Publish and be Damned
It was many years of hard and dangerous work to get the freedom of speech idea strong enough to get everyday respect from the media. In fact it is still taking much hard work and pain to achieve this worthy aim. Even today it is rather dangerous to publish certain stories. But publish we must. Even if we are damned in the process.
I happen to believe in freedom of speech. I do not agree that books should be banned (even that nasty and terrible Mark Twain and D H Lawrence did not deserve to be banned). This, my belief, is attached to the related belief that a freedom of information atmosphere is essential for a trustworthy and reliable politics. We all know, or at least by now we should know, that various powerful groups will always try to deceive the public and to lie for their own gains. Oh yes we need people and publishers that will promote freedom of speech and information.
This means that some people will get a little upset in their poor heads – god bess them. My reply to those that get a little bit upset in the head over critical reporting is simple. Democracy needs just that. Without a very strong critical awareness, supported by social structures, any vital and vibrant democracy is just a mythical image and a rather devilish promotional and advertising campaign to benefit those in the powerful positions. Over hundreds of years we have seen the struggles to keep a democratic vitality alive. This is one history of the theme ”Publish and be Damned”.
For example when that celebrity clown, Tony Halme, decided to change boxing rings he should have been warned that his basic intelligence and basic knowledge of the world might cause him to lose most of his fights. His move from that pathetic boxing-wrestling ring into the slightly more real political ring was an accident waiting to happen. In fact when he was elected as a member of the Finnish parliament my first reaction was to question the very intelligence of all those that voted for him. But that was my personal reaction and one that I have the right to publish.
However democracy is like that. I may find amazement in that celebrity clown getting a popular vote to become a member of parliament but I have no right to deny that freedom of speech in a democracy. The vote is as speech it is free for all to use and then interpret. In fact democracy is totally an active interpretation. There are no fixed laws and there are no one-way-streets of communication. All is an active interpretation with traffic going in all directions. Even China is finding this out right now through that nasty internet menace.
The celebrity politics of Tony Halme was just like his violent celebrity clown games in the ring. I have the right to say that to. Indeed I just have. Others have the right to show me if my interpretation is wrong.
A vibrant democracy needs as many critical poets as possible and needs them all the time. Why? Because there are no fixed definitions of the words that we will, can and do use. All is interpretation on-the-way. Oh yes a good democracy is essentially a poetic-democracy. Poets can use those twisty turns of meaning even if it offends certain fixed-brain-types.
As far as I can make out we have, in Finland, a woman journalist who has an artisic bent, who is being damned by hundreds of fixed-brain-types. She is damned because she published her story about Tony Halme and she is damned because those fixed-brain-types did not like that story. She, Kaarina Hazard, deserves a medel. She deserves an honour for her support of the democratic process.
Those fixed-brain-types, supporters of Tony Halme fixed-brain and brawn politics, who damn Kaarina Hazard, can be helped however. I have a few personal pieces of advice to give them.
1. Attend an educational course that might help you read a book. Begin with Mark Twain and then progress towards Väinö Linna. This might take you some time. So as you study do the following :-
2. Begin to concentrate upon your little toe (left or right it does not matter) and then get some communication working with that little toe. When communication is begun ask yourselves about the poetic democracy of Tony Halme.
3. After you have suffered this long and slow process (it is called basic education) then get writing in public. Then we will be able to see you for what you really are. Get democratic. Do not, any longer, hide under some official and safe bureaucratic censorship machine. Let us all see your naked words on display.
I hope my words above help us to respect the political intelligences of a Tony Halme type (RIP) and also help those complaint people, who complain against Kaarina Hazard, to write themselves in public for us all to see and read. I do need a decent laugh in the winter-time.
Steve Bowles
