Oh no… please no. I got through Christmas and New Year, not a sniffle, not even a tiny wheeze or cough. Then back from Scotland for the first full week of normal working life of 2025, and I am feeling good.
But then… oh no, please no. Here it comes… the nose is running, the throat is crying out for relief, sweat is trickling front and back, and moaning, groaning self-pity is overwhelming. Manflu has landed.
There is only one answer. You stay in bed. A rare upside of Covid is that sending out emails to cancel every call and meeting in the diary, which pre-pandemic might have aroused suspicions of lead-swinging or dislike of the people you were due to meet, is now fully understood, because we are so much more aware that being breathed upon by germ-infested manfluencers is not merely unpleasant, but can also be dangerous.
So, with the world duly turned off, you lie there, hope to get back to sleep, and when you can’t you hope that Fiona will respond quickly to the text message explaining that the manflu patient needs Nurofen/Lemsip/coffee/my briefcase/the thing I was scribbling last night that I think is under the sofa. How manflu victims get through this ordeal without a Fiona is frankly beyond me. Perhaps Artificial Intelligence could create one for all men who live alone, or with someone less sympathetic to the notion that a few coughs and sniffles = death’s door.
Soon, of course, boredom sets in, but you’re so far down the “can’t move, can’t breathe, can’t risk spreading this to everyone” whinings that you have to stay put. To get out of bed before at least late afternoon is to suggest things are not nearly as bad as they sounded when you were coughing and wheezing over the bathroom sink at 6am.
This is where the bedside pile of books is vital. And sitting atop mine is What Is Happening To Us?, a compilation of articles by the Venezuelan former politician-turned-academic, writer and commentator Moisés Naim. I am not normally a fan of compilations, though I do hope some of you are reading this as new subscribers tempted to become so by the offer of the compilation of my 2024 columns just before Christmas.
When health secretary Wes Streeting’s team designs the new AI robot carer, they should actually build in the fact that a compilation is perfect manflu reading. Each chapter stands on its own, takes just a few minutes to read, yet as you work your way through the book – read a bit, doze a bit, cough a bit, moan a bit, text for another coffee or a pitiful “maybe I could manage a piece of toast?” – you get a sense of big themes, trends and stellar analysis.
(I am talking about Moisés Naim here, but I am guessing from his kind signed dedication that the feeling is mutual. And a bit of flattery must also be part of the AI treatment plan for us poor men when we are struck down by a bit of cold).
Those of you who were with us before the new subscription offer may recall this is not the first time I have written about Moisés Naim. For he it was, in his brilliant book The Revenge of Power, who crystallised the 3Ps – populism, polarisation, post-truth – as an explanation of how politics worldwide has taken a bad turn. Indeed it partly inspired me to write a book of my own, But What Can I Do?, which we also used to bring in new subscribers – lots of them, as I recall – when it came out.
Think of the 3Ps and of course Donald Trump comes to mind. So, right now, does Elon Musk. And one of the most arresting chapters in Naim’s latest book is headlined “How are Putin and Musk alike?”, which he wrote in May 2022.
Given how Musk has morphed into a full 3P tech-oligarch, it seems timely to republish his piece. For now, here is a short excerpt: “Putin wanted Ukraine and Musk wanted Twitter. The first illegally invaded the neighbouring country and the second legally bought a company for $44bn. Both decisions were made by a single person. The protocols and processes that normally influence the making of such important decisions were irrelevant… The invasion of Ukraine and the takeover of Twitter illustrate how weak accountability is in authoritarian states and among the ultra-rich tech titans.”
He ends his piece expressing the hope that Putin and Musk are ultimately very different. Right now, not least in their clear shared belief that they are always right, that facts don’t matter, that there are no people or power structures that should be allowed to stand in their way, the similarities appear to be even stronger than when Naim first pointed them out.
In the introduction, Naim quotes a 1930s Spanish thinker, José Ortega y Gasset, who was worrying about the conflicts spreading across Europe and which would lead us to the second world war. “We do not know what is happening to us, and that is precisely what is happening to us, the fact of not knowing what is happening to us … That is always the vital sensation that assails man in periods of crisis.”
And so, as Trump retakes power, as California burns and yet so many still refuse to accept that climate change might be part of the reason, as war continues in Europe, the Middle East and in various parts of Africa and Asia, as inequality widens, as impunity and corruption spread, as AI develops both as threat and opportunity, as the postwar liberal world order appears to break down, What Is Happening To Us? really is la question du jour.
Perhaps next week’s letters page could be used to provide a few answers. I am toying with the idea of a book of some sort on how progressives fight back better against the 3Ps. It is a subject also addressed by my friend and former colleague Peter Hyman, in a brutally frank assessment of how progressives have helped the populists, published elsewhere in this edition. Your ideas are welcome too. If we don’t find them, we are in for a global sickness far worse than manflu.
Four years of Trump are not going to be easy to take. Buy, or maybe invade, Greenland? Take the Panama Canal? Make Canada part of the US? He is playing games with all of us.
As Jimmy Carter was laid to rest, there they sat: Biden, Clinton, Bush, Obama… and Trump. Whatever your views of the character, policies and legacy of the first four, there is a decency and humanity to all of them, as there was to the power of infinity with Carter.
As Trump sat there glowering, his wife Melania sulking alongside, over in California governor, Gavin Newsom was working round the clock as state authorities sought to bring wildfires under control.
One might have thought all political leaders would have wanted to show support for the people of California, and all who were involved in the fire-fighting effort. Not so Trump, who posted on his social media site a rant against “Gavin Newscum,” showing that even in times of crisis he cannot shake off his childlike addiction to nicknames and insults.
He went on to claim that one of the causes of the fires was Newsom’s determination “to protect an essentially worthless fish called a smelt,” thereby tickling the erogenous zones of those who refuse to believe climate change is real, and prefer to blame anyone or anything that can be given the label “woke” for anything that goes wrong in the world.
