Are we stupid?
Whenever I talk about the need for truth-telling to mobilize citizens to make democracy work, there are always some people who say – Alan, you’re right in theory, but in reality “We know our leaders and their governments don’t care what we think”. And the example the pessimists almost always give to support their point is Prime Minister Blair’s refusal to change his mind about joining President Bush for war with Iraq after between one and a half and two million people of all classes, ages and faiths demonstrated in London AGAINST war.
In response I say – but that’s only half the story. We learned from what some of Blair’s cabinet ministers subsequently said and even wrote that as the anti-war demonstration was taking place, the cabinet was wobbling. The point is that up to two million demonstrating against Blair’s war policy didn’t cause him to change his mind but… three or four million demonstrating almost certainly would have done. The task of making democracy work requires the political engagement of citizens, the voters, in big numbers.
In my book I wrote (and often say on public platforms) that there won’t be a change of American policy with regard to the conflict in and over Palestine that became the Zionist (not Jewish!) state of Israel unless and until… Unless and until a majority of the men and women elected to Congress are more frightened of offending their voters than they are of offending the Zionist lobby and its allies including the Christian fundamentalists (who I think are deluded to the point of clinical madness).
I truly believe that principle can be applied across the board in all the Western nations. What I mean is that our governments are not going to address seriously any of the critical issues that will determine the future of life of Planet Earth unless and until they are more frightened of offending their voters than they are of offending the powerful vested interests which pull their strings….. Once again we are back to the need for truth telling about real choices and options for the future in order to empower citizens to make democracy work.
Some of us, particularly some Americans and some Brits, are aware that the Orwellian 1984-type Big Brother our governments (perhaps I should say our Systems) are becoming is getting bigger and bigger on an almost daily basis. In addition to what the whistleblowers are telling us, the Worldwide Web monitoring group has just reported, yesterday, on a rising global tide of “surveillance, censorship and blocking” by government agencies, which, says the report, is “a threat to democracy”, So there’s a case for saying that it’s going to become more difficult to tell the truth about critical issues and get it circulating. But I am not pessimistic on that score, and I’ll tell you why.
There is something truth telling has going for it. And I’ll get to it with a question. What is that most citizens of most nations have in common today? Answer: A dislike (antipathy) verging on contempt for their governments and what the business and practise of politics has become.
At this point I’ll interrupt my flow to tell you a short, true and quite amusing story. The other day a friend of mine told me of a conversation he had with one of his American friends some years ago. The American said, “I’ve just watched an hysterically funny comedy. It was set in the House of Commons. The actress who was playing Margaret Thatcher answering questions was brilliant. She looked and sounded just like the prime minister.” My friend said to the American: “It wasn’t a Spitting Image type of comedy you were watching. It was the real thing,”
Public disenchantment with politics is regularly measured in America. There the latest polls indicate that 90 percent of Americans have something approaching contempt for Congress.
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