Thursday, October 18, 2007
Election Guideline
It's provincial election time where I live. As well, there was some threat of a snap federal election in Canada, but it doesn't look like that's going to happen yet. Also, I see that the campaign ads for 2008 have already started to run on American TV.
Times like this make me stop and think about what I actually believe about politics.
Of course, the simple answer to "what do I actually believe?" is "Not much." Long experience in the belly of the beast has left me skeptical of all political rhetoric, left and right.
But boil down my various stray thoughts on the issues, and it can probably be expressed in a couple of sentences:
Human beings are vain and over-confident. Our ability to fuck things up vastly overshadows our ability to do things properly.
So when politicians, left or right, come along and tell me, "We've got a bunch of great new ideas for the future!", my reaction is "Oh, Christ, not new ideas again. Heaven preserve us from the new ideas."
Why do we need to have new ideas every four years? That's hardly enough time to get the old ideas rolling, much less prove that they were bad ideas. Our society is like the ADD kid of civilizations. Why can't we try doing something consistently for awhile? Consistency: now there's a new idea I might actually support.
But consistency has its own dangers. Sometimes you have to vote the bums out just so they don't go getting lazy and corrupt.
The nice thing about our Western society is that the "new ideas" talk usually ends up being for show. The bureaucrats, gawd blessem, are usually too lazy and narrow-minded to tolerate new ideas. Many patently bad new ideas have been stopped in their tracks thanks to bureaucratic stubbornness. If only bureaucrats in the past had made an extra little bit of effort, had pushed the envelope and tried to be just a bit more lazy and stubborn, who knows how many tragedies could have been averted.
So here's my advice to voters: Vote for the same shit, different pile. Vote in different groups of politicians but don't vote for them until they promise not to do anything really different from the last group. Of course, they will never out-and-out say that, so you have to listen close.
posted by Mentok @ 11:05 a.m.,
4 Comments:
-
At 2:28 p.m.,
Grumps said...
-
Well said, Mentok, well said. I think there should be a committee of people who are average Joes and Janes with little or no political ties. Every government idea would be submitted to them and they would have the right to smack pols on the forehead with the palm of their hand and say, "what were you thinking?" It might save a lot of stupidity.
Of course, you'd probably have to pay people to do this and then they'd become too interested in keeping their jobs while sacrificing common sense. Ouch! I just smacked myself.
It's kind of like the final Tribal Council on Survivor. When pleading for votes, the finalists always end up sucking up to the jury. For once, I'd like to see someone say things like, "yeah, when I told you that, I was lying" or "HA! I played you!" or "No, really, I hate your guts! Psych!"
Of course they'd be voted down so fast, much the same as if a political party were to campaign on an unpopular idea, like, say, raising taxes. -
At 2:49 p.m.,
Mentok said...
-
grumps - I'm glad you smacked yourself in the midst of that average Joes and Janes idea!
In effect, that's what focus groups do. When I was in the business, I always found the concept of focus groups funny. Essentially, they are an admission by political types that they are so far removed from normal sensibilities that they have to hire people to tell them how normal people think.
In any case, as you allude, the whole notion of "average Joes and Janes" perpetuates the false belief that politicians are some sort of evil breed and that regular people are innately good. Sorry, folks, I know politics looks ugly, but that's just the way humans act when they are in a struggle for power. You would act the same way in that situation. -
At 12:42 a.m.,
adam said...
-
I've just finished re-reading (again) Mark Steel's 'Reasons to be Cheerful' and would like to give you the last page or so...
Most of those who submit to pessimism do so against their instincts. Ask anyone when they were most inspired. It might have been in the campaign against apartheid, as a member of CND or supporting the miners. No one will say 'my most exhilarating moment was when I realised it was unrealistic to propose a higher tax rate for the rich'.
The overwhelming majority are on the side of the weak when they stand up to bullies. That's why most of us admire the suffragettes, the French Resistance, the 15th century scientists who fought loan battles against mysticism, the ANC, opponents of dictators and the multitude of people who, at the time, were meeting in small groups, largely ignored, and derided as nutcasts.
The challange and exhilaration comes from supporting such people at the time. Opposing injustice from a distance is easy. Anyone can get up in their workplace and say 'I'd like to let everyone know that I'm completely opposed to the Spanish Inquisition'.
My advice is to value yourself higher. Follow the instinct, don't be sensible. Massive events are made up of tiny acts. At the next act of injustice, take a gulp, open your mouth nd by the one to run down the muddy bank, to start the booing, to stand in front of the tank, to refuse to get on the train - to kick out the irritating idiot at the party.
The happy ending is that one of the most popular films of all time is Spartacus. Whereas I wonder whether that film would have been as succesful if the Romans had come into the field, asked 'Which one is Spartacus?' and received the answer 'It's him over there, mate. He's nothing do with us. We're New Spartacus'.
You get what you pay for, Mentok, and people make a difference. According to focus groups and opinion polls (and the press), the key issue voters want dealt with in Britain at the moment is raising the inheritence tax threshold. No doubt the politician who achieves that is going to live on in our memories with the man standing in front of the tank in Tiananmen Square. -
At 10:29 a.m.,
Mentok said...
-
crash - and speaking of smacks on the head, thanks for that one, really. I shouldn't be so callous as to dismiss idealism entirely. My apologies.
From a certain angle, cynicism is as much bullshit posturing as the bullshit rhetoric at which the cynical sneer. Political cynics (like me) are ultimately trying to look like tough wise-guys to their peers. Beneath the surface, though, as Steel suggests, no one would bother with politics unless they believed in a cause at some level.
Still, Steel's optimism raises some further questions I can't ignore. Yes, sometimes nutcases turn out to be visionaries. But sometimes visionaries turn out to be nutcases. And sometimes nutcases turn out to be nutcases. Yet we humans often have a hard time distinguishing these differences.
Also, Steel (in this quote at least) ignores the sheer degree of gross exaggeration in politics. Yes, there are some causes like apartheid or human rights in China worth going to the barricades over. However, most issues in modern Western politics are relatively technocratic administrative matters.
But you wouldn't know it from the rhetoric. It is the raison d'etre of political parties and their legions of spin doctors to portray EVERY issue as a do-or-die, black-and-white, good-vs-evil matter. The sheer level of hate these tactics inspire is completely counterproductive to public discourse.
So, yes, it is important for political types to keep a corner of their souls for idealism. But it is equally important to keep in the back of one's mind that you could be wrong, there might be a middle path and there just might be more than one way to skin a cat.
And, for heaven's sake, we all need to recognize each other's humanity and avoid demonizing opponents. Case in point: Grumps is a socialist, I'm a Tory, we both used to be paid political professionals for opposing parties, but we've been friends for 25 years and we agree on more things than we disagree (except the quality of Bob Dylan music ;-)
