What we have here is a case of "English Detective" style journalism, when what this particular epoch requires is more "Hard Boiled Detective" journalism. The E

What we have here is a case of "English Detective" style journalism, when what this particular epoch requires is more "Hard Boiled Detective" journalism. The English Detective - Miss Marple, Holmes, Poirot (Belgian, but he is an English Detective archetype) - exists within a stable and permanent social system, class-based, in which all are basically happy with their lot, aside from a few malcontents and neerdowells, who sometimes try to cheat their way into power or privilege that is not theirs to have. It is the job of the English Detective to root out this degenerate from the ranks of the decent, expose him to the world and the nearby incorruptible agents of the law (funnier if read in an Inspector Clouseau accent), and restore the harmony and justice of the status quo, and perhaps attend a wedding of two young lovers that he has reunited through his genius efforts to expose the truth! That's who this writer is. We also have another kind of Literary Detective, that of the Hard Boiled genre from about the 30s-50s, approximately. The Hard Boiled detective, based in cheap pulp novels and most famously played onscreen by Bogart as characters like Sam Spade (The Maltese Falcon) and Philip Marlowe (The Big Sleep), is usually living in the USA or some even less lawful place, and exists in a world of inherent corruption all around him. Like the Victorian Detective, he is a creature of this world and fully adapted to its conventions, but he also retains some form of stripped-down basic integrity that he uses as his own yardstick of what is acceptable and what goes too far, even for him. When someone goes too far over the line, the Hard Boiled detective takes it as a matter of necessity, and possibly honor or respect, to deal with it, but the most important thing about a Hard Boiled mystery is that he is not really trying to "fix" anything. In The Maltese Falcon, Spade sticks his neck out in the first place strictly because someone kills his business partner; murdering someone who has distanced themselves from the shenanigans of the establishment is a good example of something the Hard Boiled detective has no choice but to do something about, and that is why the story, a fantastic story by the way, exists. It's not that I see myself as Hard Boiled here, don't get me wrong. I want a Douglas Adams future, not a Blade Runner future. But, to write about Capitalism - because what we're talking about is Capitalism, whether you like that fact or not - from the perspective of the English Detective, the defender of the established and perfect system of justice in society - is not the perspective that leads to action about anything. We are living in thoroughly Hard Boiled times, we all know it, and we have no use for a fucking Poirot just now. The writer needs to point out that CEOs are murdering people this summer in Arizona, by sending their dogs to Washington to block action on Climate Change, which has tornadoes touching down up here in Canada now by the way, and subjecting the Southwest - which has a lot of poor people in it - to a summer of death for anyone who doesn't have AC or whose AC breaks down and cannot get outside to some shade. He needs to point out that someone who has distanced themselves from the shenanigans of the establishment - an infirm grandmother living on a pension in downtown Phoenix, perhaps, with only a small fan to cool her, and no ability to get up and walk outside, and all her family in other cities - has been murdered for profit. Because none of the people who are going to die that death in America this summer, deserve that particular death. That is the sort of thing that the Hard Boiled detective cannot simply sit behind his desk and opine about, that's something that he has to get up and make something happen about. Now, the Hard Boiled detective, after he has cracked the case, generally hands over the evidence whatever perpetrators are still alive to the authorities - the corrupt authorities, who because of his work have no choice but to prosecute them or face The Press - but it was never his goal to shore them up or help them to perpetuate their system; he was pursuing his own sense of honor, one that is at odds with the reigning hegemonic rhetoric, and which would not have been serviced if not for his sometimes-legally-questionable methods. This Poirot here is expecting the incorruptible agents of the law to swoop in and deal with this, and boyo, just shut up if that's all you got. Cause what we need right now, is people with a sense of honor and justice that is completely at odds with the Capitalist system and ready to say murder when it's clearly murder, however many degrees of separation they put between their lobbying, their layoffs, their union squashing, their endless need to surveil us all, etc etc. I know I'm not speaking to those people in this forum, but I am speaking for them.