Politikverdrossenheit
Dolefulness of politics
A small group of experts had been asked to guess the weight of a horse. Then it was asked to a bigger random group of amateurs to guess the weight of that same horse. In the end they did an average of those guesses. The amateurs - in average - were more closely guessing the effective weight than the experts. An example to say that the people isn't necessarily stupid, that there is wisdom in the masses that can't be arrogantly ignored and that there is error in the opinion of experts that can't be arrogantly ignored neither. Can you apply the same logic to democracies?
You might say the contrary example exists in real politics were the people voted for Hitler, a racist antisemite with megalomaniac delusions. True. The masses voted him to power. The majority. And nothing prevents them from doing the same error again. The Americans voted for Donald Trump, to cite just one of the many rather populist leaders elected since World War 2. He hasn't started a war unlike most late American presidents, to be fair, but he proves that populism still works, as I feared and which was back in 2o12 one of the motivations for this collection of essays, didn't I expect a populist in a western nation to be so elegantly unelected, as M. Blocher got kicked out from government in Switzerland.
The people in many places is still naive when it comes to politics. I heard a few times of politicians handing out bread to poor people in the developing world so they elect them. The populist is the clown in public who is as simple as the people, that is driven by prejudice and a rebellish intolerance, with the goal to fetch their sympathy votes. And the populist is as smart and loyal to the rich elite in private, so as to get their financial support in the election campaign. A pure hypocrite who plays his or her connections in the media - who thrive on populism - as for them to discredit by all means the contender from the other side and there they go : elected.
If it's not enough, the populist uses his connections in the military - who knows a populist will serve them well once elected - to get rid in more inhumane way of the opponent. Many examples exist as well, especially in Latin America, where the leaders and the supporters of the opposition have been murdered in more or less obvious ways or otherwise excluded from becoming president or elected parliamentarians or judges.
The difference from today's populists to Hitler is that they don't want to go for world power for their nation, the creation of a global empire, at least not directly. What seems the same is that they feel special and chosen by the universe, just like Hitler. They portray themselves as martyrs in a world dominated by an elite. The same elite they will want to serve to be re-elected. Indeed, in my delusions it seems today's autocratic populists dream of the elite to install a two-class society with untouchable global rich at the top and the poor plebs at the bottom : a homogenous global empire. And a recipe for many oppressed uprisings.
The populists have many helpers, be it small-time traffickers who just want to be able to continue to corrupt the police so they can continue make a living as dealers and who such perenate the incapacity of the state to guarantee the rule of law. Or be it the lawyers who in all goodwill write laws and regulations who by their complexity favour in the end big business over small business. Yes, the elite is still believing in the dogma of economies of scale to be beneficiary in the end to all the people, but when?
I'm not so sure about the timetable of those populists and their rich friends who of course can wait a hundred years for the poor to escape poverty. Often they think because they have made it, everybody can make it, forgetting that not everyone can be a billionaire or president, resources scarce being. Luck played in their favors and they don't want to believe it but build a myth of merit around their own success, divide the world in losers and winners, and try to shape their country accordingly, forgetting that it isn't everybody's dream to end up filthy rich or president, because yes, there is a price to pay for such endeavour, for instance refusing others to get rich, or much worse. Yes, some don't know any scruple in getting rich or getting to power: they kill for it. When it started so civilized, only with a little defamation or a small round of harassment to win just that little bit of luck that was lacking and then...
And then in this corrupt world, no wonder we see a huge amount of dolefulness amongst large groups of people everywhere when it comes to politics. They have stopped believing in the good of democracy and believe the leaders anyway do what they want without listening to the real concerns of the people. A populist is the more dangerous because he portrays himself as listening to them by introducing laws that don't hurt the rich and - if we're honest - don't really profit the poor, but intelligent as those corrupt presidents are, they know how to write the media story to sell as if the world is going to change for the poor with these laws.
This further reinforces the dolefulness amongst those groups who can't believe the majority of the people is so naive to believe in the goodwill of the populist leader, causing them to refuse to go vote, either out of naivety believing their refusal is a sign strong enough to be heard, or just because often the other choice isn't less corrupt, resulting in the populist being re-elected without needing to rig the elections or kill his opponent. In the end, the frustration of being part of a nation who elects a populist refusing basic human rights causes the intelligent, critique and determined citizens - what would be the wise and appreciated leaders, first targets of a delusional president - to lose their hope pushing them to try their luck by emigrating, reinforcing the vicious circle of a poor plebs electing a populist who only serves the rich elite, who pays the parliament to refuse political education so that the plebs stays politically naive, eternizing this corrupt or neo-aristocratic game of power.
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26-april-2o2o
