When political parties become parody and self- abolishing
When political parties become parody and self- abolishing
Like empires, political parties are self-abolishing and the lurid spectacle of our times.
“The first quality of a politician is integrity. Integrity requires independence of judgment. Independence of judgment rejects partisan edicts, for partisan edicts stifle in a man’s conscience all sense of justice and the very taste of truth. When such basic truths are ignored, Parliament turns into an unseemly circus, provoking dismay and contempt in the general public across all party lines. When voters distrust and despise their representatives, democracy itself is imperiled.”—
Weil, Simone. On the Abolition of All Political Parties (NYRB Classics) (p. 6). New York Review Books. Kindle Edition.
“Therefore the essential tendency of all political parties is towards totalitarianism, first on the national scale and then on the global scale. And it is precisely because the notion of the public interest which each party invokes is itself a fiction, an empty shell devoid of all reality, that the quest for total power becomes an absolute need. Every reality necessarily implies a limit – but what is utterly devoid of existence cannot possibly encounter any form of limitation. It is for this reason that there is a natural affinity between totalitarianism and mendacity.”—
Weil, Simone. On the Abolition of All Political Parties (NYRB Classics) (pp. 15-16). New York Review Books. Kindle Edition.
*******
It may be impertinent of me to say so but when I look at the above grouping I see a great number of juvenile delinquents. I consider anybody who wages war against others as some where between being post pubescent idiots and juvenile delinquents. All of the above are either directly or indirectly involved in waging war on the world at a time when they and everybody on the planet can least afford it. It doesn’t seem to matter they are running their country as a warfare slave state, and holding the world hostage to their ungodly ambition of running the world
They have turned mendacity into an art form and there is too much money being passed under the tables. Even though the media is highly censored there are frequent references to it from reliable sources. The billions sent to Ukraine to win the war have a way of ending up in the wrong pockets.
At an early age I became a student of school yard politics. The school yard bullies ruled with a heavy hand. Occasionally us younger whimps got to watch as two brutes would fight it out to establish full spectrum dominance in the school yard. I got in a few fights myself, but it occurred to me then, and more so now a piss poor way of settling issues.
Now we have the grandest of fights, the consequences are horrendous, costs astronomical, and morality is in the sewer. Is this what politics does to people, too much power , too much money, too much privilege and they become war mongering infantilized automatons? What would their mothers say?
Eighty years ago French Philosopher Simone Weil wrote a book On the Abolition of Political Parties. Like a lot of great and very important books it is more relevant today than when she wrote it . Philosophers like Weil are prophets as they see our societies with keen insight and perception.
We are very foolish societies as we shun prophecy. Both history and philosophy are prophecy as they interpret our times, tell us who we are, and where we are going. There has been talk of the collapse of the American Empire for a long time; but it is just background chatter as the empire destroys itself. Finally the shit house blows up and we are caught in the death throes of a vicious empire lashing out trying to save itself from the dictates of history.
The wrath of history is like the wrath God and nature. It demands our immediate attention. It seems were are pathetically out of touch with the mentors we should be following.
When we allow fools, insane ideologues and utterly corrupted political parties to interpret our times, tell us who we are, and where we are going we are in shit up to our eye balls.
We have become post literate , post intelligent societies worshiping at the Tower of Babel ruled by idiots infantilized by too much money, power, privilege and corruption for too long. They are in the the Devil’s embrace. They are trapped in their own machinations without the backbone or character to show an ounce of contrition or shame. They have been zombified by their excessive corruptions and indulgences.
Their only defense is to tear down democracy, freedom of speech, human rights and be agents of chaos and anarchy. Today patriotism is treason, thinking is heresy, and truth smothered under vicious propaganda.
“The first quality of a politician is integrity.”
Early in her book Weil reminds is the essential quality that must define every politician is integrity. To stand for election every candidate must identify who they are, what they stand for and have the intellectual and moral fortitude to stand for those convictions. The lack of political integrity goes the very heart of our crisis as they lie to us before being elected and continue to do so after. They are the bought and paid for zombies serving a defunct empire.
“Therefore the essential tendency of all political parties is towards totalitarianism, first on the national scale and then on the global scale.”
Here again Weil tells us fundamentals flaws of system held in total contempt by the power elites. Our crisis is one of failed due diligence and the triumph of ruinous ideologies over common sense. Our crisis is like a speeding freight train just pulled into the station. It has been racing down the tracks for decades as governments retreated from governance and sociopathic corporate capitalism came to prevail.
Neoliberalism, the final death of Western Civilization—“idle hands do the devil’s work.
Simone Weil was a remarkable woman. Born into a wealthy family she had a tremendous empathy for the poor and their struggle, so much she lived as they lived did to better understand what it was to be destitute. Living as they lived ruined health and she died prematurely.
She paid the ultimate price for her empathy. In Western societies empathy has been utterly destroyed as we have so effectively been taught to hate and be racist toward others all in service to the empire’s bloody wars.
Neoliberalism was before her time. It is the coup de grace for Western Civilization. The complete destruction of empathy for individuals or countries: the ideology of moral, physical, and intellectual and poverty, manufacturing inequality and where corruption abounds.
Politicians are the idled addled hands doing the devils work; groupies to their rapacious corporate capitalist masters.
How is it that eighty years ago Simone Weil told us exactly what our political parties were to become?
Like empires, political parties are self-abolishing and the lurid spectacle of our times.
******
For the most part INTEGRITY has gone the way of the Dodo bird. "Honesty" used to be the best policy...today...dishonesty takes you places.