Giving the politicians a break

It occurred to me yesterday that the life of a politician is very hard. Where the job of a trader is to gain money, the job of politician is to gain power. Evereything they do is directed toward gaining personal power. This is why they behave the way they do and seem to compromised and dishonest, they take whichever route serves the goal of greater acceptance, status and power. There are a few "honest" politicians notably Robin Cook and Tony Ben in the UK and Colin Powel and Ron Paul in the US who serve idealistic and moral goals but as we have seen this only diminishes their power in the long run and they get over taken by the game players.

Given all this and the sense that the leadership therefore bend over backwards to please the voting population, to look good and to maintain their status it is a wonder that they don't all end up paranoid. Their whole existence depends upon nothing more substantial than public opinion. They are like pop stars or actors who have no concrete status - everything is based on whim. So I saw that the rigid fixation on dogmas like the old view of "employment" is a comfort to the politician because it means that he has a fixed framework within which to deploy his power and within which to feel secure about the attitudes to his work. Stats like lowering unemployment become tools of comfort, and things that are easily manipulated to comfort the voters. It brings back a sense of control to the politician.

On the other hand something like this blog that argues for equanimity and the power of common sense and reality must be rather unsettling to the politician. The thought that the masses can really control their own lives without the need for institutionalised economic and social structures is the death knell to politics. That the solution to crime for example is just people being generous, rather than being stingy and paying for a police force to enforce that stinginess, will strike paranoia into the hearts of politicians who need people to think that they are the solution to problems and will therefore be invested with the power. If the population just gave up on their faith in the institutions it would all be over in a flash. As the economy demonstrates confidence and faith are everything in this game of illusion and dreams. So ironic in a climate of people attacking religious faith - how much faith they don't realise they have!