Democratia: the best we have?
Greek words pad today’s English, take politics. Ancient Greek ‘democratia’ selected those who would benefit under it: plutocracy.
What’s changed? Some politicians, supposedly maintaining its modern-implied, human rights for all, have turned it into an oligarchal ‘mockracy’, personal, party priorities, allegiances above the necessities of society’s poor and vulnerable.
Euphemism: financial fragility, when stressful poverty is reality. Power for a visionary like Nelson Mandela meant helping all the people.
Democratic power given to lesser mortals exposed that ‘of/by/for the people’ refers mostly to the selected, imposing sanctions on enemies, allowing allies obvious licence. The smug lip service that faithful voters have accepted till now, is being openly challenged by hoi polloi, the plebs.
The anonymity of social media with its mass of vitriolic opinion posts, is not as title-subservient as old media was when voters believed all politicians were honest, and before ‘spin doctors’ insulting educated intelligence arrived.
Scandals in both Irish and UK politics make people wary of trusting what’s presented in public, secreted in private, the suffering taxpayer footing questionable bills and bonuses. RTE, Ireland’s CyBC, is guilty of public breaches of trust. Its former director general on whose watch public money was inappropriately spent, refused to face personally or in writing, a committee investigating those improprieties, pleading mental incapacitation due to the stress of public backlash.
All too often, these excuses set an escape-personal-responsibility and punishment precedent. The organisation is usually offered as at fault not individuals, and carefully worded, legal documents are created to support that safety blanket for the elite.
Cyprus has its own scandals, paradigm the covered-up death of soldier Thanssis Nicolaou whose mother resiliently braved the wrath of knowing authority to prove he was murdered.
UK post office officials faced many charges: causing suicide, wrongful imprisonment, character assassination, unjust loss of home and work, all criminally hidden by those fully aware a faulty (Horizon) computer system had created apparent embezzlements.
Past UK government sanctioned clinical trials on children without parental knowledge or consent resulting in death or serious illnesses have come to light.
Allies of Israel’s Netanyahu, who turned Palestine into a dystopian nightmare by rampant tyranny as they watched, described as ‘generous’ his offering residents of Gaza ‘respite’. This rhetoric mocked a wasteland of dead children buried in the rubble of their own homes. Arabs who viewed the entire ‘West’ as enemies, witnessed how the will of the people, demonstrating for Palestine’s right to statehood, and their governments’ reactions to IDF excesses differed.
International protests were in the spirit of modern democracy, fused by Netanyahu’s actions and his allies’ passive acceptance of them, not as he claimed an excuse for the vicious antisemitism of some. Israel needs to make sure Marwan Barghouti, a potential uniting leader if given a chance, doesn’t meet in its inhumane prisons the same end as Alexei Navalny did in his captivity.
Our government seeks ways to squeeze the vulnerable as it gives largesse to the selected. Take a very elderly widow, living years on a huge pension from her government employed husband, public aristocracy. Married young, no contributions to the state, she has no qualms about the large amount she receives – entitlement.
Then there’s another woman, paid her dues to the state for 20 years until serious illness forced her to stop work and claim benefit, a dependency she hates, who would gladly work to alleviate the constant insecurity of a mean, inescapable Limbo allowance.
Compare that to early/multi-pensions/political benefits/ignored tax dodging/nepotistic placement/government sanctioned job creation, all sucking blood from that stash of surplus cash.
The human race was never static in action or thought, change looms visibly, vocally, on a planet altering before our eyes. Donald Trump, presidential contender of earth’s most powerful nation, uses ‘bloodbath’ to rouse supporters to divisive actions even while accused of inciting an assault on US democracy.
Anarchy isn’t only a tool of extremists with a grudge. Politicians, like Trump, with narcissistic ambitions of dictatorship power, imply that its application on their behalf will be unchallenged by them in office, and there will be takers.