Practically every Western State of any eminence is currently suffering from politics that are divisive – rather than just showing where the division lines are. All of them are run by a political Establishment that hasn’t renewed itself for decades. And most of them are being run by Coalitions.
While this is an obvious thing to remark, we still need a convincing explanation for it. I think I have one – I think most sites like this one share it to one extent or another – but so far the ‘conclusion’ about how we are ruled in the 21st century (and why it doesn’t work) has failed to break out into the depoliticised mass market.
The following are ‘democratic’ States I would describe as capable of having a massive influence on the economy and money-transmission systems of planet Earth: the Unites States (sheer size), the United Kingdom (banking centre), France (bulwark against Merkelism), Australia (raw materials), and Greece (raw materials and financial contagion).
They are all divided right down the middle between the hypocritical and meaningless divisions of Left and Right. And they all have small oligarchies running that show who – because they protect their positions – utterly fail to represent their constituencies at large. Republican, Democrat, Labour Party, Conservatives, UMP, Socialists, Labor, Liberals, and PASOK, New Democracy. The people they represent – all of them – are the people with the kind of money, organisation, and communicatory power to make a difference to opinion generally, and elections in particular: globalist multinationals, banks, media conglomerates, Internet Service Providers, and bureaucrats.
What have we discoverdd since 2008 about the way these people are treated by government? Well, large global concerns pay on average a third of the tax rate enjoyed by the rest of us; banks that lost money through their own reckless stupidity have been bailed out by the rest of us, and starved the businesses of the rest of us; media conglomerate crime has been protected by both legislators and policemen in their pay; ISPs provide risible service, and carte blanche to close down, ban, ignore and even demonise users; and in the UK especially, bureaucrats have enriched themselves at the expense of the public purse to the tune of £1.3 trillion in pension obligations.
This is the human ‘tribal power’ model of social anthropology: four or five key families with the alpha genes tolerate the Chief and constantly compete to replace him, while the rest of the tribe or ‘pack’ are kept reasonably well fed and distracted….and thus happy with their lot.
The also-rans of higher animal species beyond Homo sapiens do introspect: but rarely to the point of influencing very much in terms of the pecking order. Humanity is different because it has language, printing, and sophisticated media for communication. Thus, to go all Geithner for a second, ideas can be leveraged. If one columnist invents a phrase or word – like Sloane Rangers or Yuppies – 300 million people will know about it within a short time. What the internet has done is reduce that time from years to hours.
This gives ISPs enormous power to select and censor information, and that in turn attracts the envy of the security services – organisations set up to ‘defend the State’ – by which they mean ‘protect the oligarchy’. Once the oligarchy is so unassailable as to keep any intruders out, it becomes stale, smug, mediocre…and incompetent. The vicious circle now comes into play, for the more process-driven, fruitless and incompetently administered Establishment policies are, the more ordinary voters and taxpayers become angry. They therefore have to be watched via surveillance cameras and £13bn GCHQ digital monitoring programmes 24/7.
Thus one tiny group gets infallible protection, and the 93% get the crumbs. To rationalise that reality, wombats like Milt Friedman come along and explain how this is the only way to create wealth. But no matter what degree of bollocks is applied to the attempt to make red green and up down, the practice of The Law is the obvious giveaway.
So it is that after getting on for 500 days of Hackgate, not a single Newscorp, police or government apparatchik has been so much as placed in an official dock…let alone tried. But when those at the bottom – badly parented thanks to mad social engineers, and rejected by the accountancy model of capitalist social responsibility – decide to torch neighbourhoods and steal things they’ve been told they should aspire to, 3,420 miscreants get caught, tried and imprisoned within weeks. (And of course, the media point out how far-Left elements were working these poor stupid people from behind. Which they are…but why does that excuse exclusion? It’s a result of exclusion isn’t it?)
Why does any of this matter? For one thing, in Greece it has started to break down. Over the last ten days, young voters there have have realised that they can defy the self-interested 3%. The Greek and Brussels oligarchies have in turn seen this happening – indeed, spied upon its occurrence – and, I remain convinced, will do whatever they can to derail its progress.
It matters in America, where the self-appointed elite let a tame black man into the White House. Their antidote for this empty suit is Mitt Romney. It matters in the UK, where a Prime Minister who has lied to Parliament on several occasions now tries to defend a slimey careerist on grounds so illogically ridiculous, the media barely know where to start in deconstructing it. It matters in France, where (having torpedoed one opponent) the Sarkozyistes are now busily engaging the services of bankers and Germans to demonise the new challenger. (They needn’t worry: Hollande is not exactly a game-changer in my book). And it matters in Australia, where the truly appalling Labour Stateist Julia Gillard came to power and stays there on the basis of a grubby agreement with mining conglomerates.
But above all, it matters because these clowns are in power to do as they’re told, not to address the profound problems facing their respective nations.
America’s debt, and sociopathic banker elite, are driving the country towards inevitable ruin. The weakness of its banks and dependence upon an imploding EU make the UK a hugely vulnerable nation in turn saddled with gigantic debt. France is a nation suffering a crisis of identity, an increasingly bellicose neighbour, wasteful bureauracy and perhaps Europe’s biggest exposure to Greek default. Greece finds itself surrounded by malign forces ranging from the Troikanauts to Recep Erdogan. And Australia has an overdependence on mining exports to China – coupled with a frigthening property bubble – that will give it, in time, the sort of economic and fiscal descent to make Greece’s demise look like a gradual incline.
My soundbite tonight is this: the faster the descent, the greater the dissent. As the Greek tragedy also befalls first Spain, then France and finally us here in the UK, then – when they are hit with a vicious right-hook in the pocket – the sofa dwellers will finally rise up and o something.
But my recurring fear is that they will go for somebody horrible with a nice line in “Let me take you away from all this”.
The Slog 