So let's assume we wipe'm out. Then what?
Hello, my astroturf-munching grasshoppers freedom loving worshipers of liberty & democracy! Here's an interesting excerpt from a conversation. "The morons who think protesting is a better use of their time". -- I heard that line recently. (Really? Can you "hear" a line? Anyway). The whoever-said-that made an interesting point, actually. A while ago I praised my awakening compatriots who are pissed at everything - the guvmint, the political class, the bureaucratic institutions, everything - and are now expressing it on the streets. Maybe they'd manage to bring their protests far enough to change something, anything, this time. Maybe not.
I'm hearing some voices going as far as urging for a kind of a "civil war" of the lower-than-grass masses against the arrogant, overweening elite who won't "Get *it*(TM)" and listen to the People. And I say to myself, "Really? Civil war? You're going there?" But obviously there are people who believe this crap and they believe it's a viable way of changing their predicament (even more hilariously, changing it to the better - can you imagine!?) So let me play my schizophrenic other side here for a while, and argue with the Me who wrote the above-linked post, and dig a bit further into this.
Direct quote from elsewhere (rough translation mine): "A war against the government would spare us a few more years of agony and misery. Let's wipe'm out! The whole political class!!!"
First reaction: what, just a FEW years? Then what?
But fine, fine. I'll play a bit more srsly here. So... first question. Aren't we forgetting something? The fact that politicians emerge from among us. The People(TM). (Capital P because I respect the People sooo so much). Fact: many of us are entering politics and become the scum that politicians are, having realized that this is a viable alternative to actually working a decent job; and a nice option and a way to make a fortune, to build some links and all in all, achieve self-betterment (screw the rest!)
So... shouldn't that Change We Can Believe In, actually start from ourselves, first and foremost? Because, let's say we "wipe'm out", all of Them, as the proposition says. And who'll occupy "their" place on the next minute after they're out? The same Scum(TM). If not even hungrier and more desperate to make a fortune and build links that would then bring them self-betterment. After all, which one of us wouldn't have that thought crossing their mind at some point, while on the path into politics? "Let me just get elected and arrange my life, the rest will naturally follow". Isn't that how the Political Class(TM) makes new recruitments? Isn't this how its ranks get filled with new fresh Scum(TM)?
So, the whole situation looks very much like this: You're laid on the surgeon table at the Emergency in hospital, and you're being told you'll have to get one of your legs amputated. But don't you worry, you'll have a new one growing in its place because you're a political chameleon, and lizards grow new limbs, no problem. Except, your new leg will suffer from the same malfunctions that were inherent to your previous one. You're just putting the problem away for a later time, when it could be even worse than today, but don't you worry, let's cut it now, we can think about the implications later.
Stupid metaphor, I know. OK, next talking point I'm hearing these days: "If anything, after a good nice old-style civil war*, the politicians will have at least taken the point and the People will have woken up!"
That's nice, but you can't guarantee that. There's no guarantee that the next cycle won't be the same like the previous one. Not that it hasn't happened here before. For me the REAL, deep Change(TM) can't be done overnight. And neither through an abrupt cataclysm (unless it's a result of tensions that have been piling over a long time, which in fact is not a sudden event but, again, a long and gradual process whose final expression is some drastic cataclysmic social event). Basically, drastic events happening overnight only tend to lead to toppling the status quo and quickly establishing a new status quo, which, when you think about it, would most probably carry the features of the previous one. Only the main players will have changed, and some of the slogans. The history of this part of the world (East Europe) tells us many stories of exactly this.
It's just too easy to imagine that some extreme event would change everything with a magic wand. And so we find it too easy to forget that, in fact, good nice lasting changes are not an event - they're rather a process. They happen slowly, very slowly. With lots of gradual, painful efforts. The more conscious the effort (as opposed to spontaneous and chaotic), the better and more profound the results. It's done with lots of blood and tears, and sweat. Metaphorically. Not through the chopping of some heads and rolling them down the street beside the guillotine. This time literally.
____________
* except, you can't make an old-style civil war in the lack of guns throughout the populace; which, by the way, I suspect is the sole reason that there haven't been any heads cracked open yet, and no chests punctured by bullets (water cannons can be a bit annoying, but on the upside, it's still near +30'C outside)... but I digress.
I'm hearing some voices going as far as urging for a kind of a "civil war" of the lower-than-grass masses against the arrogant, overweening elite who won't "Get *it*(TM)" and listen to the People. And I say to myself, "Really? Civil war? You're going there?" But obviously there are people who believe this crap and they believe it's a viable way of changing their predicament (even more hilariously, changing it to the better - can you imagine!?) So let me play my schizophrenic other side here for a while, and argue with the Me who wrote the above-linked post, and dig a bit further into this.
Direct quote from elsewhere (rough translation mine): "A war against the government would spare us a few more years of agony and misery. Let's wipe'm out! The whole political class!!!"
First reaction: what, just a FEW years? Then what?
But fine, fine. I'll play a bit more srsly here. So... first question. Aren't we forgetting something? The fact that politicians emerge from among us. The People(TM). (Capital P because I respect the People sooo so much). Fact: many of us are entering politics and become the scum that politicians are, having realized that this is a viable alternative to actually working a decent job; and a nice option and a way to make a fortune, to build some links and all in all, achieve self-betterment (screw the rest!)
So... shouldn't that Change We Can Believe In, actually start from ourselves, first and foremost? Because, let's say we "wipe'm out", all of Them, as the proposition says. And who'll occupy "their" place on the next minute after they're out? The same Scum(TM). If not even hungrier and more desperate to make a fortune and build links that would then bring them self-betterment. After all, which one of us wouldn't have that thought crossing their mind at some point, while on the path into politics? "Let me just get elected and arrange my life, the rest will naturally follow". Isn't that how the Political Class(TM) makes new recruitments? Isn't this how its ranks get filled with new fresh Scum(TM)?
So, the whole situation looks very much like this: You're laid on the surgeon table at the Emergency in hospital, and you're being told you'll have to get one of your legs amputated. But don't you worry, you'll have a new one growing in its place because you're a political chameleon, and lizards grow new limbs, no problem. Except, your new leg will suffer from the same malfunctions that were inherent to your previous one. You're just putting the problem away for a later time, when it could be even worse than today, but don't you worry, let's cut it now, we can think about the implications later.
Stupid metaphor, I know. OK, next talking point I'm hearing these days: "If anything, after a good nice old-style civil war*, the politicians will have at least taken the point and the People will have woken up!"
That's nice, but you can't guarantee that. There's no guarantee that the next cycle won't be the same like the previous one. Not that it hasn't happened here before. For me the REAL, deep Change(TM) can't be done overnight. And neither through an abrupt cataclysm (unless it's a result of tensions that have been piling over a long time, which in fact is not a sudden event but, again, a long and gradual process whose final expression is some drastic cataclysmic social event). Basically, drastic events happening overnight only tend to lead to toppling the status quo and quickly establishing a new status quo, which, when you think about it, would most probably carry the features of the previous one. Only the main players will have changed, and some of the slogans. The history of this part of the world (East Europe) tells us many stories of exactly this.
It's just too easy to imagine that some extreme event would change everything with a magic wand. And so we find it too easy to forget that, in fact, good nice lasting changes are not an event - they're rather a process. They happen slowly, very slowly. With lots of gradual, painful efforts. The more conscious the effort (as opposed to spontaneous and chaotic), the better and more profound the results. It's done with lots of blood and tears, and sweat. Metaphorically. Not through the chopping of some heads and rolling them down the street beside the guillotine. This time literally.
____________
* except, you can't make an old-style civil war in the lack of guns throughout the populace; which, by the way, I suspect is the sole reason that there haven't been any heads cracked open yet, and no chests punctured by bullets (water cannons can be a bit annoying, but on the upside, it's still near +30'C outside)... but I digress.