I can’t remember a time when politics has been so depressing – so steeped in cynicism and disillusion that most ordinary people regard even the attempt to raise it in conversation as faintly ludicrous. Perhaps that is why the death of Michael Foot and the nostalgia-fest of film clips and speech excerpts that it provoked in the media actually reduced me to tears. I can, of course, just recall a time when my own political sympathies were very close to his, so I suppose the sadness was partly self-indulgent mourning for my own youth. If I eventually turned my back on those views, I never abandoned the idea that politics was about conviction and passionate argument.
But sentimental journeys apart, there was something that struck even those who are too young to remember, or whose approach to politics is normally too ironic and post-modern to acknowledge it. Suddenly the airwaves and the public prints were full of people calling for a return to real political disputation rather than playground insult, real beliefs rather than focus-group-tested formulae, real convictions rather than platitudinous slogans. Alastair Campbell, of all people, commented on Newsnight that there seemed to be a hunger for politicians who said things that they really believed and were prepared to stand up and fight for them.
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Notes:
Janet writes up a good column on a problem that is prevalent in all western countries (I see it that way). In many cases, as long as there is something in it for the voter that’s all that matters. It’s getting so bad in Canada that people don’t even bother to vote anymore. A common refrain across the working spectrum is “Why bother? It’s just more of the same.”
Disillusionment or “comfortable”? I don’t know but I suspect more of the latter than the former. Therefore all the howling over Harper and Obama. Both are disturbing the “comfort zone” of the voter base — popping bubbles — and people are reacting. Starting to sit up and pay attention. Maybe that’s a good thing but only time will tell.
@Jack: How can you follow a statement like “A common refrain across the working spectrum is “Why bother? It’s just more of the same.”” with one indicating that people are comfortable with what they see?
The people I talk to (other than the idealistically partisan who have their own special issues to deal with) have either come to feel as powerless as our politicians and political leaders want them to feel, or have come to a point where they simply do not trust either the system or the people working it.
How many times (in addition to “Why bother? It’s just more of the same.”) have you heard, “It doesn’t matter what they say, they’ll do something different as soon as they’re elected”?
Re: #1 — It’s true. I feel the same way myself and I heard it almost everyday during the past twenty years of my service. That’s why I can say it and that is why it is true.
Nobody cares anymore and we need to change that view.
Point: If your cops give up and don’t care anymore why would the motoring public?
And you have asked a good question. There are no clear answers but we need to find them.