Disillusionment with Current Politics is the First Step to a Better Politics

Politics is a mess.  No doubt about that.

But let's put it into perspective.

The origins of politics are to be found in the early civilizations.  Politics were further developed following the dark ages in Europe, but with mainly social changes.  The essential feature at all times was rule by a King who was divine, or was there by divine right, and who could do no wrong.

This is crazy.  So politics was psychotic. But people accepted it.

Crazy rulers like that still exist.  They operate by whim and their own personal power.  They are surrounded by unproductive people: always secret police and a military.  In the past, there were also  priests and often courtiers and aristocrats.  The royal court (or dictator's entourage) lived, or still live, in relative luxury paid for by natural wealth and taxation of an impoverished populace.  People accepted it.  Law counted for almost nothing if you were an elite.  Justice had little meaning.  People accepted it.  Incest and inter-marriage amongst the ruling classes produced feeble-minded weaklings. Coerced conscription to kill innocents for the plunder and glory of the monarch and the realm was normal.  Napoleon marched on Russia with 500,000 soldiers and returned empty-handed with just 25,000.  Sheer madness, surely.  Pol Pot and Mao and Stalin organized mass exterminations of their own countrymen.  People accepted it.

Let's fast forward (or defect, if you live in a totalitarian state) and focus on liberal welfare democracies.

Politics in these states is criminal.  Actual or threatened prosecutions, indictments or impeachment of supreme political leaders are not exceptions but the norm.  Then the next supreme leader or the judiciary pardons or exonerates them and life goes on.  People accept it.  Politicians lie, cheat, and bribe, especially at election time.  People accept it.  The political system runs welfare as a Ponzi scheme, illegal for everyone else for good reason.  People accept it.  Governments handle financial accounting in ways that would land businesses in the dock for willful deception.  People accept it.  Pursuit of fraud within big government is normally blocked, and those responsible for discovering and publicizing fraud are persecuted and removed.  People accept it.  Politicians doctor reports, operate in secrecy, falsify statistics and manipulate the news.  Politicians go further and give their employees rights to interfere with citizens: to kidnap, to torture, to steal information, to print money (i.e. counterfeit).  So where and how did those governments get those rights?  Did they campaign for them?  No—they acted like any criminal enterprise—arrogantly wielding naked force and sowing fear.  People accept it. 

My message to readers of this blog: Be grateful!  Criminality is a massive improvement on living in the lunatic asylum of primitive politics.  It's far more predictable, it's competitive, and social productivity is valued.

There is a common view, promulgated of course by political elites and their academic supporters, that we are now enjoying the acme of political perfection.  It's a fact: politics' history is at an end—an essay published before the latest travesty of irrational wars and monetary destruction brought to us by—who else?—our criminal political-financial elites.

Let's face it: Life is imperfect—and political choices will never please everybody.  But there is no need for politics to be either crazy or criminal.  No need whatsoever.

You, your friends and the billions of other people around you are basically decent human beings.  There is a natural goodness in people: and always has been.  That is why humanity has survived and progressed.  Of course, there are psychopaths and lunatics out there.  But you aren't routinely molested when you go shopping, drive to work or visit the beach.

Any of us can be misled.  Our darker natures can be evoked.  We are particularly susceptible to charisma and authority.  But resisting temptations and illusions is the essential challenge in being human.  People will rise when the scales finally fall from their eyes.  Nothing that is good comes without a fight: I mean the good fight with words and deeds, not hate and violence.  Once everything else has been tried, people will do the right thing.

So there is a future for politics: it is one of limited effects, ordinary incompetence and simple inefficiency.  After all, it is our responsibility not to deny to politicians our own human qualities.  The benefits to all would be enormous.

So be happy.
It's always darkest before the dawn.
And I think we are on the way.

What's your view? Tell me now!

WK

*Consider being like Odysseus who had himself bound to the mast while listening to the sirens song.  THEE could be the ropes protecting you from being harmfully influenced. TOP is devoted to showing that people can easily think along the right lines, and it helps you allow yourself to do so. Just be objective about who, what and where we are. If you want to see the story of politics according to THEE, start with the review of past and present here; and then explore. See this small sample of what ordinary people en masse could easily decide so as to remove perverse incentives in politics.  Want to join or moderate a Politics forum on the THEE website? Contact me.