56 Up (2012)

The Up series, latest installment. As it was inevitably going to happen, Michael the Interviewer drops the R word on Tony Walker. Well, as I have suspected from day one, and hinted at in my previous reviews, Michael the Interviewer is what some people affectionately call a libtard. Or a progtard. He even accuses (laugh out loud) Tony of doing in Spain what immigrants are doing in England. This is just too much, don't you think? Tony, the smartest guy in this series by a country mile, responds to that in an admirably cool manner, but let's get things straight in a way he was perhaps too polite, or too cautious, to do. Tony is not leeching on the Spanish welfare system; on the contrary, he is contributing to the Spanish economy by going there and spending. This was point one. Point two, he is culturally close to Spaniards. They are all European, for Christ's sake. But I think I might be wrong about one thing, and here is a theory which I have been dwelling on for some time now. It may be the case that some people are not really libprogtards in their hearts (basically perhaps because that would be impossible for such intelligent, successful persons). Perhaps they have devised a tactic and a strategy. Perhaps they are not allowed to say some things that go against the Politically Correct rules of modern society. And, just perhaps, they know it when they encounter someone who is more outspoken than they are. So, those phony libtards trick those more outspoken persons into saying those things that they themselves are not allowed, or do not have the guts to say. Well, that is my theory anyway (another theory is that it is always safer to bet on stupidity than on strategy). Concerning Bruce, another participant in this series, there is a noteworthy bit. Bruce is the pro-immigrant Christian-Socialist guy who taught immigrants in the past and later in life switched to a posh Catholic school. He now makes his children go to a Christian (Quaker, I think) school to learn some basics of Moral Values or something to that effect. His wife points out that what she wants to have instilled in her children is the "ethos of tolerance and understanding". Well, I am not a Christian, or any other religious denomination for that matter, so I am unable to give the correct Christian stance on these matters (supposing there can be one). What I can say based only on observation and common sense is: hers is the most traveled road among intellectuals and semi-intellectuals, and there is a nice big hole at the end of that road. But I am sure she is not interested or even listening.

So, I am through with this series for a while (until around 2020, I suppose). What it has taught me is very simple: what we are is all in our biology. Mostly genes, of course, but also how the pregnancy develops, and how the birth process is carried out. So, you really are what you were when you were seven, and even earlier than seven actually, perhaps even as a newborn.