The demons are not us

As human beings we are social and political animals. We are hard wired to think in terms of them and us. And we can easily be made to demonise ‘them’.

During WW2 the Nazis ate babies for breakfast and it was thus our duty to kill them. Since the war the propaganda machine has changed focus and we now get along fine with the Germans. The new foreign scurge is Islamic fundamentalists who crucify and decapitate their prisoners and have built up huge stocks of WMD.

The main home grown scurges at the moment are, amongst others, David Cameron and George Osborne. They are portrayed as the rich brat progeny of super wealthy parents who sent them to very selective private school and then to Oxford and Cambridge where they bonded by forming anti social clubs. They have no experience of the real world, they are not very bright, but they can be bought by corporations for huge sums of money and for other less tangible goodies.

The media would have us believe that those two leaders of the country have silver tongues with which they deliver unrealistic promises to the punters and very real profits to their pals. Austerity to the undeserving poor and feather bedding to the independently rich.

So what are they:

• innocent buffoons who are controlled by special advisors with close links to big business
• cynical, unscrupulous pillagers of the nation’s wealth and fiddlers of expenses
• smallminded, self centred and vainglorious egos concerned with their place in history
• intelligent and courageous champions of neoliberalism
• intelligent and courageous champions of socialism

They are the present good and great and my cultural conditioning would therefore have me respect and support them. But they are neoliberals and not working class. I cannot escape the feeling that they are committed to restructuring the global economy such that it serves the agendas of the profit maximising super rich even though this involves exploiting the workers whom they view as statistical units in their master plan.

The other day I was chatting with a couple of retired businessmen who were right wing, conservatives to the core. Thatcherites implicitly assuming that greed is good and that the good lord helps those that help themselves. And they were not joking. They seemed to live the media myth. Such people really exist. In comparison I might be labelled as a green social democrat with leanings towards anarchy through judicious subsidiarity. What is not to like about that?

Politics is a messy business. There are no easy answers. At root it is about morality, about right and wrong. But recent, big-data analysis suggests that there are five main value topics. Jonathan Haidt has it figured out. Go see at http://naesaebad.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/haidt-on-morality.html

My head is seriously messed up with bits and pieces of thoughts and feelings popping in and out of consciousness. The good news is that I know about what is going on and I can stay calm and rise above it. Crucially I can remain calm and aloof when propogandists encourage the demonization of ‘them’.