Trying to figure out WTF is going on
Is he talking about a political party, or a football team? It's hard to tell. The language is the same. The attitude is the same. It's all about the winning. It's all about his team versus the other team and which is victorious on match/polling day. Politics is the management of power relationships. Electoral politics is supposed to be a contest of ideas about how power relationships are managed. A battle of lofty ideals and grand schemes. Aspiration versus aspiration. Credibility versus credibility. It has ceased to be about any of these things and has become instead an unseemly, unedifying, unproductive squabble over the trappings of power and the rewards of public office. Our politics has become a matter of how to acquire power, not how to use it. Witness Sir Keir Starmer's British Labour Party. The matter of how power was to be used had so little significance that he was able to promise to use it in one way only to use it in an entirely different way once he had it. But his is only the most blatant example. Other politicians are just mini-me Starmers. Other parties are just as obsessed with having the title and all it entails and just as little interested in how that power might be used to effect positive change in anything other than their own status. Starmer talks as if he is the manager of a football team. Football team managers are never required to say what they will do with the trophy after they've won it. They would be baffled if asked what they would do with their new status. It is all and only about the winning of that status. The concept of using it in some definable way doesn't even exist. That concept doesn't exist for Sarwar either. Or it least, it is not a concept to which he gives much consideration. When asked what he might do with political power he responds with glittering generalities and scripted soundbites. You'll rarely pin a politician down to a specific, concrete commitment. And if you do, it will all but certainly be insincere and subject to so many conditions as to render it meaningless. When we vote for the likes of Sarwar - in whatever party - we are voting for an illusion. The same kind of illusion as is used to sell cars and toothpaste and celebrities and the latest fashion or food fad. They have to capacity to seem to be whatever is expedient in any situation. They are all chasing the same consumers, so inevitably they converge on the illusion which has optimum appeal. They end up looking and sounding the same. What passes for political acumen these days is the ability to tweak that illusion in such a way as to make yourself appear different from the herd. Look at Nigel Farage. Look at Donald Trump. Their only political talent is their ability to stand out in a gallery of clones. But it's just more illusion. There is no substance there. There is no difference. Politicians and their clients do not fear the people. They do not respect the people. They do not attend to the people, nor do they serve the people. People have no power. Various cliques have usurped that power. It was easy to take that power from the people because the people ceased to use it. They were diverted. Power unused does not evaporate. Power unused goes by default to those who most want it for their own purposes. Nothing will change until people take back the power they can only have in combination. Nothing will change until the politicians fear the people more than they fear the interests they have come to serve. Politicians are parasites. Which is not necessarily an insult. Ideally, they have a parasitical relationship with the people, inasmuch as they derive their power from the people in combination. In our reality, the political caste derives their power from a source which has come to be known as the 1%. All they get from the people is their votes as individuals. And those are easily bought. All it takes is the right illusion. For Scotland, liberation will remain nought but a beautiful dream until our politicians and political parties fear the people of Scotland more than they fear the British ruling elite. They will fear the people only when we combine in a demonstration of our strength. Presently, there is nothing to indicate that this is even a possibility. You're currently a free subscriber to Peter A Bell. For the full experience, upgrade your subscription.
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Tuesday, 22 April 2025
Vote illusion!
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