Political Will

Reading a piece by Dougald Lamont here: “The Great Deception” about 20th century Canadian fascist fake-socialist politics and Tommy Douglas. Pretty fascinating.

My comments? I’ll be brief.

When “Politics” Sickens Us

When the word “socialism” gets associated with so-called “Christian socialism” (disguising fascism, they’re neither Christian nor socialists) you get that sick feeling in your gut about “all politics”. it’s hard to avoid. But you have to avoid it.

Yes, by nature, economics and politics are sickening in both academic profession sphere and practical sphere. Everyone gets corrupted. Economics because it is where the policy power mostly resides. Politics because the politicians are inevitably typically feeble and followers, less iconoclasts and more egotistical people, attracted to power. Very few politicians are genuine leaders, they follow the egg-head economists advice and the lobbyists, which is “where the money comes from” (MMT/MMM${}^\ast$ folks can laugh, and I do, followed by a grimace, because it’s not a laughing matter).

Idiots who should know better by simple moral and ethical thinking succumb to gross mainstream economics paradigms of n(needless) austerity (the, “We’ve run out of scorepoints…” stuff, disguised disgustingly as, “We’ve run out of money…”.)

${}^\ast$MMM = Modern Money Mechanics (the framework formerly known as MMT).

Yet Politics Should Not Sicken Us

Let’s face it, we are living through an era of extreme adolescence in politics and world affairs, past ages cannot rival us because of global reach, global networks, and magnification of ideological groupthink (q..v. Mitchell and Fazi “Eurozone Groupthink”

However, politics is the art of governance, and so is a pretty critical field of human endeavour. It must be suffused with spiritual impulses and virtues, it must be morally and ethically driven. The fact it is not is, more or less, precisely what sickens us. You don’t really get sickened by corruption and violence within a crime family or syndicate, you expect it, and you steer clear of it. It is where corruption and greed and violence appear where they are least appreciated is what really sickens us.

In a better world, with more spiritual as opposed to (or complimentary to) technical education, we might have a less corrupt and less greed-driven politics. Politics, proper, should not sicken us, but attract us. The impulse to do good. It drives a lot of good people into politics even when established politics is full of the dirty games and shear corruption and propaganda that Lamont writes about.

Thus, not only should better public good policy be our objective, we also need to work hard on finding ways to make our politics less corrupt, and so more attractive to good and kind-hearted people. It is one of the biggest social issues of our age. It has always been, for every age past and present, but the difference today, perhaps, is that we can see ways to finally overcome greed and corruption. Modern Money Mechanics or MMM (the framework formerly known as MMT) is one massive aspect of this, a factual aspect. It needs to be complemented by spiritual virtues and impulses (which I find it often is, as a movement beyond the academia).

Innoculation Against the Disgust

I can think of a few remedies, but one is that thinking morally and ethically we simply cannot conscionably allow politics to be overrun by the fascists and neoliberals and their ilk. Although we may fail to make a lot of progress in our own lifetimes, it is still incumbent upon us all to at least fight against the ingrained right-wing establishment. And this includes an awful lot of so-called “left-wing centrism” — it is, like “christian socialism” a mislabelling. There are no left-wing centrists these days, they’re all using the “fiscal conservative” right-wing economics paradigm. It is disgusting. But that is why we all have to fight to clean it out. Get rid of the rot. And personally I find no better antidote than education.

Education is a very slow inoculation against political rot however. But I see it as the ultimate sure path. Being opposed to violence except in defence of innocents.

That clause is important. Plenty of poor families and working class grunts are defenceless innocents in a class war. Some violence to defend them is called for. A good ethical use of violence is aggressive education! Do not let schools teach the mainstream economics rot, especially the macroeconomics and political economy rubbish inherited from 19th Century idiots (who nevertheless wrote nicely and were doing the best they thought they could— they are only idiots relative to our capacity given our more substantial intellectual heritage.).

Fight the idiocy, and educate, to inoculate normal everyday people from ignorance. (Yes, I must acknowledge Neil Postman here, thanks dude).