Politics 6: Democracy is only the lesser of two evils.

When democracy was a relatively new idea in the 1700's, there were a number of arguments against it. The only one I believe that makes any sense is the most despised one. Giving people what they want is not the same as giving them what they need. Ordinary people were unfit to make decisions of life and death. Old-fashioned elitists were worried that democracy would eventually turn into an absurd popularity contest while no one actually governed, i.e., precisely what's happened. Unfortunately, elitism went hand in hand with racism, sexism and class consciousness in those days, but it isn't the same thing. In fact, there's nothing wrong with an elite based on merit. Anyone can become a member of this group by merely achieving something, thereby proving their fitness to have a greater say in things than ordinary people. That's not the general view, though. 'Elitists' is a swear word these days. It's associated with unearned privileges and contempt for ordinary people. How did that happen? The main reason is the way voters have literally switched sides. When universal suffrage was introduced in the early 20th century, socialist politicians suddenly had more power than at any other point in history. They set about securing more rights for the ordinary people than ever before, despite a financial crisis and a world war, setting the stage for the immense economic growth of the 50's and 60's. Despite their concerns for the common man, these politicians were often hardly common themselves. They fought for social justice on behalf of ordinary people. They succeeded admirably, essentially making themselves obsolete. Their way out of social irrelevancy was broadening their scope. All kinds of other groups needed help as well, and there were plenty of other social ills besides economic ones. These new ideas didn't appeal to their old voters, but attracted new ones, educated upper and middle class voters. On the right, traditional right wing parties seized the advantage and decided to appeal to the working classes. This is now the default setup for many western democracies. Two groups voting for parties that enact policies that disadvantage them, both run by members of the elite, who don't want to be seen as elitist and claim to give people what they ask for, rather than what they need, and actually give them what they want for themselves. Both sides lie and manipulate to maintain their positions, and the public is distracted with fluff and nonsense. The only group with a genuine representation of their opinions in politics, is business.

Politics 5: The shadow of big business

The general level of paranoia in the general public has constantly risen since Nixon. A constant flurry of lurid exposés of authority figures is part of our culture's normal background noise, as are absurd conspiracy theories. Business is a main component in both factually reported misdeeds and the insane fever dreams of the theorists. The collusion between business and politics is very real, however, and about as old as government itself. Governments and politicians need large amounts of money and businesses are willing to provide, for legislation that benefits them and the contracts to do things for the government. Basically businesses spend money to make money. The only difference in recent years is how much more powerful businesses have become. Multinationals have always been able to lord it over poor countries, often with the backing of their home countries, but now there are companies big and influential enough to take on western democracies. Since the 1980's there's been a definite effort to give businesses as much freedom as possible, with detrimental results for the individual. If you adjust for inflation, the average real wage has taken a drastic drop throughout the west, and taxes have gone up only slightly. Governments have also privatised so much of their own businesses they barely have an idea how they operate in the real world anymore. Their tasks haven't really changed though, except now it's up to private contractors to do it, for a fee. The government gets less money from you, has lost a great deal of power and competence, handed it to business, who are now bigger and richer and get more of your money. They're only getting more powerful and both the individual and the government suffer.

Politics 4: Watching the news is harmful to your inteligence.

This is what's wrong with the news. It's a formulaic narrative run by a commercial enterprise, which is why it's frequently scary, nonsensical and obsessed with sensationalist topics which have nothing to do with the facts. The facts are the only thing that ought to be important, but nobody wants to read that, that's what Wikipedia is for. But they keep changing these facts, and it's hard to keep track of them. But not that hard. The news makes perfect sense if you know some of the backstory, i.e. everything that's ever happened. It's like a daily list of changes, so it's almost in it's nature not to provide a lot of context and to ignore things that don't fit the stories that already exist. That's why the only important story about the civil war in Sudan for the majority of the conflict was the fact that no one seemed to do anything about it or care very much. This happens to a lot of important things. The news is so ephemeral there's genuinely no telling what's going to happen, or what has actually happened without getting your information from other sources, but less and less people do that. The news, seriously defective as it is, is the main source of current information. It is a playground for the smart manipulative assholes that politicians employ to communicate with the public. The only thing standing in the way of constant 24-hour propaganda from politicians, business and third parties is the people who make the news. But they're under-informed, underfunded and under constant pressure to keep you interested. Is it any wonder you alternate between being bored, frustrated, angry and scared every time you watch it? There's no way to fix it either.

Politics 3: Open letter to my friends, the hippies and the fascists

I'm always ending up defending right wing viewpoints to my many socialist friends and acquaintances, not because I enjoy it, but because they often have absurd views. The opposite happens when I'm with my right wing friends and family members. Whereas I'm a socialist black sheep with them, everyone I know from college tends to put me squarely on the privileged rich bastard side. Actually, I believe in neither. The older I get, the less use I have for defining myself or others as left or right wing. Conservative vs. progressive is a workable dichotomy, it's an axis you can stake a place along, for every subject even. But left vs. right? Les extremes se touchent. The amount of times a conversation about politics has lead me to argue against a friend or family member with an absurd point beggars belief.

As a shorthand: You can't fix the economy by privatising everything, or nationalising everything. Freedom of speech applies especially to people you don't agree with, also to people who don't agree with freedom of speech. Immigration only adds more different people to your country, this is a totally neutral process, they should adapt enough to function and eventually (a century or so) will be indistinguishable from other inhabitants, i.e. will probably be anti-immigration themselves. It's not even remotely feasible for everyone to have all their basic needs taken care of, without a dynamic capitalist economy to pay for that, and even then some injustice is inevitable, unless we build an economy not based on money, like on star trek. It's stupid to start wars, but when you have, it's your responsibility to fix the country you invaded. Saving the environment is so difficult, we should make it the driving force behind fixing the economy. Governments should govern, businesses should do business, when they work together just as many good things happen as bad, but they are both entirely ineffective without individuals, who should have as much say in anything they do together as reasonably possible. Most of the people on the planet do not live in the U.S. or Europe, it's completely fair that they should have a bigger say in the stake of the planet then we do. Since the vast majority of the problems we have to tackle in the next hundred years are completely global in nature, it's our responsibility to use the advantage we have to get a result we can all live with.

I guess that makes me a romantic.

Politics 2: The great unwashed...

That's the swing voter, but also the general public at large. Most people are so confused and bewilderd by the modern world, they let themselves be influenced by whatever random concept of order politicians suggest, but never promise. Some people vote for the same party their entire lives, or large chunks of it, without ever reading a party program or a newspaper or watching the news. These people's polutical opinions are formed entirely from visual cues, conversations with equally ignorant people and vague ideas about where a party is on the spectrum vis-a-vis their own uninformed opinions. Scared out of their minds and bored and frustrated with the long and complex stories you have to follow to make sense of the world, they're easy prey for manipulative pricks that put on some bullshit persona to win the right to boss them around: I give you the general public.

Politics 1: Sociopathy is a political asset.

If only it were this painful for them, too. For me at least, politics are hell to follow and discuss with anyone. What I hate most is the staggering ignorance and stupidity on the side of the politicians, the general public and most so-called intelligent people. Last week's Dutch elections were quite interesting, but the discourse around it was just absurd, as per usual. Hence, a theme week:

Politicians are constantly involved in the pursuit of power, things like principles, ideals and even money are secondary concerns, if at all. The fact that so many of them drop out at some point prior to retirement should be a dead giveaway. What happens to these people after their political careers? Often they end up in powerful positions in public or private life, quite often considerably more powerful than they were. Politics isn't exactly an end goal. It's what you do before you become really powerful. Take this into account and their cynical behaviour becomes remarkably clear. There are some gormless idealists that end up in this industry, but they either don't get very far, or don't last very long. They are just so much grist for the mill of someone else's ambition.

Dutch elections most exciting in years, to no avail.

Surprisingly low turnouts for the 6th election in ten years, the same bizarre swings as protest votes went form the left to new viable options on the right. Controversial politician Geert Wilders has tripled the number of seats and is now the country's third largest, getting most of the votes of the heavily wounded christian democrats, proving that Jesus hates Muslims too, even though they're fellow Semites. There may be a right wing coalition, where it not for the fact that none of the parties in that coalition really want to work together, or have all that much in common. The left has most of the other half of parliament, but is divided into four relative large, and another 5 small parties. Absurd rainbow coalitions aside, some kind of right-left combination is most likely and indeed, most desirable. On the off chance that the right wing coalition does work, we'll be treated to hilarious scandal after scandal, then we'll just have to have another election in six months or so, at which point a left wing government will probably be formed, which might just finish it's fucking term. If some parties don't start fusing together, we'll need a fucking military dictatorship to run the country.

Congress is important...

Shockingly, Elmo is the only non-human ever to have given testimony to congress. I imagined there must have been some dogs and horses called before the HUAC in the fifties, but no, it's just Elmo. It baffles me that there's no video for this. But that picture says it all, anyway. Most of my google searches for video led to articles complaining about the marginalised role that congress apparently plays in the governing of the U.S., but none of that seemed particularly shocking, though. The executive branch is pretty much the legislative branch as well? Doesn't that always happen? Whether you form your government based on a majority in the parliament or just elect a leader, there still the issue of some kind of support from the legislature. And most shocking, according to the academic papers, congress issues stupid laws that don't work in the real world, but sound good and then shoot down the executive branch for executing them in a cynical way? Have these guys even heard of politicians before?

British politics more or less resolved for indeterminate period

Well, there we are. Conservatives get to fix the economy in the most cynical way they can come up with, but the Liberal Democrats get their reforms. The only question now is how bad they'll allow it to get before bailing. Lack of experience with coalitions, the general malaise and the little or no hope of ideological change in the government mean this might not last until the end of the year, if it wasn't for the horrible state of the Labour party. There won't be a competent opposition, maybe not for years. But there is some hope that the old Labour will come back, the social democratic party so thoroughly destroyed by Tony Blair. That would make a difference, and if this coalition holds, it may mean a brighter future where one of the richest countries in Europe isn't also the most in Debt, or has the highest teen pregnancy rate, etc.

British Political analysts struggling with concept of coalition...

There's no cute video for this. Anyway, British political commentators are struggling to explain to the public their own weird historical mutant of election law, where everything is an ad hoc gentleman's agreement. Aside from the fact that the Prime minister has to decide when he calls for an election, there's the case of the hung parliament where the sitting government actually gets to decide who to talk to first. But the Liberal Democrats have decided not to do that, not in the least because they wouldn't have a majority, even with Labour, but they would, with the Conservatives. But then, the conservatives aren't going to offer the Lib Dems Proportional representation, Which is what they need if they're ever going to be a viable contender in the future. Britain has one the most heavily gerrymandered district systems in the world, which is why the Liberal Democrats have 8% of the seats, when they have 23% of the popular vote. If the Conservative-Liberal Democrat government doesn't make it, then there is little to no hope of a majority government, unless there's a truly bizarre rainbow coalition in the works. If there's anything this election's proved, it's that the Liberal Democrats are right, Britain needs a major election reform so it can have the governments it needs, not this shit. And all the ranting and raving about how coalition governments are rife with 'horse trading' are just so much nonsense. Contra-moral sellouts labeled as compromise are the very soul of politics, and whether you dither and argue with coalition partners or extremists and lunatics within your own party is completely irrelevant.

Gordon Brown reveals human side...

Classic stuff. This looks more like the kind of thing that would happen on Yes Minister or The thick of it, than in real life. If you haven't been following the British elections, you probably don't care, but it might be genuinely interesting this time, seeing as the Liberal Democrats, who have been the second party in the country for years, until recent tory resurgence, might be needed to get a majority, which paves the way for a possible reform of the two-party system and the end of almost 30 years of right to center right domination in British politics. Gordon Brown's unending string of mistakes, of which this is just the most recent, are damaging, but mostly make both him and the Tories look bad for some reason. David Cameron is just a bit to eager and falls over these mistakes a bit too soon each time, but he's also just as stiff and useless as Brown is in reality. Not that the Liberal Democrats are a fount of Charisma, but they manage to look human most of the time. A hot summer of elections and coalition negotiations up ahead..