Where Do Politicians Come From?
Sep. 21st, 2021 11:21 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sphagnumThis sounds like a childish question. Of course they are humans like the rest of us, not lizard people (although sometimes I really wonder). However, it is also true that whenever you see a politician for the first time in an important role, it is almost always the case that he has had a long career before him or her preparing her for this moment. Understanding this process, and understanding the implications, is of fundamental importance for regular folks that want to become politically active, but who are not in such a career path.
The truth is that many politicians have been scouted at a young age and went through specialized courses, received grants, were offered vita-building stints (like an internship at this or that institution) that also generate vital network connections. Beyond these networks, the professional politician also has access to a lot of resources like marketing intelligence, professional public relations expertise, speech writing, and other things. There are on this planet organizations with very long time horizons willing to build political power over the course of decades, and with the deep pockets to do this.
When you talk to a politician of this type, you are in a way not talking to the human being in front of you, you are talking with an avatar of an institution that has a certain position it wants to impose on the world, for one reason or another. To put it bluntly, this human being doesn't hear your arguments as arguments, but as challenges to be overcome in an elegant way. And, incidentally, if you get to talk to a politician of this sort, the whole situation will always be staged, because what matters is how this looks to other people. Talking to a politician of this type is at best a completely futile exercise unless you manage to turn the theater around, to make him or her look bad. You will never convince them of anything.
If you ever wondered why some politicians sometimes look like they are possessed, now you know why. They are possessed. In a mundane, profane way, but possessed they are.
If you look at political discourse over the last few years, you will see this phenomenon everywhere. All this manipulative, facetious and twisted rhetoric comes from the same source: the fact that your opinion only matters in so far as that you are a field to be conquered in a game in which your humanity only plays a secondary role, if at all. That is what you have to understand when you read absurdist logic like the one in which the vaccinated have to be protected from the unvaccinated. It's a numbers game. If they convince enough people then progress was made.
Originally, the type of institution that had such long term goals, and was willing to put up with a very long game is an institution like the catholic church, which had such strategies for centuries (so the phenomenon is actually very old). The original motivation is not only power but the preservation of civilizatory substance in a barbaric world, which, frankly, I do not think of as a sinister motive. Similar motivations led to many modern states to do that, which is where the elite colleges of many nations come in. The idea is that the politicians which were to hold power on a later date should be acquainted with the substance of the state and were selected for compatibility with it.
But nowadays it is not only the state that is engaging in political class building (arguably, the state has stopped doing this in many places) but instead a bunch of billionaires through their various NGOs and the corresponding NGO network. If you want to get an idea of how this works, I recommend to you this harrowing article that shows you in detail some of the mechanisms.
There is no reason to get despondent over that terrifying landscape of oligarch power. On the contrary, now that you know what is being played you can understand the news better and also plan better for actions, which might be more effective now than they were before. I hope it also convinces the motivated activist to understand better the world around him or her, to study political theory, and to build networks. Such a framework for understanding politics also helps to see what the pain points are in the behemoths.
And it seems to me that there is a lot of pain going around. The absurdist rhetoric, the constant changes of mind, the moving of goal posts, the lying, the bullying - these are in a way displays of power, but they are also politically very expensive, in the sense that with every lie they lose people, and, remember, it's a numbers game. They also are humans, and there is shame in being caught telling lies. Additionally, in the modern era it is all recorded and documented and every momentarily successful talking point can be used to humiliate them at a later point.
And if you read the linked article carefully, you will see that the goals of these institutions is not actually that well defined, which is another way of saying that they don't necessarily know what they are doing. The money flowing into climate change public relations, for instance, is probably in part doing so just as a novelty for the billionaire who, able to own whatever he or she wants, also wants to be a saint. Which is why, I think, so much of it looks so self defeating and suicidal.
The truth is that many politicians have been scouted at a young age and went through specialized courses, received grants, were offered vita-building stints (like an internship at this or that institution) that also generate vital network connections. Beyond these networks, the professional politician also has access to a lot of resources like marketing intelligence, professional public relations expertise, speech writing, and other things. There are on this planet organizations with very long time horizons willing to build political power over the course of decades, and with the deep pockets to do this.
When you talk to a politician of this type, you are in a way not talking to the human being in front of you, you are talking with an avatar of an institution that has a certain position it wants to impose on the world, for one reason or another. To put it bluntly, this human being doesn't hear your arguments as arguments, but as challenges to be overcome in an elegant way. And, incidentally, if you get to talk to a politician of this sort, the whole situation will always be staged, because what matters is how this looks to other people. Talking to a politician of this type is at best a completely futile exercise unless you manage to turn the theater around, to make him or her look bad. You will never convince them of anything.
If you ever wondered why some politicians sometimes look like they are possessed, now you know why. They are possessed. In a mundane, profane way, but possessed they are.
If you look at political discourse over the last few years, you will see this phenomenon everywhere. All this manipulative, facetious and twisted rhetoric comes from the same source: the fact that your opinion only matters in so far as that you are a field to be conquered in a game in which your humanity only plays a secondary role, if at all. That is what you have to understand when you read absurdist logic like the one in which the vaccinated have to be protected from the unvaccinated. It's a numbers game. If they convince enough people then progress was made.
Originally, the type of institution that had such long term goals, and was willing to put up with a very long game is an institution like the catholic church, which had such strategies for centuries (so the phenomenon is actually very old). The original motivation is not only power but the preservation of civilizatory substance in a barbaric world, which, frankly, I do not think of as a sinister motive. Similar motivations led to many modern states to do that, which is where the elite colleges of many nations come in. The idea is that the politicians which were to hold power on a later date should be acquainted with the substance of the state and were selected for compatibility with it.
But nowadays it is not only the state that is engaging in political class building (arguably, the state has stopped doing this in many places) but instead a bunch of billionaires through their various NGOs and the corresponding NGO network. If you want to get an idea of how this works, I recommend to you this harrowing article that shows you in detail some of the mechanisms.
There is no reason to get despondent over that terrifying landscape of oligarch power. On the contrary, now that you know what is being played you can understand the news better and also plan better for actions, which might be more effective now than they were before. I hope it also convinces the motivated activist to understand better the world around him or her, to study political theory, and to build networks. Such a framework for understanding politics also helps to see what the pain points are in the behemoths.
And it seems to me that there is a lot of pain going around. The absurdist rhetoric, the constant changes of mind, the moving of goal posts, the lying, the bullying - these are in a way displays of power, but they are also politically very expensive, in the sense that with every lie they lose people, and, remember, it's a numbers game. They also are humans, and there is shame in being caught telling lies. Additionally, in the modern era it is all recorded and documented and every momentarily successful talking point can be used to humiliate them at a later point.
And if you read the linked article carefully, you will see that the goals of these institutions is not actually that well defined, which is another way of saying that they don't necessarily know what they are doing. The money flowing into climate change public relations, for instance, is probably in part doing so just as a novelty for the billionaire who, able to own whatever he or she wants, also wants to be a saint. Which is why, I think, so much of it looks so self defeating and suicidal.