Studies of underlying public opinion reveal a deep political
disillusionment.
A majority of people express opinions suggesting they view the
electoral process as a ‘charade’ - played out by large contributors,
party leaders and the advertizing and public relations industries,
with crafted role-playing candidates saying almost anything to get
themselves elected.
On most issues citizens cannot identify the precise policies of
parties and candidates - as probably intended by those involved
in the ‘political spin’ processes.
Issues in which popular opinions differ from mainstream ‘power
elite’ opinion are excluded from ‘political debate’ as reported in
the mainstream media.
Voters feel themselves directed to ‘personal qualities’ of candidates
rather than ‘issues’.
A majority of people feel themselves not to be truly ‘active citizens’,
but at best ‘powerless spectators’, at worst ‘passive victims’ - and
have little sense as to how they could be ‘empowered’.
What remains of ‘electoral democracy’ seems a ‘choice’ between
very similar ‘commodities’.
Noam Chomsky, in Hegemony Or Survival [2004], suggests this is
a quite deliberately and cynically contrived set-up:
‘Business leaders have long explained the need to impose on the
populations a “philosophy of futility” and “lack of purpose in life”
to “concentrate human attention on the more superficial things
that comprise much of fashionable consumption”. Deluged by such
propaganda f rom infancy, people may then accept their
meaningless and subordinated lives and forget ridiculous ideas
about managing their own affairs. They may abandon their fate
to corporate managers and the PR industry and, in the political
realm, to the self-described “intelligent minorities” who serve and
administer power. From this perspective, conventional in “elite”
opinion, the November 2000 elections did not reveal a flaw in US
democracy, but rather its triumph.’
The underlying thinking of modern ‘power elites’ is well illustrated
by some comments by Ron Suskind, an American journalist:
‘In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire
that the White House didn’t like ... I had a meeting with a senior
advizer to Bush ... he told me something that at that time I didn’t
fully comprehend - but which I now believe gets to the very heart
of the Bush presidency. The aide said that guys like me were ‘in
what we call the reality-based community’, which he defined as
people who ‘believe that solutions emerge from your judicious
study of discernible reality’. I nodded and murmured something
about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off.
‘That’s not the way the world really works any more,’ he continued.
‘We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.
And while you’re studying that reality - judiciously as you will -we’ll
act again, creating other new realities, which you can study
too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors ...
and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.’
In Britain, politics is often reduced to a ‘spectator event’ centring
on the Westminster Village ‘political drama’ - mostly trivial antics
of a few ‘significant players’.
While attention is focussed on such relatively trivial gossipy issues as
whether a priviliged public schoolboy potential prime minister smoked dope two decades ago (or what his wife looked like a decade ago in short skirt)
... etc etc etc ... the somewhat more serious issue of the replacement of
Trident is barely discussed at all.
Updating the Trident nuclear mass murder system will cost British
tax payers an estimated immediate £25 billion - while the overall
costs of maintaining Trident will be an estimated £75 billion more (recent estimates suggest £100 billion (= 100, 000, ooo, ooo = 1 followded by 11 noughts ...) ... or even more ...
Life or death choices.
Would £25 billion or more be better spent on a
mass murder weapons system? or to pay for 120,000 new nurses
each year for 10 years? or to pay for 60,000 new teachers each
year for 20 years?
One Trident warhead could wipe out a city of 1 million people.
The UK has 200 Trident warheads.Trident ties UK to US foreign
and military policy - and is essentially an American mass murder
system, not an ‘independent British nuclear deterrent’.
Trident replacement would violate the nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty - the very treaty the UK government is accusing North Korea
and Iran of ‘violating’.
Those of us trying to encourage any kind of serious debate of
this kind of serious issue often find ourselves faced by a
widespread sense of political ‘disillusionment’ and ‘disinterest’.
People seem resigned to their roles of ‘spectators or victims’ -and
the ‘power elite’ get away with scandalous abuses of power
on a huge scale - as if as a consequence ...
