I didn’t watch the debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. Like millions of other people in the U.S. and the world I felt a surge of relief that somebody besides President Biden was going to run against Trump. I stopped writing my blog months ago because I just couldn’t keep myself from venting my frustration about the insane circus that American politics has become. Since then it has become clear that similar patterns have evolved in European countries and the Middle East . The temptation is to view it all as a shift to the right and authoritarian conservatism around the world but it is more than a simple political trend. It is a deep and significant shift in the socio-economic culture of all of these countries.
The fundamental inability of governments to address and solve the multitude of complex, inter connected grievances of working and middle class populations has led to distrust and failure of confidence in any government , left or right. Regardless of the orientation, neither left nor right can deliver solutions on the range of issues emerging in the twenty first century and more significantly, the policy making processes and priority setting machinery are trapped between twentieth century, obsolete, party policy agendas and more modern, technological, data based, systems that could help balance the resources available with the issues most relevant to people and enlist their assistance in addressing the most pressurized grievances . Instead, we see retrenching of rigid positions and confrontation politics with irrational conspiracy theories and a growing hostility that ensures that force becomes the most likely lever for change.
I was tempted to watch the debate with the sound turned off on my T.V. to see if it changed my perspective. On the surface there would be two well dressed, middle aged, respectable looking, people in civilized surroundings, engaged in a debate. Nobody waving arms or throwing things. Nobody charging across the stage. nobody collapsing in hysterics. With the sound off…it might have been bearable. But I couldn’t do it. Because I knew that this was never going to be an exercise of reason…it was always going to be political theatre. So in the end we are back to the people…whether they like one character or another…in the absence of any clear understanding of the consequences of either being a winner. And I don’t just mean in the U.S. They same game applies in Canada and in Europe and elsewhere. Maybe the problems and solutions have become so complex that no politician or media outlet can explain them reasonably…let alone offer hope that they will be addressed. One of my friends called this “Best Chance Politics” , that people should vote for whomever they think has the best chance of accomplishing something. The corollary is that people will vote against whomever has the least chance or…who has not demonstrated any such chance currently. Not good news for modern democracy.
Blues 13 09 24 (Friday)
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