THATCHER? I HARDLY KNOW HER. HEY-OOOOO!
Apr. 11th, 2013 10:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
defrogYou don’t need me to tell you that Margaret Thatcher is gone.
And I do feel compelled to post something about it, if only because there are a disturbing number of young people who apparently have no idea who she is. (Either that, or they DO know but get a kick out of f***ing with grown-ups who don’t “get” Twitter. I’m hoping it’s the latter.)
I should start at the outset by saying that, as an American, I regard her more as a sociopolitical icon of the 1980s than as a prime minister. Which is to say, what I remember of her when I was in high school and the US Army comes down to five things:
1. Everyone called her The Iron Lady.
2. She and Ronald Reagan were BFFs and occasional dance partners.
3. The Falkland Islands.
4. The HAIR.
5. She invented punk rock.
Okay, I’m stretching things a little on that last one, if only because punk started before she became PM. But there’s little doubt she gave UK punk bands – and really, lots of rock bands and musicians in general – a lot of material to work with. None of it flattering.
Morrissey was certainly no fan.
Anyway, as to Thatcher’s actual political legacy, obviously my take is going to be a lot different from people who actually had to live with her political policies, as well as people who have chosen sides in the political ideology wars – which means I don’t have the emotional investment that they do in assessing her accomplishments. It's sort of like asking farmers in Greenland what they think about Obama’s stimulus package – they may have an opinion, but they’re not going to have a conniption fit over it.
It’s fair to say that whether you lived in the UK in the 80s or not, yr opinion of Thatcher will largely depend on which side of the political spectrum yr on, whether you were a beneficiary or a victim of her policies, and whether you think being tough, ruthless and strong-willed regardless of the consequences is admirable or dickish.
The results are fairly predictable: the Right Wing generally adore her at Reagan-level proportions, and the Left Wing hate her and everything she stood for. Put another way, I’m betting that everyone over at Fox News is swooning with grief and fanboy admiration on the air right now, and ripping to shreds anyone over at MSNBC who isn’t. And vice versa.
On a purely objective level, I think it’s fair to say she was tough as nails and politically ruthless, and her economic policies were clearly painful for a lot of people. It’s only now that people can maybe say it was worth the pain, and even then, not everyone is going to agree with that.
The dance parties are a bit mean. But it's worth remembering that Thatcher basically pushed through pretty radical economic change for Britain. It would be like an American president using his/her bully pulpit to, say, abolish Medicare and welfare, privatize Social Security, bust unions, and implement a flat tax. Those might be good ideas on a long-term macro level, but the impact would be severe for millions of people. And you can’t expect them to thank you for that when yr response to their concerns over the resulting unemployment spike is (and I’m paraphrasing here), “Suck it up, buttercup, this is for the greater good, so stop whining and deal with it.” You certainly don’t get to act surprised when they describe you as inhuman. (Then again, if yr nickname is “Iron Something”, odds are that's not going to bother you much anyway.)
Meanwhile, Thatcher’s death comes with a local angle for me: she is widely known here in Hong Kong for negotiating the deal with China to take over HK from the UK.
Legacy-wise, that’s also a mixed bag. On the one hand, she arguably got HK the best possible deal for reuniting with a totalitarian state, which could have turned out much worse if we had been handed back unconditionally. On the other hand, even Mags admitted in 2007 that she didn’t get the deal she wanted, which was to extend the colonial lease.
So much for the “Iron Lady” rep.
And given the current state of things politically – as well as the sight of protesters waving colonial flags to make the point that the ersatz Beijing-approved democracy we have now isn’t an improvement over the colonial days – an argument could be made that Thatcher failed HK in that regard.
For all that, Thatcher was reasonably popular in HK at the time, and as far as I know, most people here don’t really blame her for the handover and the subsequent unrest concerning Beijing’s influence on local affairs. That’s being directed at both Beijing and whatever HK chief is “elected” at the time.
Okay, I’m done now.
Tramp the dirt down,
This is dF
And I do feel compelled to post something about it, if only because there are a disturbing number of young people who apparently have no idea who she is. (Either that, or they DO know but get a kick out of f***ing with grown-ups who don’t “get” Twitter. I’m hoping it’s the latter.)
I should start at the outset by saying that, as an American, I regard her more as a sociopolitical icon of the 1980s than as a prime minister. Which is to say, what I remember of her when I was in high school and the US Army comes down to five things:
1. Everyone called her The Iron Lady.
2. She and Ronald Reagan were BFFs and occasional dance partners.
3. The Falkland Islands.
4. The HAIR.
5. She invented punk rock.
Okay, I’m stretching things a little on that last one, if only because punk started before she became PM. But there’s little doubt she gave UK punk bands – and really, lots of rock bands and musicians in general – a lot of material to work with. None of it flattering.
Morrissey was certainly no fan.
Anyway, as to Thatcher’s actual political legacy, obviously my take is going to be a lot different from people who actually had to live with her political policies, as well as people who have chosen sides in the political ideology wars – which means I don’t have the emotional investment that they do in assessing her accomplishments. It's sort of like asking farmers in Greenland what they think about Obama’s stimulus package – they may have an opinion, but they’re not going to have a conniption fit over it.
It’s fair to say that whether you lived in the UK in the 80s or not, yr opinion of Thatcher will largely depend on which side of the political spectrum yr on, whether you were a beneficiary or a victim of her policies, and whether you think being tough, ruthless and strong-willed regardless of the consequences is admirable or dickish.
The results are fairly predictable: the Right Wing generally adore her at Reagan-level proportions, and the Left Wing hate her and everything she stood for. Put another way, I’m betting that everyone over at Fox News is swooning with grief and fanboy admiration on the air right now, and ripping to shreds anyone over at MSNBC who isn’t. And vice versa.
On a purely objective level, I think it’s fair to say she was tough as nails and politically ruthless, and her economic policies were clearly painful for a lot of people. It’s only now that people can maybe say it was worth the pain, and even then, not everyone is going to agree with that.
The dance parties are a bit mean. But it's worth remembering that Thatcher basically pushed through pretty radical economic change for Britain. It would be like an American president using his/her bully pulpit to, say, abolish Medicare and welfare, privatize Social Security, bust unions, and implement a flat tax. Those might be good ideas on a long-term macro level, but the impact would be severe for millions of people. And you can’t expect them to thank you for that when yr response to their concerns over the resulting unemployment spike is (and I’m paraphrasing here), “Suck it up, buttercup, this is for the greater good, so stop whining and deal with it.” You certainly don’t get to act surprised when they describe you as inhuman. (Then again, if yr nickname is “Iron Something”, odds are that's not going to bother you much anyway.)
Meanwhile, Thatcher’s death comes with a local angle for me: she is widely known here in Hong Kong for negotiating the deal with China to take over HK from the UK.
Legacy-wise, that’s also a mixed bag. On the one hand, she arguably got HK the best possible deal for reuniting with a totalitarian state, which could have turned out much worse if we had been handed back unconditionally. On the other hand, even Mags admitted in 2007 that she didn’t get the deal she wanted, which was to extend the colonial lease.
So much for the “Iron Lady” rep.
And given the current state of things politically – as well as the sight of protesters waving colonial flags to make the point that the ersatz Beijing-approved democracy we have now isn’t an improvement over the colonial days – an argument could be made that Thatcher failed HK in that regard.
For all that, Thatcher was reasonably popular in HK at the time, and as far as I know, most people here don’t really blame her for the handover and the subsequent unrest concerning Beijing’s influence on local affairs. That’s being directed at both Beijing and whatever HK chief is “elected” at the time.
Okay, I’m done now.
Tramp the dirt down,
This is dF
