Christmas special

The going explanation for the critical international situation today is that the authoritarian, statist powers of the world are cooperating with one another against the Western, democratic, capitalist ones to smash the supposed “rules-based” order on which they imagine Western hegemony rests. This is certainly one cause of the present global crisis but I do not believe it is the proximate one, which is rather the entirely predictable — though inexplicably unpredicted — result of the network of nearly instant electronic communications in which international society is enmeshed as if in the web of a malignant cosmic spider, combined with a reinforcing system of cheap global transport operating at not much below supersonic speed.

The other day I saw something you don’t often see these days on the streets of London: a truly stylish man. He was a tall, skinny black dude, with a velvet top hat that tilted on his head in a jaunty way that defied gravity. He wore a brightly-embroidered paisley jacket, a waistcoat, tight black trousers and shiny, pointed black shoes — and he carried a pearl-handled walking stick. He looked like a cross between Beau Brummel and James Brown. So I was surprised when I saw this elegant man start to collect cigarette butts from the ground. Here was a dandy in the gutter — but one so cool, he stooped with style. I went up to him and said, “Hey man, I dig your look!” And I meant it.