My belated condolences. I always enjoyed reading his posts and will miss his insight and wide ranging views. May hew…
The Misrepresentation of the People Act.
For the last three decades or so, there’s been a phony war going on. Whichever democracy you happen to live in, you’re involved, but your role in it is purely confined to being a football kicked around between the two sides. The two sides in question doing the kicking are the two political parties which broadly style themselves as right or left of some notional line through the no-mans-land middle ground between them.
The actual names vary from country to country; Republican or Democrat, Conservative or Labour, Liberal or Labor. There are always a few tiddler or schism parties wandering aimlessly around the political edges going nowhere accompanied by nothing other than their own strident outrage at something or another, but the essential shape is two big mainline parties, or in some cases as in Germany, comfortable coalitions of such long-standing that they might as well be one party anyway.
They effectively take it in turns to run the country. A left-wing party is in power for a couple of administrations before becoming decadent and unpopular, producing calls from the electorate for a new broom, in the shape of the local right-wing party, to take over the reins. They win the next national election and a right-wing administration takes over the governance of the country. After they’ve had enough time to become decadent and unpopular themselves, the reformed left-wing party emerges freshly christianised from its time spent out of power in the political wilderness.
It’s one of those rinse and repeat efforts that’s been going on for as long as politics has been around, which is to say, forever. When it works as it should, it’s a pragmatic recognition of the debilitating aspects of the same party being in power for too long, and also acts as a natural emetic to get rid of them. That hackneyed old saying about the corrupting effect of power is very true.
In short, as Mark Twain observed, governments are like diapers – they need to be changed regularly.
Where this paradigm breaks down is when the leaders of both the parties begin to treat the whole election process as a turn and turn about thing; okay, you’ve won power for a couple of administrations and then it’ll be our turn. We won’t rock the boat too hard for you other than giving you a jolly strict telling off when you make a public cockup of something. The unspoken but understood caveat on being an effectively quiescent opposition party is that the big players in it still get a decent share of the power and money floating around that’s commensurate with such tacit co-operation.
The people running these parties, and being run themselves by big money interests in various shapes and forms, tend to share the same education, privileged background and über political world views of what used to be termed internationalism but has now mutated into a bastardised consensus of smug political globalisation, because that’s what’s really good for their super rich patrons.
At face value this may look like a stable political situation, because it’s essentially taking choice out of the hands of a notoriously fickle electorate, but it’s inherently unstable since it lacks any feedback to correct the corruption such power in perpetuity will inevitably engender. It pushes the day of reckoning further ahead, but that day will arrive in the end.
As always, the basic cause allowing this situation to develop is electorates disinterested in politics who sleepwalk into this mess. For too many years they’ve listened to the vague promises of jam tomorrow from political con men whose only talent is stringing the mark along. There is a propriety Antipodean shortcut into this situation which involves electing a reasonably sane leader who’s very quickly stabbed in the back by one of his underlings who turns out to be incompetent but has the saving grace of being eminently corrupt. Anyway, this combination of lazy electorates and seemingly Alzheimer stricken populations who can’t quite connect promises made and promises not fulfilled, will eventually break down.
Lincoln’s aphorism about it not being possible to fool all of the people, all of the time, or to use another quote – by their fruits shall ye know them, starts to kick in. They promise whatever you want like a kindly grandfather who knows what’s best for you, but in the final analysis, they actually produce nothing of substance for the greater good. It’s all about them, not you. The vested interests prosper at the expense of impoverishing the ordinary person, irrespective of their race, colour, creed or politics.
Rinse and repeat, baby, just rinse and repeat. Keep plucking those pigeons.
By this late stage, the bulk of electorates are totally jaundiced about any involvement in the political process and those actively engaged in it as foot soldiers are starting to suspect they’re not even a minor player in the game, but the football. They’re regarded by their betters as highly motivated, but easily manipulated drones busy at work producing honey for their masters.
By this time we’re heading into stage 4 cancer in the body politic, but the status quo of those deeply entrenched in power will start to defend itself by any and all means available, whether legal or not. Imagine getting the snouts of a hungry herd of swine out of a steaming swill-filled trough, and you’ve got a pretty good idea of the immensity of the task.
As the new broom of the faux opposition party being elected isn’t working any more, it’s possible to invent a third party that’s making all the right reformist noises but is still a cat’s-paw of the current background interests. This was done in Greece with the previous administration which swept to power. It was a freshly minted party by the power mongers which just continued on in the same old way, but was quickly found out.
In exactly the same fashion, France got similar treatment with a phony new broom party elected with a hitherto unknown leader Fifi Macron mincing around in front of it and making all the right noises. A few months in, he promptly junked the modest tax reforms of the previous nominally left-wing administration which were a tad too expensive on his extremely rich backers who’d put him into power to do just that. At the same time, he started lumping more and more taxes on blue and white-collar workers.
This was all being done in the name of various Green and virtuous causes, while the standard of public services was in free fall. Last year’s hike of 23% in petrol taxes was supposed to be followed by another hike this year. That was the straw that created the Yellow Vests movement, which although hardly reported on these days by the liberal media, is still ongoing. Despite disparaging reports you might have heard about them, they’re painfully ordinary people struggling to survive in Macron’s France. There’s a lot of them and they’re composed of that most dangerous segment of any electorate, those pushed into a corner with no way out and not much to lose.
These fake parties misrepresenting the will of the people have a short lifespan, simply because by then the disconnect between the ruling class and ordinary people has grown into a yawning crevasse. This elite lives inside a hermetically sealed bubble of power, privilege and wealth where never is heard a disparaging word from their fawning sycophants who know better than to raise any unsettling criticisms. Because they’ve no real understanding of the people they’re ruling, their efforts to appease unrest are best characterised as one blunder after another which eventually leads on to the terminal stage – the use of force, at first subtly but increasingly with more violence.
Riot cops or paramilitary thugs are deployed to brutally suppress public demonstrations against an administration that’s becoming a dictatorship in all but name. Not only are public demonstrations being physically attacked, but wholesale arrests and incarcerations start to become the norm. Behind the scenes, preventive arrests start to be made. With regard to the weekend after weekend protests in France, numbers like 1400 arrests made are bandied about by the Quisling media, but what’s not being disclosed is 1000 of these were preventive arrests. Arrest and imprisonment of people before any protest has even been made. When that begins, we’re on the slippery slope with occasional stops for doing things like arresting schoolchildren and treating them like POWs.
As the situation deteriorates, the news media, who’re totally owned and under the control of the monied interests financing the mainstream parties, are spinning the protests as the work of a minority of despicable anti-social malcontents who are anyway being financed and used by foreign powers such as Russia. It’s amazing how many lazy thinkers fall for that red herring.
If the government manages to put down what is in effect a rebellion, you end up with a dictatorship with a nice name like the Democratic People’s Republic of Whatever, as happened in Venezuela and with the usual dire results for the inhabitants. If the government falls or is overturned by a real shooting rebellion, then a new administration is formed which is more realistically attuned to the needs and aspirations of the whole country rather than a select few.
Normally, those are the two ways such a sham display of democracy is brought to an end. Either as becoming an outright dictatorship or brought back to a real democracy by Jefferson’s tree of liberty being yet again refreshed by the blood of patriots and tyrants.
A third and extremely rare outcome is a natural leader primarily in touch with the people rising to power. Even more rarely, if not uniquely, that person comes from the super-rich classes, who’re usually the power brokers and puppet masters behind the various thrones, and refuses to accommodate them. They will bring to bear every power at their command to destroy him, because he’s betrayed what should be his natural class, is re-energising swathes of the electorate to re-engage with politics and they’re rallying to the colours of someone who’s actually doing things for them.
That’s the scenario you’re looking at in America at the moment.
In Europe, an increasingly distant and out of touch imperial EU is becoming an unelected dictatorship which is at war, for the moment economically, with countries like Italy, Greece and Spain, while the Eastern part of their empire looks to be breaking away from them. It’s the same phenomenon at work but at a supranational level – you can get ruled any way you want, just as long as it’s the way that suits us. It’s a Hobson’s Choice, except a refusal of the one choice on offer is not tolerated, as the French people are learning.
The heart of power within the EU was Germany with France as the supporting act, but Fifi is finished and Merkel has become an electoral liability even for her own party. Like the stricken battleship Bismarck, she’s alone and steaming around in circles with no flotilla rushing to her aid. A few more torpedoes and she, like the EU, will be out of the game.
The question you’ve got to ask yourself is how far down the misrepresentation of the people toilet your own democracy is, and how will it pan out, if you’ll excuse the pun.
©Pointman
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Phony political parties, jaundiced voters and declining governments | Churchmouse Campanologist says:
[…] phony political parties, jaundiced voters and declining governments. Please take the time to read ‘The Misrepresentation of the People Act’ in […]
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Pointman's 
Absolutely bang on the money Pointman. People right across Western Civilisation are waking up to the fact that for the past 40-50 years, their governments, with a few minor exceptions here and there are actually working against them. Was it any wonder that voter participation was dropping election on election. Most people don’t care about politics, as they see it as a necessary evil, but they should take notice – it IS important. It determines everything. The masses seem to have an unspoken, unsaid, almost primeval understanding of when they are getting shafted. People KNOW, even if they can’t enunciate it in terms that we can all understand. Fortunately for us, the Left do it for us, and so we are all “fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists” courtesy of “Call me Dave”. Failing that we can be “Deplorables” as per Hitlery Clitpiece. It all adds us to the same thing. Fifi Macron (superb nickname btw) is the perfect example of the globalist elites, an enarque no less, who determines that he will rule like a Greek God, or was it Roman. It was supposed to be Jupiter anyway. And just who TF does he think he is for f*cks sake. His only recourse is state approved violence – no doubt encouraged by his masters who reside in Brussels. It won’t last. It can’t last, not when you reduce your population to penury and your masters reduce southern Europe to beggars.
These, oh, so clever, so expensively educated political aristocracy have forgotten the very basics of human nature. The first rule is that you treat your enemy with respect, he’s not a fool, and won’t be treated like one. The second rule is never, never, never, ever back your opponent into a corner with no escape, because those who are in such a position have absolutely nothing to lose, and they will come out fighting with everything they’ve got, and you will be severely injured in the process, because old son, If I’m going down, I’m fu*king taking you with me. Capiche.
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Good summary Pointman and thank you for doing that.
It will be interesting to see how the “Tax Serfs” can manage to dig themselves out from underneath the Bureaucrats! The world over.
One area that concerns me is internet regulation.
What happens when the FB’s and Googles decide to shut us all down, for the safety of the realm?
Is there a way that ‘we’ can set up a ‘light web’ as opposed to a ‘dark web’ to keep getting information out?
Fun times for 2019.
Re the French and other Euro country protests it is hard to know how many agit-prop bad apples infiltrate these types of movements but I have always been impressed by the various countries WWII resistance movements.
Cheers.
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Pointman,
As you amply demonstrate in this blog each week, interesting men usually have interesting things to discuss, and G. Michael Hopf is no exception. In his book ‘Those Who Remain’, Hopf had this to say …
“Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.”
When a strong man is surrounded by parasitic weaklings who have been hollowed out by greed, corruption and complacency can he, by sheer force of will, drag them into his slipstream to create ‘good times’ for all?
Perhaps they have neither the backbone nor the balls to survive floundering in his wake.
As for supposedly opposing political parties being two sides of the same coin, it’s always reminded me of corporations such as Lever &Kitchen who manufacture and sell all their own competing brands, made from the same ingredients, shipped out of the same factories, with nothing but the packaging and labels deciding which price-point niche they’ll fill.
And if a real competitor emerges they are soon bought out, stripped of assets, and that product too is promptly manufactured in the same factory, with the same executives and bean-counters calling the shots, the same insatiable blue-chip shareholders demanding more bang for their buck, while the hapless consumer pays increasing prices for smaller packages … now the same product is just labelled ‘Concentrate’ so it’s obviously better value. Wall to wall bullshit! And still we buy it.
Pointy, you ask how far down the toilet our so-called Australian democracy is today?
Well, we’ve been in serious need of an expert plumber since 1972 when Organised Crime and the Marxist/Socialists of both parties embarked on a dizzying ’pas de deux’ (with seven prime ministers in the last 10 years) and the Green Fairies tripping the light fantastic by playing both ends against the middle.
In fact, our political sewage pipes are utterly clogged by a massive Fat-berg of betrayal and corruption that makes London sewer’s 150 ton blob of grease look puny in comparison. We’re up to our chins in the back-up.
I suspect it’s going to take some VERY “hard times” to create a resurgence of “strong men” (and women) to avert the inevitable.
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The EU is Spiraling Out of Control!!!
Apologies if you’ve seen this.
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It’s good to get an upbeat assessment, and like 2007 saw the ‘high-water mark’ of AGW, it seems that at last we have reached the point where the tide is turning on the globalist dream of a return to feudalism. From the moment I first heard of the idea of a European army I guessed it would be for crushing dissent and controlling the masses. But, there is now so much dissent all over the EU that things are, just, beginning to move beyond their control.
To think, politians were thinking of a second Brexit vote with the alternatives being:
1. May’s non-Brexit
2. Remain
There is real anger in the country now and few have even a vestige of trust in politians.
We need a Trump or a Thatcher right now!
Another good Pointman essay. Thank you.
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The US is not far behind these days: Excerpts from an informative chronology, featuring the US’s on Carool Quiqley (mentor to Bill Clinton)
============================
Behind many visible world leaders stand “wise” insiders who have been guiding change for decades. Some of their recent names are familiar: George Shultz, David Rockefeller, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Henry Kissinger, Brent Scowcroft…. These men — in the top echelon of the Council of Foreign Relations (CFR) and other elite “clubs” — serve in presidents’ cabinets again and again. Some lead silently behind the scenes. They may call themselves Republicans or Democrats; it doesn’t really matter.
Few have done more to expose this revolutionary agenda than Carrol Quigley, the history professor at the Foreign Service Schools of Georgetown University whom Clinton honored in his acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention, July 16, 1992. [See Quigley’s credentials] In his 1300-page tome, Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time, he wrote:
“The chief problem of American political life for a long time has been how to make the two Congressional parties more national and international. The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only the doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead the two parties should be almost identical, so the that American people can ‘throw the rascals out’ at any election without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy.” [4-Quigley, 1247-1248]
In other words, elected officials come and go, but the unelected leaders behind the scenes continue their reign. As European Parliament member Ashley Mote wrote in an article titled “Beware the Secret Heart of the EU,”
“Even the EU’s public face – the unelected commission – is part of the charade. Power does not lie with them. It lies with the senior staff running their departments…. We do not know what their budgets are, how they are financed, or who approves their costs. Indeed, we do not even know what powers they have been given, nor by whom. And we cannot get rid of them….
“The EU would no longer be the servant of the member states. It would have become their master. Every previous treaty was a small step along that road…. The other 24 commissioners, each appointed by the other member states… are figure-heads. They take the flak in the public arena, and make announcements decided for them by their senior staff, with the guidance of the secret committees.
“…officially above the commission sits a Council of Ministers…. But the council is just more of the same elaborate illusion…. The European Parliament sits below this vast superstructure… designed to create an illusion of accountable democracy. A condescending pat on the head for voters held in contempt.
“…the EU’s parliament has a built-in majority in favour of the social market. It is the repository of an unspoken agreement between the left and the multinationals. … In effect, the left has said to the multinationals: you can have your markets stitched up for you, if we can indulge ourselves in endless social engineering. Big business has agreed. The result is a largely supportive parliament both from the left and right of the political divide.” [The “Americas” are moving in the same direction!]
Source: http://www.crossroad.to/Excerpts/chronologies/un.htm
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Commenting on his monumental four-volume (thus far) biography of the liar, cheat, swindler, blackmailer, philanderer and 36th President Lyndon Baines Johnson, Robert Caro took issue with Lord Acton’s dictum.
Caro stated that it isn’t accurate to say that power corrupts. Instead, Caro submits that the truth is closer to “Power reveals.”
I think Caro is right. It’s only when someone uses the power they have gathered (all too frequently by means of corruption) that we see the underlying person.
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JG – Agreed. Power doesn’t create feral swine out of silken purses.
The questions we need to address are not only about the criminal apex predator at the top of the food chain, but the entire infrastructure that shields him/her from any accountability under the law.
Maybe Trump’s ‘new broom’ will turn out to be a fire hose that washes all the detritus from the halls of power everywhere.
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Yellow vests: France to crack down on unsanctioned protests
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/world-europe-46788751?__twitter_impression=true
Macron takes the first step to dictatorship. BBC reports without a peep …
Pointman
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Netherlands: Woman dragged away from her baby merely for wearing a yellow vest. Meanwhile, France is considering a law that would make all protest without government permission illegal. Europe is sliding towards tyranny.
Pointman
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Much as I like Paul Joseph Watson, I’d rather he check his facts and ask a few more questions before he posts material like that. The comments thread on that post raises quite a few of them.
It seems it was a “social experiment” … only a doll in the pram and the lady was arrested for not carrying ID.
Question is – who was conducting the ‘experiment’?
Unlikely to be conservative protesters when there were two mounted police on hand, four officers to deal with the “mother” and a police van parked beside them. Another red flag was a young woman who did NOT go ballistic when she was manhandled and dragged away from her “baby”.
So what was the point of the exercise?
Were police trying to tell the world that it’s now illegal to walk the streets without producing ID on demand? It’s illegal to wear a yellow vest except in a roadside emergency? Or … wear a yellow vest and this is how you can expect to be treated by law enforcement?
Or maybe panicking governments will go the other way and DEMAND that all conservative nationalists MUST wear yellow vests at all times to signify their political allegiance.
Oh well, at least being made to wear a yellow vest is not the same as being made to sew a yellow star patch on all your clothes … not yet anyway.
In 2019 we should all make sure our ‘bullshit antennae’ are in good working order so as not to be manipulated and stampeded into irrational responses to staged “social experiments” that will have us herded into easily controlled units under allegedly justified new draconian laws that further curtail whatever freedom remains.
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A further thought; was the ‘social experiment’ simply meant to gauge the response of passers-by?
After all, the ‘actors’ in such a carefully staged tableau were meant to represent the most vulnerable and deserving-of-protection people in our society … a mother and infant child … the very wellspring of our Christian ethos.
If so, they chose a very poor location for a truly representative reaction … there were so few people about.
But the couple of male and female pedestrians barely noticed, the bystanders did nothing but gawk, an apparently pro photographer got a few shots (as he was assigned to do), passing traffic carried on oblivious, and a couple of geriatric cyclists stopped but said nothing.
Big FAIL, ladies and gentlemen of the constabulary (and your bureaucratic bosses who put you up to it) … try it on for real and you’re more likely to get some actual streetfighters who will take on you … AND the horses you rode in on.
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Only thing I’d support is ‘no masks.’ That would stop the Antifa infiltration and violence that undermines genuine grievance protesting I think. Here in Oz, time to gilet jaune protest at disgraceful guvuhmint destruction of our coal mines. Marchons, citoyens!
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