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Or, How To Destroy Our Country Article by 龙信明 | ||
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We will begin with a simple task - the selection of an outstanding person as our high-school Graduation Class president, someone to represent and speak for our school and to serve as a role model for the younger students. The first few times, the entire class discusses the issue, the selection criteria, the proposed duties for such a chosen person, and so on. And the class may hold a few elections in this mold, each student simply voting for whomever might be the best person to fill that role. It works well, but it can sometimes result in smallish numbers of votes for many people, failing to produce a clear winner. It shouldn't, but for many reasons, it might. So someone gets the idea of having "nominations", where students would do a kind of pre-selection to eliminate all those who might garner only a few supporters in an actual vote. So each nominee must have at least 5 votes, for e.g. And this seems to work a bit better. And in fact it might work continuously, if only people weren't human. The next step in the process is that one or more ambtious students realise they would enjoy the honor of being class president, but would never be nominated by the group. However, they see a way around this problem, and we now begin our slide into the abyss, a slide so slow that nobody will realise what is happening until it is much too late. So this ambitious student gets a few of his friends to "nominate" him, not because he would be a good president but because he is their buddy. And, with his friends "campaigning" for him - a new development the students haven't seen before - he wins the election. Next time, everyone is a bit wiser, having realised that the selection of a class leader was essentially hijacked by one person and his friends. So now we have several ambitious students getting themselves nominated, and now we have a real contest, real campaign battles. Somebody wins, and it is most likely a boy because boys would tend to be more aggressive than girls in their approach. Note: We have moved from the students selecting a leader, to one student wanting the leadership power, selecting himself, then trying to convince everyone to choose him. And now some of the girls, either resentful, jealous, or ambitious themselves, get into the fray and at least one girl gets herself nominated by her friends. We still have the boys, of course, and the election will by its very nature become a boy vs girl contest. It won't be long before the girls will be pressured to vote for a girl, and the boys to vote for a boy. After all, you have to support your own kind, be a team, and all girls know how rotten boys are. So now our selection of a class leader has become a battle of the sexes. And a boy wins, again because of the aggressive campaigning. From here, it is an easy step for the girls to get themselves organised so that the boys can't "steal" another election. The boys will of course organise as well, and now we have the foundation for party politics: the short skirts against the long pants. Now, the boys and girls must change their selection and nomination process, having in-house run-off votes that leave only one candidate standing - the person who has the best chance of winning the election. After all, we can't afford to have the girls fragmenting their votes among several candidates while the boys have only one, because the boys would win every time. So now we have The Grand Event: one girl against one boy. True multi-party politics. But then something strange happens. A girl wins. And the boys - being boys - are not going to let that happen again. Next year, an astonishing development ensues. The lovely darling sweetie girl candidate - who is almost sure to win the election - is revealed as being a bit promiscuous, apparently having had relations with most of the players on the football team - perhaps at the same time. This information is leaked by someone who is closely connected with these events but cannot have his name mentioned since he is not authorised to speak on these matters. Of course, the girls are unprepared for this, have no ready defense, and the boys win the election. Again. Next year, the girls are again wiser, and not incapable of creating their own unimpeachable sources who cannot be named. More than that, the girls are more clever. Well, devious, anyway. We always knew that, didn't we? The female candidate tells her graduating class voters that, if elected, she will seduce the principal into extending the lunch break and lobbying the school board for new girls' gym showers. Actually, she omits the part about seducing the principal, but the girls know she could do it if she put her mind to it. And, maybe she does. Anyway, the girl wins. Over time, a structure develops with a kind of "support group" that contains all the experience and knowledge of elections and campaigns, and this group begins to take charge of these annual events. After all, it knows how to select "winning" candidates much better than do the students. It knows the elements of a successful campaign as it does the intricacies of managing lobbies, of collecting and buying votes, of how and when and where to do things. And we have one of these each for the boys and the girls, support groups to which the students are willing to commit their trust, and to whom they are willing to relinquish their control. We now have true political parties, who have the real control. The next year, the boys have a new twist. They didn't think of it by themselves, but some enterprising (and rich) student wanted permission to open a canteen at the school, selling snacks, colas, etc. His father is a wholesaler, and this kid could make a lot of money if the new student President would support him. The newly-elected President of the Graduating Class could help to sway the school and the Department of Education to give permission. On the strength of that, and a promise to share the profits, the rich kid gets a commitment and promises 25 votes. But it doesn't end there. Many students are enterprising, offering to help offset campaign expenses, deliver votes, help to trash the opposing candidate, in return for one future favor or another. Not only that, the candidates and their campaign managers were becoming more sophisticated too, developing a clever ability to attract votes in exchange for empty promises that either would not, or could not, be fulfilled. School politics is becoming big business. It should not go unnoticed that something - arguably the most important thing - the only reason for existence in the beginning - has disappeared from the process entirely. And that thing is consideration of the credentials of the selected leader. If you recall, our task was to choose the most outstanding person as the leader of the graduating class. That implies real credentials, not only personal but academic. No "outstanding leader" would fail his or her classes, but these personal qualities are no longer an issue. The students no longer even consider personal qualities or leadership ability, or even merit, when selecting their candidates. They can't afford to, because the game has changed. The objective is no longer the selection of the best person for the sake of the school, but rather to win the election for the sake of the team. In fact, to "win the game". When the students shifted their objective from a leadership selection process based on merit, to a gender-based competition for power based on popularity, everything changed. This school's 'politics' has now become a primitive, gender-based competition of superiority. It would not be different in a boys vs girls volleyball game. We don't think about it, nor do we verbalise it, but in truth we no longer care about the credentials or virtue of the candidates. We now care only about winning the competition. One year, the boys assiduously cultivated (if you'll excuse the expression) the girls in the junior classes, and won the election by a landslide. There followed bitter recriminations and creation of the only sensible rule in this environment. It was agreed to restrict voting to the senior classes only, on grounds that the younger students were vulnerable, unaware and unfamiliar, and lacked the ability to make an informed choice. The next year, the boys are smarter. No, that's not true. Boys will never be smarter. Maybe they're just more determined. In any case, the boys agree to raise money from their parents and pay for a weekend class barbeque - with free beer. And of course they continue with the rumor-mongering about chastity having eloped with modesty, while the girls counter with whose parents are in the Mafia and why the chosen candidate prefers pink shirts. And who pinned that really dumb (and signed) love letter to the school bulletin board? At the culmination of this truly "democratic" process, the "winners" hold a big party for all their supporters, dancing in the streets, letting the champagne (well, an effervescent Rosé) flow, while the "losers" cringe in despondency verging on despair and realise they face a year of misery before they can try again. And so it continues, with each year, each generation, becoming more inventive, more sinister, more determined to win. In fact, more "democratic". And now we can return to our beginning. Our task, if you remember, was the selection of an outstanding person as our Class president and leader, someone to represent and speak for the school and to serve as a role model for the younger students. How have we done? I would have to answer, "Not too well." Let's translate this little example into "grown-up" government and politics. We began with what you could call a "one-party" system, but it was really a party-less system - just a group of people wanting to choose a representative and leader. But due mostly to human flaws, that innocent intention morphed into a genunine multi-party political system. And that change destroyed not only the innocence of the people, but the efficiency of the system, and it virtually guaranteed a substandard outcome. Perhaps this is too obvious to mention but it is also too important to ignore: inherent in the shift from one (or no) party to a multi-party system, is the disappearance, from view and from mind, of the only reason for holding the election in the first place - the selection of an outstanding leader. We saw what happened in the school, and I believe only the terminally stubborn would deny the same process is visible in real-life elections. As a little quiz to test what you have learned so far, here are three candidates from multi-party democratic countries. Please raise your hand if you are prepared to name these as the outstanding leaders of their time: I rest my case. The Western, multi-party democratic system has as its most visible feature the dumbing-down of candidates to the level of mad dogs and Englishmen. Unfortunately for democracy, the cleavage of society into political parties was not according to the (relatively) peaceful separation by gender, but according to one of the most dangerous and lethal of all pairs of human characteristics - the pacifists and the war-mongers. You may not like this, but those are the real identities of the political Left and Right Wings, those we refer to as "Liberal and Conservative". And it appears, though I make no claim to Sociological credentials, that human society, at least Western society, will automatically cleave along these lines if given a fertile chance. It is not easy to explain or understand the causes of the often vehement enthusiam with which many Westerners embrace their political convictions. It often seems as violent and passionate as some Europeans or South Americans embrace their football teams and competitions, frequently resulting in physical violence. We can conclude only that this separation, this cleavage of people according to their propensity for war-mongering must involve some of the deepest and most primitive instincts and emotions of the human psyche. And how to account for what appears at least superficially similar instinctual and emotional responses to team sports and religion? The combination of whatever is here, is not only potentially explosive, but essentially mindless - a kind of yearning herd mentality with a propensity for violence. It is clear that politics, in the Western sense, is seldom guided by reason. Reason can accommodate and withstand discourse; ideology on the other hand, cannot. Politics, religion, and team sports must have a common root in the Western psyche. None can be discussed intelligently for very long; all raise violent emotions, all suffer from ideology that is blind to fact and reason. Many people will tell us - often, at the top of their lungs - that the multi-party government system is about "freedom" and "choice" and is "real democracy", blah blah blah. But the multi-party system is not about freedom and choice, and it most certainly is not about either democracy or government. It's about conflict and competition, about playing in a team sport. I want to be a winner, and I want to fight so my team wins the game. And, just as with the students, the "game" is not good government; it is the election process itself. After my team "wins" (the election), the game is over and we all go home. And we absolve ourselves of any responsibility for what "the players" - the elected government, in fact - do after the game is over. And that is the reason that Western government leaders, as incompetent as they tend to be, are almost never held to account for their actions. Our philosophers would tell us that self-serving and incompetent leaders have broken their social contract with the electorate, but that isn't true. The social contract was never about competence or freedom from corruption; in fact, there was never a social contract at all, except in the minds of the naive and simple-minded. The only contract that existed was the sports-related one - a commitment to try to win the game. The process became so corrupted that the end result of Western politics doesn't even pretend to refer to the quality of government that might ensue after the election. The end result is the process itself - the competition, winning the election, nothing more. It is perfectly possible to have elections and a participatory government without political parties, just as we initially elected our high school Class President. No parties, no cleaving the population on the basis of some ideology; just a selection of whomever we believe to be the best person. A one-party government - in fact, a party-less government - is by far more efficient, much less fractious and, since it cannot lose sight of its purpose, tends strongly to remain a meritocracy where only the deserving and competent are placed in positions of leadeship. That will never happen in the West because "government" has been so hijacked by "politics" that it is unlikely they could ever be separated. In the Western world, it is 'politics' that is the attraction, not 'government'. I sincerely doubt that many people who are active in the political process give even a single thought to the quality of government that will emerge. Their only focus is winning the game for their team. As I've written before, if you wanted to design a really stupid system of goverment, you couldn't do better than this. The frightening thing about this is that most citizens in Western countries have been so brainwashed by propaganda about the superiority of their system that they believe it is the epitome of political or government evolution. They believe this "government selection as team sport" is a kind of natural law of the universe that all peoples in all countries will naturally aspire to, as they evolve from apehood and become more developed or sophisticated. The reason it's frightening is that these outstanding Christian leaders of their time like Bush, Harper and Blair, have no qualms about using B-52 bombers to deliver this higher form of government to you, if you aren't sufficiently evolved to do it yourself. It is frightening because many Westerners, especially those from the Right-Wing countries like the US, Canada and the UK, have turned this team sport into a religion that encompasses all the other stupid things they think. And because these people are primarily Judeo-Christians, judgmental and condemnatory as only God's Chosen People can be, their DNA tells them they must either convert or kill anything that is different from them. And that means you, China. I want you to look at the photo below, of a man campaigning for votes in the US - somewhere in Jesusland, I suspect. | ||
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How did the supposedly-great concept of participatory democracy descend to such a pathetic level? And how is it that these individuals will most likely scream the loudest about the virtues of their system? And by what pathology would they be eager to inflict it by force on others who see it for what it is? Many Westerners will look at the above photo and admit this might happen in parts of the US, but that democracy is not all like this. But it is like this. We can remove the monkey costume, but nothing changes. The fundamental issue is that Western democracy changed its objective from selecting an outstanding leader, to one of winning a game in a team-sport competition. And it is too late to reverse course; they cannot return to the beginning and start again. To do so would require a social upheaval equivalent to a popular revolution. And any Western government would viciously put down any such attempt. Why do Americans so stubbornly assume their multi-party political system should be the world's standard? There is no factual basis for such an ideological position, and their belief in it does not make it true. It is astonishing, incredible, that so many Americans have elevated their private political ideology to the theological status of a "Universal Value and Human Right". Not only that, they appear fervently infused with a Christian charity that compels them to inflict this universal value on everyone else, using military force, if necessary. What is behind this pathological tendency to meddle in the affairs of other countries, to presume to dictate what they should want, how they should think, what kind of government they should have, what their values should be? Readers may want to consider that in these Western discussions of China, most of the hype about 'democracy' is quite unrelated to the superiority of the system, but rather more to the ease of external interference, manipulation and control. For the part of the US for example, all the blathering about democracy is just jingoistic hypocrisy for the masses. The US has repeatedly demonstrated it doesn't much care what kind of government exists, so long as it is controllable and will do the bidding of the master. By US thinking, the two best kinds of government are (1) dictators that you install (Suharto, Somoza, Shah Reza Pahlavi) and (2) democracies you can influence, bully, subvert, and control (The UK, Austria, Belgium, Romania, The Czech Repubic, Canada). The worst kind is China's one-party system that doesn't easily lend itself to outside meddling and subversion. The interest in all of this is not to make China free or to liberate the Chinese people, but to force China to become part of the US camp - to become a vassal to the hegemon. And you begin by trying to force a change in the political system, not to free the people but to open the government to outside influence and control. |
