“Speaking truth to power” isn’t necessarily telling the powerful something they don’t know, but rather saying what the powerful has ruled out as unsayable.
For example, let’s imagine a well-known male comedian and a large political party have cooked up a scheme to field this man as a woman candidate in a constituency.
Insisting in this scenario that the prospective MP is a man is surely speaking truth to power, as well as an act that potentially earns you social-media bans, lost work, social opprobrium, etc etc.
Them telling us a lie and trying to prevent us telling the truth is an act of dominance, and raw power if ever I’ve seen it.
Martin Bollis
1 year ago
“Most liberals and leftists look on power with suspicion.”
Really? I thought it was with deep hunger given their predilection for insisting the rest of us abide by their idea of virtue.
polidori redux
1 year ago
“The Met police, for instance, are in trouble partly because becoming a police officer is an attractive prospect to a lot of natural-born bullies and rednecks, who wouldn’t otherwise have the chance to kick other people around”
I am a Red-Neck. The word was from white share-croppers working the cotton fields bent over with their hoes chopping the weeds.. and their necks would become deep red in the baking sun. it was a poor share-cropper and field hand…
I work construction in the South, pretty Red-neck – But the thing of a Red-Neck is he may be small minded, but at the same time he is salt of the earth – he is who actually does the work. Builds the houses, asphalts the roads, farms the soy beans, pulls the power lines, drives the 18 wheelers, fells the trees and drills the oil… Easy to look down on – but impossible to do without. Then also a hard headed intelligence, patriotism, honest, very hard working, and pretty much always, believes in Jesus and God.
Sixteen Tons Tennessee Ernie Ford Some people say a man is made outta mud A poor man’s made outta muscle and blood Muscle and blood and skin and bones A mind that’s a-weak and a back that’s strong
You load 16 tons, what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt St. Peter, don’t you call me ’cause I can’t go I owe my soul to the company store
I was born one mornin’ when the sun didn’t shine I picked up my shovel and I walked to the mine I loaded 16 tons of number nine coal And the straw boss said, “Well, a-bless my soul”
You load 16 tons, what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt St. Peter, don’t you call me ’cause I can’t go I owe my soul to the company store
I was born one mornin’, it was drizzlin’ rain Fightin’ and trouble are my middle name I was raised in the canebrake by an ol’ mama lion Can’t no high toned woman make me walk the line
You load 16 tons, what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt St. Peter, don’t you call me ’cause I can’t go I owe my soul to the company store
If you see me comin’, better step aside A lotta men didn’t, a lotta men died One fist of iron, the other of steel If the right one don’t get you Then the left one will
You load 16 tons, what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt St. Peter, don’t you call me ’cause I can’t go I owe my soul to the company store
the redneck lament……
Johnny Cash – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfp2O9ADwGk
Interesting. I always thought Rednecks were associated with the Cornish criminals who were transported to the Sugar Plantations as slaves. They have always been an embarrassment to the Caribbean authorities and ranked at the bottom of the pecking order there. Now virtually extinct there particularly in Barbados.
Strange also that the word rednecks would never be allowed on the MSN forums. Not an offensive word but banned nevertheless.
Quite. Has anyone watched Fresh Cops, on BBC3? I actually thought it was a spoof along the lines of Scot Squad at first. It would now seem that rather wet university graduates with very little gravitas are what the Police are looking for. But that doesn’t happen in the world of an ageing Marxist who has spent a lifetime playing the working class card In Oxbridge colleges. Thatcher is still in power and the SPG are still driving round London in an unmarked van, duffing up anyone from ethnic minorities.
Steve Murray
1 year ago
Undiluted Claptrap, by an academic who’s spent his career specialising in the subject.
Referencing Hume, Burke and Shakespeare in an effort to appear learned, then displaying the toy-throwing ability of an experienced toddler is no way to go about political analysis.
If he’d employed the proverbial monkey that’d got bored with trying to reproduce the Works of Shakespeare to write this article for him, it might well have been more coherent.
Peter B
1 year ago
I quite liked large parts of this article, but don’t think we ever got an answer to the question in the title – i.e. “How Powerful is Liz Truss ?”. And the conclusion didn’t make much sense for me.
Aaron James
1 year ago
What a mess this article is. All jumbled up, ill thought out, inappropriate, quotes and allusions and cliches coming from a Hard left agenda.. Not even good writing by any means. Too much wrong to address.
As far as Truss – her political and economic instincts will destroy the Party, maybe the Nation. Truss said Boris did the Covid response correctly – although the economy is irreparably wrecked by exactly that. Then she said Boris pumping money and weapons into Ukraine was correct. This shows she is 100% wrong about everything.
And she is powerful because the Party is headless chickens – my guess is because things will blow up, and no one really wants their name attached to the disaster Boris created, and there is no real plan possible, which will save the day – so the Party cannot have an enemy to unify them and get behind in this fight – as they are the ones who created this convoluted mess. NO one is coming out of this self inflicted disaster with reputation intact.
Covid response and Ukraine were the biggest two petards to ever blow up wile still in the hands of the makers. They together have likely brought Britain it a full Stagflation. The economy is a ‘Dead Man Walking’ – as I have been saying – wait till Friday and see if the QE she triggered does stop – and QT return. I think it too late, I think the Gilts explode – but the timing of all this is on her (It had to come anyway, but could have come softer if planned).
Here is a great article on ‘‘LDI: the better mousetrap that almost broke the UK” about the leveraging of the pension funds. I wish Unherd could get this guy to write here https://worldnewsera.com/news/finance/stock-market/ldi-the-better-mousetrap-that-almost-broke-the-uk/
The foundation of this depression being the 13 years of QE and keeping interest at zero, and MMT levels of deficit spending by money printing – a Gift Gordon Brown gave the Nation, but one the Tories kept going, and then the Boris insane response to the flu, and then starting WWIII where it was not in National Interest.
P.S. as the £ devalues to pennies – just remember Brown sold the national Gold stockpile for about £220 an oz (In 1999, Chancellor Gordon Brown sought to sell off 401 tonnes (56%) of the UK’s gold reserves.)– haha, what a disaster – and he was Blair’s Finance guy – Blair, Brown, Boris – 3 guys who wrecked UK.
Ben J
1 year ago
I’m paying for this, by the way, Terry. Please do better next time.
Brendan O'Leary
1 year ago
The Left seeks Power, the Right seeks Freedom.
That’s the way it is these days. It’s not 1968 anymore.
Yes. How I wish someone would examine the revolution that has overtaken our society since 97 and so stop this endless obsession about what Boris Truss or Keir do. Where have the real levers of power gone? Who really wields it? This govt cannot control the Bank of England and certainly not the international money markets who are now re shaping KK’s budget piece by piece. The executive assured us it has the power to control our borders. But 35000 illegal economic migrants have landed on our beaches – the human rights legal framework set up by Blair is more powerful. Boris cried out in the covid crisis- we are pulling levers and nothing happens. He was a puppet of the more powerful medical industrial complex. And what about the communications of a government? The BBC has openly disavowed all pretence at partiality on net zero and suppresses information on grooming gangs and the Islamist threat. It toppled Boris over a leaving do. And drunk on power it will continue to harrass and undermine any Tory goverment. So lets stop pretending the PM matters. Powerful vested interests have grown parasitically on our neo Socialist State and they will all nimby and resist anything that threatens the 15 year Good Times Bubble. Lets speak about real Power.
Yes. 1984/2022. Our media has forfeited trust. It covers up numerous ugly truths and is now OPENLY evangelical for the dread toxic State ideologies – race hating identitarianism, Pol Potist Net Zero zealotry, Covid lies & catastrophism and sustained cover up of all truths about the dark underbelly of islamism/failed state multiculturalism. Any challenge to socio- economic Zombie State Orthodoxy and the Equality Cult – even a rational non Truss one – are doomed and on the Cancel List. America has led way. But the BBC – the bulwark against such tyranny – has utterly betrayed us all and taken a side. No honest open public debate exists on MSM today.
Christine Hankinson
1 year ago
‘Only those with enough power already can afford to be sniffy about it, just as there are millionaires who fix their thoughts on spiritual matters and despise the rest of us for our crass materialism.’
That hit home. Interesting article thanks.
James Jenkin
1 year ago
A very interesting read, thank you! Lots of gems. But the point was …?
Antony Hirst
1 year ago
“You need power to free yourself from slavery or Vladimir Putin.” Let’s just ignore it was those with power who shackled us to Putin 😀
Mark McKee
1 year ago
When considering the question of whether it is preferable to be feared or loved, Machiavelli famously advised his Prince, “The answer is that one would prefer to be both but, since they don’t go together easily, if you have to choose, it’s much safer to be feared than loved.”
Benedict Waterson
1 year ago
‘Incentives’ might be a better word than power in the kind of market Liberal society he claims to describe, where the power of the state is conditional, limited and provisional, and incentives towards capital drive change. Leftist refs to ‘power’ always read like some primitive fear of a secret moral order of dark forces.
Nigel Rodgers
1 year ago
For an Unherd column, this is remarkably dull and stale, even clichéd. I found it hard to finish.
“Speaking truth to power” isn’t necessarily telling the powerful something they don’t know, but rather saying what the powerful has ruled out as unsayable.
For example, let’s imagine a well-known male comedian and a large political party have cooked up a scheme to field this man as a woman candidate in a constituency.
Insisting in this scenario that the prospective MP is a man is surely speaking truth to power, as well as an act that potentially earns you social-media bans, lost work, social opprobrium, etc etc.
Them telling us a lie and trying to prevent us telling the truth is an act of dominance, and raw power if ever I’ve seen it.
“Most liberals and leftists look on power with suspicion.”
Really? I thought it was with deep hunger given their predilection for insisting the rest of us abide by their idea of virtue.
“The Met police, for instance, are in trouble partly because becoming a police officer is an attractive prospect to a lot of natural-born bullies and rednecks, who wouldn’t otherwise have the chance to kick other people around”
Or literary critcs.
I am a Red-Neck. The word was from white share-croppers working the cotton fields bent over with their hoes chopping the weeds.. and their necks would become deep red in the baking sun. it was a poor share-cropper and field hand…
I work construction in the South, pretty Red-neck – But the thing of a Red-Neck is he may be small minded, but at the same time he is salt of the earth – he is who actually does the work. Builds the houses, asphalts the roads, farms the soy beans, pulls the power lines, drives the 18 wheelers, fells the trees and drills the oil… Easy to look down on – but impossible to do without. Then also a hard headed intelligence, patriotism, honest, very hard working, and pretty much always, believes in Jesus and God.
Sixteen Tons
Tennessee Ernie Ford
Some people say a man is made outta mud
A poor man’s made outta muscle and blood
Muscle and blood and skin and bones
A mind that’s a-weak and a back that’s strong
You load 16 tons, what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt
St. Peter, don’t you call me ’cause I can’t go
I owe my soul to the company store
I was born one mornin’ when the sun didn’t shine
I picked up my shovel and I walked to the mine
I loaded 16 tons of number nine coal
And the straw boss said, “Well, a-bless my soul”
You load 16 tons, what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt
St. Peter, don’t you call me ’cause I can’t go
I owe my soul to the company store
I was born one mornin’, it was drizzlin’ rain
Fightin’ and trouble are my middle name
I was raised in the canebrake by an ol’ mama lion
Can’t no high toned woman make me walk the line
You load 16 tons, what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt
St. Peter, don’t you call me ’cause I can’t go
I owe my soul to the company store
If you see me comin’, better step aside
A lotta men didn’t, a lotta men died
One fist of iron, the other of steel
If the right one don’t get you
Then the left one will
You load 16 tons, what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt
St. Peter, don’t you call me ’cause I can’t go
I owe my soul to the company store
the redneck lament……
Johnny Cash – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfp2O9ADwGk
Interesting. I always thought Rednecks were associated with the Cornish criminals who were transported to the Sugar Plantations as slaves. They have always been an embarrassment to the Caribbean authorities and ranked at the bottom of the pecking order there. Now virtually extinct there particularly in Barbados.
Strange also that the word rednecks would never be allowed on the MSN forums. Not an offensive word but banned nevertheless.
hear hear!
Quite. Has anyone watched Fresh Cops, on BBC3? I actually thought it was a spoof along the lines of Scot Squad at first. It would now seem that rather wet university graduates with very little gravitas are what the Police are looking for. But that doesn’t happen in the world of an ageing Marxist who has spent a lifetime playing the working class card In Oxbridge colleges. Thatcher is still in power and the SPG are still driving round London in an unmarked van, duffing up anyone from ethnic minorities.
Undiluted Claptrap, by an academic who’s spent his career specialising in the subject.
Referencing Hume, Burke and Shakespeare in an effort to appear learned, then displaying the toy-throwing ability of an experienced toddler is no way to go about political analysis.
If he’d employed the proverbial monkey that’d got bored with trying to reproduce the Works of Shakespeare to write this article for him, it might well have been more coherent.
I quite liked large parts of this article, but don’t think we ever got an answer to the question in the title – i.e. “How Powerful is Liz Truss ?”. And the conclusion didn’t make much sense for me.
What a mess this article is. All jumbled up, ill thought out, inappropriate, quotes and allusions and cliches coming from a Hard left agenda.. Not even good writing by any means. Too much wrong to address.
As far as Truss – her political and economic instincts will destroy the Party, maybe the Nation. Truss said Boris did the Covid response correctly – although the economy is irreparably wrecked by exactly that. Then she said Boris pumping money and weapons into Ukraine was correct. This shows she is 100% wrong about everything.
And she is powerful because the Party is headless chickens – my guess is because things will blow up, and no one really wants their name attached to the disaster Boris created, and there is no real plan possible, which will save the day – so the Party cannot have an enemy to unify them and get behind in this fight – as they are the ones who created this convoluted mess. NO one is coming out of this self inflicted disaster with reputation intact.
Covid response and Ukraine were the biggest two petards to ever blow up wile still in the hands of the makers. They together have likely brought Britain it a full Stagflation. The economy is a ‘Dead Man Walking’ – as I have been saying – wait till Friday and see if the QE she triggered does stop – and QT return. I think it too late, I think the Gilts explode – but the timing of all this is on her (It had to come anyway, but could have come softer if planned).
Here is a great article on ‘‘LDI: the better mousetrap that almost broke the UK” about the leveraging of the pension funds. I wish Unherd could get this guy to write here https://worldnewsera.com/news/finance/stock-market/ldi-the-better-mousetrap-that-almost-broke-the-uk/
The foundation of this depression being the 13 years of QE and keeping interest at zero, and MMT levels of deficit spending by money printing – a Gift Gordon Brown gave the Nation, but one the Tories kept going, and then the Boris insane response to the flu, and then starting WWIII where it was not in National Interest.
P.S. as the £ devalues to pennies – just remember Brown sold the national Gold stockpile for about £220 an oz (In 1999, Chancellor Gordon Brown sought to sell off 401 tonnes (56%) of the UK’s gold reserves.)– haha, what a disaster – and he was Blair’s Finance guy – Blair, Brown, Boris – 3 guys who wrecked UK.
I’m paying for this, by the way, Terry. Please do better next time.
The Left seeks Power, the Right seeks Freedom.
That’s the way it is these days. It’s not 1968 anymore.
Yes. How I wish someone would examine the revolution that has overtaken our society since 97 and so stop this endless obsession about what Boris Truss or Keir do. Where have the real levers of power gone? Who really wields it? This govt cannot control the Bank of England and certainly not the international money markets who are now re shaping KK’s budget piece by piece. The executive assured us it has the power to control our borders. But 35000 illegal economic migrants have landed on our beaches – the human rights legal framework set up by Blair is more powerful. Boris cried out in the covid crisis- we are pulling levers and nothing happens. He was a puppet of the more powerful medical industrial complex. And what about the communications of a government? The BBC has openly disavowed all pretence at partiality on net zero and suppresses information on grooming gangs and the Islamist threat. It toppled Boris over a leaving do. And drunk on power it will continue to harrass and undermine any Tory goverment. So lets stop pretending the PM matters. Powerful vested interests have grown parasitically on our neo Socialist State and they will all nimby and resist anything that threatens the 15 year Good Times Bubble. Lets speak about real Power.
Yes the “Blob” It’s so nice to be able to say that word here. Banned by the American woke Microsoft News in the UK.
Yes. 1984/2022. Our media has forfeited trust. It covers up numerous ugly truths and is now OPENLY evangelical for the dread toxic State ideologies – race hating identitarianism, Pol Potist Net Zero zealotry, Covid lies & catastrophism and sustained cover up of all truths about the dark underbelly of islamism/failed state multiculturalism. Any challenge to socio- economic Zombie State Orthodoxy and the Equality Cult – even a rational non Truss one – are doomed and on the Cancel List. America has led way. But the BBC – the bulwark against such tyranny – has utterly betrayed us all and taken a side. No honest open public debate exists on MSM today.
‘Only those with enough power already can afford to be sniffy about it, just as there are millionaires who fix their thoughts on spiritual matters and despise the rest of us for our crass materialism.’
That hit home. Interesting article thanks.
A very interesting read, thank you! Lots of gems. But the point was …?
“You need power to free yourself from slavery or Vladimir Putin.”
Let’s just ignore it was those with power who shackled us to Putin 😀
When considering the question of whether it is preferable to be feared or loved, Machiavelli famously advised his Prince, “The answer is that one would prefer to be both but, since they don’t go together easily, if you have to choose, it’s much safer to be feared than loved.”
‘Incentives’ might be a better word than power in the kind of market Liberal society he claims to describe, where the power of the state is conditional, limited and provisional, and incentives towards capital drive change. Leftist refs to ‘power’ always read like some primitive fear of a secret moral order of dark forces.
For an Unherd column, this is remarkably dull and stale, even clichéd. I found it hard to finish.