 In truth, as every journey begins with a single step, the only way to fix the system which Brand not-unreasonably calls broken is to do it in increments. Incremental change is what democracy is all about, and although this can prove frustrating, it is, as Churchill pointed out, "the worst possible system of government except for all the other ones."

 I admit that I didn't vote in the last election, largely due to the self-same disaffectation and apathy that Brand describes, but having now seen the colossal, cataclysmic damage done by another Tory government, I'll be first in line to get Labour in on the next chance. That's not to say that Labour isn't a party riddled with career politicians and stooges to big business, but dammit, they're a step in the right direction, and that's what counts. Taking one step at a time is necessary to affect any sort of lasting change, personally or socially, and this should be crystal clear to a reformed addict like Russell Brand.

 A new, democratically elected government would not be the full, sunburst, revolutionary dawn that Brand wants. But it would be a chink of light in the darkness. A star in the night by which we might set a compass.

 And it will never happen unless we all get out and vote for it.




*That actually makes the show sound better than it is...