Sleep Joe v Pussy Grabber
We flatter ourselves that we know
and/or understand the folks who have been elected to represent us.
In the end; they become caricatures based, usually, on our prejudices
and expectations. Still the idea that we know them persists. This is
a very human frailty. We are at heart a tribal species and research
shows us that, at most, we “connect” with about 150 people. On
the very personal level this number is much smaller with family,
close relatives and friends and work-related members dominating.
The Rule of 150 was coined by
British Anthropologist, Robin Dunbar, and is defined as the
“suggested cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one
can maintain stable social relationships and thus numbers larger than
this generally require more restrictive rules, laws, and enforced
norms …
This is fine until we get to,
“Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers
from the consent of the governed. '' In the USA and the UK to give
two examples with many millions of voters required to give consent to
be governed this inevitably leads to a disconnect between the
governed and the governors.
We therefore fall back on our
prejudices, our shared values, our history, our ethnicity, our
religious beliefs and many other fallible sources of context to make
our choices about who is to be elected. This in itself is not a
problem. The problem comes when we revert to our tribal past to make
judgements about how well, or no, the elected leaders are doing. We
revert to the tribal past so that we can use what is familiar to us
from our own experience to judge the leader’s performance by direct
evidence. He did this. He said this. He usurped my property, my
mate, or my gods. He is so bad that we need to leave the group and
start over. Not only is he a bad guy, but he is a bad guy because I
know him. He’s in my circle. I have first hand experience of his
bad behaviour or bad judgements; so I vote with my feet and leave and
that’s how, in a very large part, we came to populate the entire
planet.
Problem here is easy to define. We
don’t know Joe Biden, Donald Trump, Boris Johnson or, even say,
Vlad Putin, so we have to judge them by what we see or perceive to
see what they do and say.
What tools do we have to overcome the
inherent disconnect between the voters and the elected? In the past
we relied on the media - chiefly the print media - to provide us with
details of the policies a government might follow. Nowadays the
media has proliferated into realms our political leaders could have
once only dreamed of. The media is the message has now become the
media is the only message. And the message is almost always about
character.
In the 1980’s I was fond of what I
called the next-door neighbour test. Imagine the house next door was
sold to (in those days) Margaret Thatcher. Can you imagine living
next to Maggie? You’re in your garden and there she is looking
over at your undies on the washing line and tut-tut ing! Nightmare!
(incidentally, in those days despite the fact that she won a slew of
elections you could never find anyone who would admit to voting for
her) So who passes the Maggie Test today? Joe Biden? Not likely.
Vlad the Putin – never. Bonking Boris? He wins in and landslide.
He’s inviting you round for drinks or he’s in the local pub
buying everybody a drink! Boris wins hands down.
The transition of news from print,
television and radio to digital spaces has caused huge disruptions in
the traditional news industry, especially the print news industry. It
is also reflected in the ways individual Americans say they are
getting their news. A large majority of Americans get news at least
sometimes from digital devices, according to a Pew Research Center
survey conducted Aug. 31-Sept. 7, 2020.
The days of FDR’s fireside chats and
the Presidential news conference are largely gone.
Even the “great communicator”
Ronald Reagan would find it difficult today. Poor old Tricky Dick
lost the 1960 election, chiefly because the voters judged him hot,
sweaty and flustered at the debate with Kennedy.
This transition is not in itself a bad
thing. A multiplicity of news from a variety of sources could be a
good thing, but only if John Q Public is diligent enough to evaluate
not just the news but also the source. There is little evidence that
this is happening. The result is folks see something on their news
feed and just accept it, particularly if it reinforces their
prejudices.
Personally, if I see that a “story”
is from Fox News, or the New York Times I tend to gloss over it,
admittedly for completely different reasons, but gloss nevertheless.
I regret that most folks are not so discerning. Even more worrying
is the tendency for folks to stick to the media outlet that most
agrees with their already-formed prejudices. This is bad for
democracy.
A fairly simple example:
The
claim: Thomas Jefferson said giving to those who are not willing to
work endangers democracy
A Dec. 16
post
to the Facebook page for Save Southern Heritage and
History includes a statement about democracy allegedly written by
Founding Father Thomas Jefferson.
"The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those
who are willing to work and give to those who would not," says
the quote, which is credited to the nation's third president in a
meme.
Save Southern Heritage and History is a society and cultural website
that also posts conservative news and patriotic memes, according to
its Facebook profile
page.
USA TODAY reached out to the group for comment.
The statement has recent origins and has not been found in
Jefferson's catalog of writings.
I’m sure that “quotations” from liberal sources which purport
to “prove” that GW Bush was/is a racist or that Trump supported
Vlad the Putin through thick and thin could also be easily found.
We have, as a society, lost the art of critical thinking. We are not
questioning either our leaders or our news sources. We are allowing
falsehoods to profligate with impunity.
More recently from CNN
https://edition.cnn.com/2021/01/16/politics/fact-check-dale-top-15-donald-trump-lies/index.html
Lest we think that only one party/individual can play fast and loose
with the truth:
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2021/jun/25/joe-biden/joe-biden-gets-history-wrong-second-amendment-limi/
So, what are we to take from the lack of trustworthiness in our
political leaders?
Some folks may conclude that voting is just a waste of time. Some
may conclude that all politicians are alike and completely
untrustworthy. Some may be moved to grab a banner and march for
their chosen person/cause. Some may conclude that only violence is
able to effect real change and grab a gun!
I found this from Neil Fleming, whoever he is?
Do British people view the USA as a legendary country?
Absolutely. There’s lots of things you excel at and are world
leaders among developed nations.
Your lack of healthcare, dreadful employment laws, endemic racism,
lack of gun control, lack of social care, regular mass shootings,
lunatic creationists, conspiracy nuts, lack of paid vacation time,
expecting people to work for tips rather than a decent wage. Out of
control trigger- happy police. Ludicrously jingoistic warmongering
attitudes. A fear of anything mildly liberal. Terrible food
standards. The death penalty. An utterly corrupt political system.
And all the gun toting, right wing, bible thumping republicans who
think all of the above is acceptable.
This
theme is not just historical: It was reported
on 5 April that Matteo Salvini, leader of Italy’s League Party
(formerly the Northern League) and the country’s controversial
deputy prime minister, has invited leaders of other European radical
right parties to a conference in Milan, scheduled for 8 April.
Salvini’s aim, according to the Guardian, is to create a bloc of
right-wing populists which extends beyond the Europe of Nations and
Freedom group in the European Parliament. With 36 seats, ENF is the
smallest grouping in the parliament and Salvini is clearly aiming to
create something grander.
What
are his chances of success? Perhaps his biggest prize would be to
attract Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s far-right prime minister, who has
(still) not been ejected from the centre-right European People’s
Party grouping in the European Parliament, despite having been
censored for his attempts to push Hungary in an authoritarian
direction (or as he styles it, ‘illiberal democracy’).
Although
Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) has confirmed it is
sending a representative, Marine Le Pen of France’s National Front
has said she will not be attending. Le Pen herself hosted a similar
meeting in Nice in 2018, at which Geert Wilders from the Dutch Party
for Freedom and several other influential radical right speakers were
present, an event which indicated how hard it has been to create a
pan-European radical right bloc.
Glorifying
the nation
This
should not surprise us. At the root of radical right ideology is a
glorification of the nation, a narrative of exceptionalism and
superiority that inevitably puts like-minded nationalists from
different countries at odds with one another. It is one thing to
drive across a European border to a secret location to attend a blood
and honour gig; creating a fully collaborative pan-European radical
right quite another challenge.
As
David Barnes recently wrote, narratives of European civilization have
been both common and hard to sustain; Oswald Mosley’s post-World
War II argument in favour of ‘Europe – A Nation’, which shares
many similarities with today’s anti-immigrant discourses promoted
by the likes of Salvini, found few takers, despite the fact that a
notion of Europe having a homogeneous racial and cultural background
was widely held across the continent’s radical right movements.
Besides,
in today’s Europe, when some radical right leaders such as Salvini
praise the Russians and share the Kremlin’s desire to destabilise
the European Union, others, such as Poland’s Jarosław Kaczyński
and the Law and Justice Party – despite sharing Salvini’s aim to
break the ‘Germany-France axis’ in Europe – come from a very
different perspective, that of Poland’s traditional suspicion of
Russia.
And
where some, such as Geert Wilders and, to some extent, his new rival
Thierry Baudet of the Forum for Democracy – whose penchant for
highfalutin verbiage has already become notorious – talk of
defending European freedom in the face of a supposed Islamist
advance, others, such as Orbán and Le Pen, are more socially
conservative.
Even
if Europe’s radical right leaders share certain fundamental ideas,
however, such as a belief in the need to defend the ‘white race’,
a hatred of Islam, a desire to stop immigration, and a basic
ultra-nationalist position, it is hard to see how the clash of
nationalisms that conferences such as Salvini’s will expose can
survive the experience.
Indeed,
we have been here before. During the interwar period, attempts to
create a ‘fascist international’ were set in motion on several
occasions. Historians who have recently conducted research into
‘transnational fascism’ – such as Federico Finchelstein,
Aristotle Kallis or Arnd Bauerkämper – have shown the extent to
which fascist ideas and personnel criss-crossed the continent of
Europe and beyond (to the Americas, for example), so that fascist
ideology and practice were often shared.
Examples
might be fascist aesthetics, racial ideology, or training camps.
Fascist leaders such as Mosley or Coreneliu Codreanu were inspired by
and devoted to Mussolini. And Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany
established an uneasy alliance. But the analysis can only take us so
far, before it becomes clear that such collaborations might have been
set in motion but could not be sustained, as the different groups
with their rival nationalisms ran aground on the rocks of mutual
suspicion.
Finding
alternative idea-mongers in Europe is less easy. Traditional left
wing parties in the UK and on the continent are, despite the fear
generated by conservatives, are definitely in retreat. More
right-wing parties are on the up.
Take,
for example, Bonking Boris and the British Conservative Party.
Despite the left-wing rant from Neil Fleming, the UK public like
Boris and his policies. The voted for him in droves at the last
election and in spite of his recent problems with Party-gate they
still generally support his government. This may change with the
resolution of the Ukraine conflict, but there are no guarantees.
It
is interesting to note that many political leaders have managed to
survive scandals. Ronnie Reagan springs to mind. When push comes to
shove it seems the voters will forgive peccadilloes
and poor judgement calls far easier than the commentariat.
Perhaps
the most glaring obfuscation here is the
old adage: I hate to be an I Told You So. Actually, we all
love to be an I told you so. We are never happier than when we are
sure that we have the inside track on our fellow man, have the
winning combination at the gambling tables, have all the answers
whilst others are scrabbling around in the
dark, have cracked the code whilst others are just dim-witted morons.
I
conclusion: the incessant labelling as either right or left wing
ideas and policies has very little effect on the average voter. It
does tend to consolidate the support for leaders who need a secure
base from which to launch a bid for political power. It
encourages a volume
of poor thinking from both sides. It adds nothing to political
debate. It encourages
the kind
of mental agility that Dr Paul
Joseph Goebbels
would have been very
proud of indeed.
