POLITICS AS CHEAP ENTERTAINMENT
Now we have two hairstylists as political ‘world’ leaders, what with any number of fading stars from sports, movies and social media as supporting actors – all ‘elected’ by people who think the joke is not on them. This theatre of the absurd is financed and manipulated by a few rich listers who know how to ‘influence’ the ‘influencers’. Maybe it has always been like that but then again, planet earth used to be able to contain this madness – not anymore. With vast stretches of the earth becoming uninhabitable for billions of people, such a political merry-go-round only hastens the demise of humankind, all in the name of a vast fortune to be made in the next five minutes. The toxic by-products like pollution, disease, abject poverty and modern slavery are all swept under the red carpet on which celebrities dance the night away. The middle classes – and lower classes with false ambition – lap it all up as great entertainment, for what else could they possibly do? Reading and watching the daily news is a fantastic diversion from the drudgery of work, delighting in the latest gaffes from buffoons like Trump and Johnson. It’s like an ancient Greek tragic comedy, only that the real consequences are not confined to the amphitheater anymore but to the world at large. Proxy wars are started at the drop of a hat, vicious oppression by absolutist rulers goes unanswered, and the high and mighty taunt each other until ‘the laughter grows too loud’. Career politicians of the sort seen in Germany and New Zealand eagerly follow suit, making sure that any meaningful politics is derided as mad and bad socialism or greenie claptrap. Even then there is any number of politicians in the making, riding any bandwagon as long as it furthers their ambitions. If it suits to be ‘green’ so be it. If it suits to advocate for the ‘poor’, so be it. All talk, no action.
When even mainstream commentators like the Guardian’s George Monbiot decry the current state of affairs, echoing sentiments expressed by the more enlightened voices of Noam Chomsky and Arundhati Roy, we have to assume the worst. The slippery slide down the hill may go unnoticed by the population at large, occupied as they are, by the daily grind of work and consumption. The human capacity for suffering is such, that just about any oppressive power can move in and decimate those who show the slightest signs of dissent. Popular uprisings are squashed without mercy, with an obedient armed force that relishes brutality and destruction. A Nazi mentality is being fostered and made ready for deployment. Red-baiting moderate conservatives will have the desired effect, as it did in Germany: when the center gives way, the fascist hordes move in and take over. History will repeat, sadly for the last time: there will be delirious joy amongst the followers as they shoot themselves, first in the foot, then in the head.
Can all this still be prevented? Perhaps, but the time bomb is ticking away. The point of no return is ever getting closer. Can anybody turn the ship around? Can the crew throw the captain overboard or is the captain part of the crew? We seem to know what the problems are but nobody seems to know what the solution is. Is our fate as writers, as Arundhati Roy suggests, to simply document all this as a fait accompli? To leave a story to tell for a post-modern world, with nobody to listen? There is an eerie silence already: when so-called revolutionaries like Michael Albert take to podcasts, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, they acknowledge that they have no idea who they are talking to. Well, let me tell you: in New Zealand, the joke is that the only government department listening to the people, is the secret service. All these social media are obviously just a Big Brother plot to keep tabs on Michael Albert, who in his idealism somehow hopes, hope against hope, that someone is actually listening to him and understands what he is saying. Like me, here I am talking to myself, which by the way is not so bad, because it helps me to translate my thoughts into written language. So, if by a remote chance you are reading this, I can recommend such a mental exercise, that might even lead to some sort of communication, that beats cheap politics as entertainment. If, on the other hand, you are an AI algorithm to keep me silent: good luck, because you will need it when the chips are down.
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