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November 10, 2005
Terror-fying
"The most common sort of lie is the one uttered to one's self; to lie to others is relatively exceptional. Now this refusal to see what one sees, this refusal to see a thing exactly as one sees it, is almost the first condition for all those who belong to a party in any sense whatsoever: the man who belongs to a party perforce becomes a liar." — Friedrich Nietzsche, The Antichrist
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." —C.S. Lewis, In Freedom
Party politics has always confused me. I understand the need for parties as a central pool of funding, without which we couldn't have elections in the sense that we've come to know and ignore them. I also understand the social aspect—the need to have one's views re-affirmed by others of a similar ilk, that the group may together go some way to escaping the scary prospect of floundering around lost in a world without meaning. It drives all of us in all our actions. Got it. Bit pathetic maybe, but at least understandable.
Where it all starts to go a bit hazy for me is when the petty politicking becomes engulfing, swallowing up any last semblance of sensible, or, god forbid, independent, thought that may be remaining in long-forgotten vestiges of minds long since suppressed by dark and mysterious forces.
Despite projecting a general sense of disdain onto all the stupidity that squabbles and scratches about me, I have always liked to believe that there is only so far this insanity can stretch; that there comes a point when even the collected masses simply must take a step back and ask 'Why?'
However, like Bertie Russell, who saw his faith in the ultimate sanity of the people as possibly the gravest error of his long and admirable life, I'm having serious doubts.
"Hence it is evident that the state is a creation of nature, and that man is by nature a political animal." —Aristotle, The Politics, Book One
No arguments here. Aristotle was, on the whole, a sensible chap, and that states and subsequently politics are born out of human nature is fairly indisputable. Sadly, just as history confirms the veracity of famous-to-the-point-of-cliché snippets of Ancient Greek thought, it also suggests that we're not only 'political animals' in the sense of spontaneously forming well-ordered societies for mutually-beneficial purposes but also in the much more malevolent sense of forming groups to vent the various antagonisms that swell up out of inherent human fears and insecurities onto others, such that we may feel more justified in our individual existence.
Before this gets too theoretical, and thus stops flirting and starts making out with the 5,000 word mark, it's time to hammer a few nails into the ground of the here and now. And no one likes to hammer things as much as our Polly, commenting on the allegedly gloomy aftermath of last night's backbench rebellion. (my emphasis)
Those on the centre-left who wish at all costs to keep Labour in office and to keep the Tories at bay should take a deep breath before wishing that power tumbles away from Tony Blair and his government in a helter-skelter panic of Westminster hysteria.
If Labour peeps don't want the Tories in because they believe bad laws will follow, fair enough, it's a noble aim. But when this is secured at the cost of passing, erm, bad laws, is this a victory? Bollocks is it. It's not even a Pyrrhic one. How crap do Labour have to get before their die-hard supporters finally give it up? The sad truth is that for some of them, it's never. Ideological blindness is bad at the best of times, but when it's based on a now-defunct ideology, it's positively pathetic.
It reminds me of Hamza in The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie:
"More than anything in the world, I hate admitting that my enemies have a point. Damn sight better to kill the bastards, I've always thought. Neatest bloody solution."
Being wrong not only sucks, for way too many people it can be earth-shattering. Far be it for me to impinge on this life-giving elixir, but in the context of politics, it can't make for especially good governance. But so long as Seneca's assertion that "every man prefers belief to the exercise of judgement" holds true, good governance will remain as fanciful as Southampton winning the European Cup.
This is not an isolated incident. Electoral reform has been battling the violent excretions of this diseased morass since man discovered how much fun it was to claim almighty power and use it to kick the mere mortals around for shits and giggles.
As Boris says, in the middle of an exquisite article even by his stratospheric standards:
"it was a bad measure, ill-thought-out, and had nothing to do with security, and everything to do with party politics."
Yet how many of those decrying the absurdity of the 90 days Bill, and all those Bills of similarly towering levels of crack-pot reactionary nonsense that have gone before will die defending the noble aims of their beloved party, never seeing how the nobility never existed, except in thin strips of cloud-like dreams, ready to be blown away by the slightest breeze? How many would blindly back a policy which were it to be announced by 'the other side' would have them hurriedly scribbling to their paper of choice in despair and disgust? How many people will be positively offended by reading the good Doctor this morning:
"I don’t care if it puts me on the same side as the Tories. I would far sooner support them than the authoritarian twunts in government and the Labour members that give them the benefit of the doubt time and time again, when any doubt that remained disappeared long ago."
If only we could all see this in a similar way to Armando Iannucci. Trust the satirists people, it's always far better to hold someone up to derision than to obloquy.
But no. Seeing clearly requires abandoning the comforting choke of the party-political fog. We only need to go back to Polly and see that, in terms of the future, the talk is not about doing things better once Blair has departed, but instead ensuring "a smooth transition of power".
Is that what it's really all about?
Clearly it would be folly to ignore the power impulses that shape politics (and to some extent created it in the first place), but it is all too easy to get lost in this rancorous cloud, to completely lose sight of what it is one is actually doing. Is the aim purely a Machiavellian maintenance of position? Is this an end in itself? And if so, is it a worthwhile one? Somewhere along the line, someone has lost it big time. It's not shocking; it's happened a thousand times before, of course, and in many respects it's inevitable. But an air of inevitability doesn't mean it has to be like this; there is scope for getting back on track, whatever and wherever that mystical track may be. There may be no nirvana, no Eden, no utopia, but there might be a slightly more habitable swamp.
If only the bastards in charge and their precious minions could see through the maelstrom and find out where the damn thing is.
UPDATE: (11/11) (from Simon Hoggart)
[One Labour MP] said he had regretfully voted for 90 days because he couldn't vote in the same lobby as "the [first bad word again]ing Tories". Many survivors of the old international brigade in the class war feel the same way.
Grow the [bad word] up.
Posted by pauldavies on November 10, 2005
