August 5, 2008
The People
I agree with most politicians that the people (that’s you and me as well) tend to be stupid. Hey, look around you and keep your eyes open this time, and we all keep on voting (on the same parties!) hoping that our votes will change something, don’t we? Naivity is a form of stupidity too. I don’t mean to insult you (I already know that not all people are stupid(I refer to myself <g>), just most of you – I refer to the idiots mentioned in earlier posts)
Now, when a politician speaks about the people, they always refer to this mythical entity which exists only in their ideology. Take for example, the millennium objectives – those are (all noble in themselves) objectives which, according to the radio commercials, we set. Like banning poverty. I didn’t know I set that objective! But when a politician decides that we the people want something (read: they want it) then he’s going to blame us when we didn’t fight hardenough to achive it. Just you wait and see, we’ll get the blame for all those fancy objectives not being met.
The death of Aleksander Solzhenytsin made me think of another great example: Soviet communism. It was the worker’s paradise, and by golly, Stalin had the unfallible vision of how to achieve it. Anyone who dared to protest it, was in for trouble. Enemy of the people! Stalin wasn’t angry that you protested againsthis plans, but that you protested against the obviously only course to well being for the people.
Manufacturing consent? « They are here! said,
August 12, 2008 at 12:11 pm
[...] Looking at how many people are disgruntled with the course of politics (and have been for quite a while), it both leads to the conclusion that democracy has gone wrong (all those disgruntled people keep voting for the sameparties they have voted forfor years on end. Golly, and nothing changes? Why would that be? Rebel in the only way you can in a parliamentary democracy: invalidate your vote. If you don’t vote, in effect your vote goes to the winner, as you’ve done nothing to influence the (im-) balance of votes. Invalidating your vote wihll still make it count, but it’s a blank; you haven’t assigned it to any party, thereby indicating that none of the parties in the ellection have your confidence. You can vote for fringe parties, which is admittedly tempting, but not necessarily good. If their opinions differ too much from the political mainstream (which keeps flowing in one and the same diection ergardless of election outcome) they’ll only be ignored or even boo’ed at when they’re speaking. or they’ll be shot dead. Anyway, the public’s view of them will be influenced by those in power, giving them a very black and white image, and of course twisting the truths is a popular tool to influence the people. [...]