Psychology and not-so-modern politicians

Artificial Intelligence can easily over take human intelligence especially when it comes to politics.

The image above is generated by AI, signifying the merger of Human and Artificial Intelligence. But we must also look much closer at the merger of Politics and Psychology.

Computer graphics are so sophisticated now we can replicate the flawless human figure and animate it. The one thing we cannot do is duplicate the glimmer in the human eye indicating actual real life is present there in. This is the magical spark of all living beings, as opposed to the frozen stare of the walking dead where the world is too often seen with eyes willfully shut.

Political parties today don’t have a brain of their own. They are owned and controled by vested interests, bought and paid for with an immature pack mentality insuring they are dysfunctional with no desire for being responsible or representative. They are the self-denigrating consequence of neoliberalism existing as pseudo-democratic totalitarians.

Where political parties are supposed to be countervailing forces ensuring some semblance of democracy they are cheerleaders and stooges for the despots who prevail with unaccountable power and the unlimited financial resources to wage wars and pursue endless corruptions.

We are in cultures today ruled by power, money and endless wars, all at the sacrifice of humanist, democratic and socialist values. We are social beings but socialism and social societies have been eradicated. Socialism now only exists for corporations and the ultra rich where they parasitically feed off the cultures they ruthlessly exploit with predatory neoliberal capitalism.

Social contracts have been shattered and liberalism is buried deep. — Are they worth reviving? The answer is obvious. They were eradicated to create the present tyranny of lawlessness and pure evil and the prevailing chaos and nihilism destroying our cultures.

When liberalism has succumbed to neoliberalism and the ruination of the West rolls on.

When I phone my doctor, lawyer or plumber I can be assured they have the qualifications and experience required. They are worthy practitioners who can be trusted. This is not true of politicians. They arrive in political parties from every walk of life with very different motivations. Some honorable and others no so honorable. Some as dangerous ideologues with dangerous minds and latent psychopathies.

It must always be every citizens right to run for political office. That right does not extend automatically to serving in high office. As it is today too many fools, buffoons and incompetents prevail never scrutinized or properly vetted as they should be. Many psychologists and scholars are now recognizing that the momentous issues, complexities, and demands of governing today are such that only the best, brightest and sane rise to high positions.

Depending on the job we apply for and the aptitudes and responsibilities defining it our credentials are carefully checked. Ranging from interviews, resumes, references. police checks and psychological profiling.

Where “going into to politics”used to be seen as a higher calling to community and public service it has now been become an entry point to the world of power and privilege where politicos become hirelings to the anonymous power brokers who own and control the levers of power and manipulation. They have abdicated their sworn obligation to provide good government; rather they become servants to their controllers.

As politicians distance themselves from the voters who elected them they become more distant and contemptuous of electorates as are their billionaire sponsors. Politicians are captive to their controllers distant from those who elected them, having the effect that politics becomes a sham show of outrageous lies and pretensions.

Where it has always been easy to be cynical toward politics and politicians; the contempt directed by them is now redirected back at them. This all comes under the headings of societal fragmentation and alienation.

When it comes to politics credentialing ranges from little to none at all. Too often candidates are assessed on no more than their being electable, or their ability to fill a seat in Parliament.

What underlies the definition of politics is that it is considered a cliquish sport, a game to be played. Where they claim to exist to serve their electorates they have devolved to the point where they are not only self-serving but captive to the lobbyists and vested interests controlling them.

Lobbyist Grover Norquist, a well-known proponent of neoconservatism has famously said, "My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub." Norquist didn’t get it quite right. The bloated corpses of Western governments have drowned themselves in the bath tub. Governments have voluntarily resigned themselves to corporate capture and the crime of neoliberalism.

The Peter Principle applies today like never before:

All institutions are vulnerable to the Peter Principle but politics especially so as credentialing is absent and promotion is based on questionable criteria.

We end up with a prime minister serving for a decade who was a mediocre MP from day one. In the leadership race he won, a much more capable candidate withdrew as he new the interloper was going to win on the fame of his family name and not much more. Sadly his own caucus failed to hold him accountable as long as his famous name insures their re-election. Unlike the famous father’s charisma and political intelligence which attracted many talented colleagues, the narcissistic son was quick to purge his cabinets of their best talent. He has chose to make cabinet shuffles so often no minister is in a portfolio long enough to be fully effective.

In the key cabinet portfolio of Foreign Affairs he has had five ministers in less than ten years. He fired his first FA minister as he knew he would not be acceptable to the incoming Trump administration. The minister in question wanted to pursue rapprochement with Russia to which Trump would later turn his attention.

When an incumbent president brags he has been in the service of his country for fifty odd years alarm bells should ring everywhere. It is a very good indication he puts tenure before dedication and integrity.

It is a sad day for party politics when a tarnished Democrat icon attends a Liberal party convention in Ottawa and is given obsequious standing ovations. It is even worse when a war criminal addresses Congress, receives 58 standing ovations in just over an hour and at one point admonishes his audience to quit clapping and listen.

Ethnocentrism is only a worthy notion where it defines a society based on just values and noble purposes. Wars, corruption and alienation are their death knell. Hand clapping at funerary functions is never appropriate.

Where we most often think of psychology as the study of individual behaviors, it is also very much applicable to History; our collective behaviors, are cyclical and predictable.

History is all about societal collective behaviors, and the failings of leaders who lead. The consequences of leadership especially psychological pathologies are present. Too many politicians see it as a game for playing, a cliquish sporting event, where wholesale corruptions are considered acceptable, where “Disordered Minds” flourish in the dark halls of power. Only a few decades ago going into politics was a call to serving the nation and the public, now it has become a comfortable sinecure for over paid and redundant opportunists, stuffing their pockets with pay and privilege. It has become a gravy train for empty suits.

It has been noted that in the US Congress incumbents spend half their time raising funds for re-election when they should be focusing on the nation’s business.

Ian Hughes writes a very important book for our times: Disordered Minds: How Dangerous Personalities Are Destroying Democracy.

“At the beginning of the twenty-first century a strengthening of democracy is urgently required if human progress is to continue, immense human suffering is to be avoided, and perhaps even if humanity is to survive, in the decades to come.”—Hughes, Ian. Disordered Minds

Ian Hughes

The not-so-modern politician

Many years ago I was astounded to read Archibald Lampman’s poem(below) where he profiled The Modern Politician. Well over a hundred years later this is still the definition our not-so-modern politicians. We live in highly complex societies yet we allow dunderheads to represent us and run government. Politicians are left to dance around the money tree hand-in-hand with the lobbyists who control them. The principles of being responsible, representative and proactive are extinct.

Given how deeply the corruptions are embedded in our pseudo-democratic systems effective reform may not be achievable and the West lingers on as dissipated societies in a world passing us by.

Our political classes have become the “rabble,” they have betrayed their sworn duty to deliver sound competent government. The road back to equilibrium is long and arduous including many fundamental reforms; up to and including better credentials for those in power and especially those in high power must submit to psychological screening. Hughes has written a very compelling book for our times.

We can no longer afford… “when clowns into the vacant empires pass, blinding the multitude with specious words”.