In the Observer this weekend, David Mitchell (the comedian/actor/smartypants) wrote on the hypocrisy of we – the public – expecting our politicians to provide us with the luxurious standard of life we have become used to, whilst simultaneously demanding them to do so without sullying our high ethical standards. It was a pretty cynical, bleak article (I normally love David’s wry way with words and ability to cut to an interesting point, but I thought this was an unusually apathetic one, for him) and I felt it touched on one of my personal favourite arguments, so I posted a comment which I’m now copying here, in case it’s of interest to anyone. Might be worth reading the original article first, though.
Nice cheerful article this weekend, David… Winter blues?
“When there’s a controversial war, some nice, middle-class people go on an organised weekend stroll. When petrol is too expensive, lorry drivers blockade the major roads and the country grinds to a halt. Our leaders would have to be fools to take the former more seriously than the latter.”
Valid point, but it seems to scratch the surface of a much broader problem – political disenfranchisement. The nice, middle-class people who organise the weekend strolls are the only ones left who think the electorate can (or indeed should) effect political change – the wealthier elite certainly don’t, and the working classes aren’t interested (as long as their boys go to war in titanium safety bubbles with super-missiles to kill any nasty enemies who dare to fire at them, who cares who they’re killing? a job’s a job). Petrol prices are one of the only remaining political indicators which remain tangible to nearly everyone, so when they become prohibitively high, inevitably more people are mobilised to take more drastic action to press the government to address them. Plus, historically, blockading roads with lorries achieves results while weekend strolls just make a bit of a mess, so a majority of people consider themselves to have better ways to occupy their time.
Your flatmate’s point about the washing machine simply illustrates that fact that consumerism is more central to our culture than democracy. Is that just pragmatism, or a corruption of the kind of society we like to think we live in? Communism’s an over-zealous solution to the ‘problem’, and full-blown-socialism isn’t much better (not that a socialist party would ever be elected in such a climate – one mention of the word ‘tax’ and all but a brave few would take their votes elsewhere), but I do feel there’s room for an expansion (and – not wishing to sound too flippant – democratisation) of democracy.
Open it up. Make the MPs represent their constituents, make the constituents express their views through regular local referendums on key topics. Remove the oligarchical political party system, thereby leaving power in the hands of the populace. Invest in more accessible, more informative politics programming, and technological infrastructure to enable people to vote the way they do for reality TV (only, y’know, without the fear of vote-tampering).
By making our politics OUR politics, you eliminate the hypocrisy, and force people to confront their own selfishness. Empowering the populace will raise awareness (the most commonly-cited reason for political apathy is: “It don’t change nuffink, does it?”) which may (or may not, but at least on our heads it will be, not those of a bunch of well-meaning but distant politicians) lead in turn to social change – perhaps we’ll take expensive oil in return for the moral high ground, or perhaps we’ll settle for the higher ethical price to see lower figures at the pumps, but either way, we’ll have no-one to blame but ourselves.
If anyone has any comments to make, you can try using my still-not-really-working-properly-because-I’m-a-wordpress-retard comments form below, or else email me.
Hope you’re all well,
Bish x