Crime: Real and imagined

 “Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring.” —Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace

Theodore Dalrymple (AKA Anthony Danies), prison psychiatrist and astute social observer, has seen enough of real life crime and criminals to agree completely with Weil:

Most murder is merely sordid, unmysterious, stupid, and not infrequently drunken, or alternatively engendered by passions of a crude culture.

In light of this, it is interesting that his latest book is devoted to fictional murder of the most contrived sort:

Agatha Christie and the Metaphysics of Murder

A deep dive into Christie's They Do It With Mirrors serves as a launch pad for a discursive meditation on crime, criminals, and modern society.

Christie's novel is perfectly suited to Dalrymple's purposes because this country house mystery is not populated by aristocrats, vicars, or village gentry. This time Miss Marple finds herself surrounded by juvenile delinquents, left-wing do-gooders, and the women who enable them.

The denizens of this novel are different from the criminals Dalrymple dealt with in prisons and inner-city hospitals. His real life patients are a product of “a culture that was debased, crude, and shallow, though profound in its effects. It was thin in its content but deep in the hold that it exerted.” Christie's characters are high-minded, educated, and devoted to the fine arts.

Dalrymple does not scoff at this nor does he deride the writer for her inventions. As a shrewd observer of of the world and a student of history, he understands that “a man in the grip of an obsession to do good can be very ruthless and not see that his end does not justify his means – even if his end is genuinely good rather than an impossible pipedream. In fact, the less tangible the good a man is trying to do, the greater the lengths he is prepared to go to secure it. The worst crimes are committed by those of the largest visions.”

Not for the first time, Christie has buried a profound truth in one of her cozy entertainments.

II

In his book Our Culture, What's Left of It, Dalrymple notes that this transformation of Christie's England to Kier Starmer's "did not come about through any volcanic eruption from below: on the contrary, it was the intellectual wing of the elite that kicked against the traces."

Modern Britain chose to reject the common sense and traditional morality of Miss Marple and Agatha Christie and instead put its faith in experts and do-gooders.  The results have been nothing short of catastrophic.

In 2019 Usman Khan was a Cambridge University success story: a de-radicalized terrorist and a rehabilitated criminal.  On 29 November he was in London for a conference touting the success of Cambridge University's "Learning Together" program for educating criminals.  While there, Khan demonstrated the high value of the program by stabbing five people (killing two). 

Stephen Griffiths had a lengthy record of violent criminal behavior and was diagnosed as a schizoid psychopath..  This proved to be no barrier when he was admitted to the University of Bradford's Ph. D. program in Criminal Justice Studies (studying homicide methods).  Alas, he was unable to graduate after he was convicted of the murder and dismemberment of three women.

Currently, Mohammed Yaseen is living a soft life subsidized by taxpayers.  He is an ISIS/Al Qaeda member who participated in atrocities in the Middle East.  After entering the UK illegally he then lied about his age, identity, and terrorist past.  That landed him a stint in jail but somehow he "earned"  early release (six months).  Then he claimed asylum to avoid deportation. 

Ten years before Christie wrote "They Do It with Mirrors" the UK and US swiftly executed enemy combatants who infiltrated their homelands.  In the new Britain they get free housing.

Nowhere is the contrast between Christie's Britain and the modern "cool Britannia" more evident than with  policing.

Robert Conquest identified 'firm leadership and light rule'  as the essence of traditional governance.  The police in Christie's mysteries exemplify this,  Stolid and polite, they maintain order with a stern glance and a quiet word.  They are an integral part of the community but rarely intrude into the lives of the public.

Woke policing has shattered that image forever.  The police are unable or unwilling to curb street violence, the grooming gangs are an indelible stain on their reputation, and burglaries are an every day fact of life.  Meanwhile, countless man-hours are devoted to monitoring mean tweets and angry Facebook posts.