People hate those people most that they vote for.
It is always easier to oppose new ideas that provoke change in the present situation. It is what American (and many other) politics rely on – the party in power lose popularity so fast they can’t be in power for very long. This is why every once in a while a new party takes space in the government and why three subsequent presidents are rarely of the same party.
Whether the president even should belong to a party is an another matter – in a large country where most people have sided with extremes a popular neutral candidate would be nearly impossible to find anyways. I’m looking at you, Americans.
Everyone’s a critic. Everyone knows how to do things better until they are forced to do it. Nobody actually wants to upset the *natural* order of things. But without knocking over some of the anthills how can they be improved upon?
Chaos propagates growth and innovation. The greatest scientific breakthroughs have been due to military research, the greatest triumphs of democracy have been violent revolutions. Sudden shifts in political power and will could sing a song of prosperity and progress. But most people fear that it would be a chirp for the worse – this causes civil unrest and exaggerated panic. But that every single action the party in power takes is an octave off sounds fishy.
While I understand the importance of hindering the political powers from pushing through their every wish, I do not comprehend to do it at every single step, even when their wish and the people’s wish coincide with each other. After all, how are they supposed to get any work done when nobody wants them to do anything? But the work must be done. Even for the first time.
This is where the critics do themselves harm. Universal healthcare is either good for you or it does not affect you, hence there is no reason to cause ruckus or make a fuss about it. By doing so they create unnecessary panic and opposition to the ruling group of people. And then they start supporting the people whose task it is to criticize everything the people in power do. And next time they vote for the critics.
It reminds me of a saying “Every revolutionary becomes a conservative the day after the revolution.”
Because it works vice versa, it also applies to general politics. The underdog becomes the big cheese, the big cheese becomes the biting dog. Again and again and again and again. It is a vicious circle that makes very little sense. Why vote for the ones you know you will hate if they are apparently no better than the people you hate but will turn to tolerate in time for the next elections?
One party mustn't rule too long. Because holding the throne for too long means that they get comfortable with it, therefore lazy, therefore dumb and ineffective or they start loving the position so much, that they don't want to leave it, ever.
ReplyDeleteChaos propagates growth and innovation...
This doesn't make any sense to me, neither do you support this idea in following paragraph. Yes, greatest innovations have come from military research, but that is far from chaos, it is always clearly directed and organized research, not chaotic.
Yes, sometimes sudden shifts in political power COULD bring about prosperity, but history shows us that most of the times it isn't so. Especially when you look at the revolutions made in the days of WW2, before and after.
The critics paragraph is a bit funny to me. You start by stating that critics harm themselves and finish it by saying that they get elected. Doesn't sound like too much of a harm to me?
Other parts sound reasonable to me and I also despise the idea of dumb criticism, opposing something just because you feel like it is wrong, without doing anything about it yourself.
I would not call war as 'clearly directed' or 'organized'. Sure, tacticians do their best and most maneuvers are indeed clear-cut and logical, but war in general is a lot more chaotic than peace. And the threat or wish of war, of chaos, is the motivation behind the research. This is why Americans invented the Dragonskin body armor, it is why they tried to build a plane-mounted rocket-destroying laser.
DeleteBy your example of the revolutions before, during, and after WWII, I assume you mean the revolutions that were either silenced by military strength, in which case there was no actual shift of power, the revolts that were catalyzed by the Soviet Union, in which case I would argue that the shifts were not all that sudden and also can't be called triumphs of democracy., or the third type of revolts you could mean are the ones in the newborn countries that decided to bail on the Soviet Union. These I would consider alike to the ones preceding WWII. In those cases the short moments of freedom were times of amazing economical growth, similar to the one we had until the bubble broke and the global crisis came to bug everyone. It is the growth that made one of Estonia's party leaders claim that we could reach Europe's top 5 richest states very soon. Little did he know...
Now you might argue that I used a long period of time where parties in power changed several times, hence it would be in conflict with my point. However, it is not so - the political system in most civilized is designed to avoid extremist policies by means of having many parties. This way a single party hardly has the opportunity to grab hold of the ruling establishments (President, Parliament...) and every policy has to be the result of compromises between the extremes and the in-betweens. This means that in any relatively normal political system the changing of parties does not cause a shift in power significant enough. Hence why don't we look at a country with a stupid system, USA fits the bill perfectly.
The American Revolution vastly decreased taxes and hence created a huge boost from national economy and private enterprises. The Civil War freed up a lot of willing workforce (who were not very motivated before their new rights) and created a lot more consumers (who were too poor to consume anything before the Civil War). While the plantations' profits shrunk as they lost a huge part of their cheap labor, the economy as a whole benefited.
And on the point that the critics get elected, I fail to understand how getting elected makes a difference if the people who get elected cannot make a difference. Sure, they might get paid a little more and become victim to constant verbal bullying but by their previous criticism they hindered their competition to make a change, hence they aren't really allowed to reach their goals either. Quid pro quo. Which in turn is 'dumb criticism - they criticize when they are not in power but cannot do anything when they are in power because the previous party in power is now on their backs. A vicious circle of progress-hindering.