Micro politics

Politicians wield a hugely ambiguous power over us.  On the one hand, through legislation they can change our lives in the most fundamental ways; on the other, since their power is ultimately derived from us, they cannot exercise a power over us that is radically at odds with the power that we want exercised.  After all, the ultimate objective of every politician is to stay in power, whatever the compromises - uncompromised power soon turns into non-power.  Hence politicians emerge as consummate beagles, eternally sniffing the air to detect which way the wind is blowing, and what strange new scents it may be carrying.

It can be said that properly politicians perform in the arena of macro politics, politics of the broad brush stroke, of the general trend.  There are no original ideas in macro politics; by definition, its policies can only be pushed through if there is a general consensus in the country - which does not mean majority approval - that such ideas' time has come.  Politicians are like circus artists riding huge and powerful beasts, surviving by channelling those beasts' own desires into a semblance of obedience.

But those beast are always dinosaurs.  Politicians are dim-witted and short-sighted beings; they can only pick out the very largest and most obvious of ideas, those which are blatant and have been around for that critically sufficient time to be perceived as safe and with a growing acceptance.  What politicians miss - which is why thankfully they all get thrown out every so often - are the mammals. 

These are the small, fast-moving ideas that run in and out of the lumbering limbs of the cold-blooded dinosaurs.  Mainstream politicians have no truck with them; they are the province of the counter-establishment forces, the opposition present within most of us.  Where they are born is hard to say; it might be in some obscure academic journal; a polemical novel; or at a dinner party in the suburbs.  Though their birth is obscure, their growth is not.  Through countless chains and systems they are disseminated, debated, and flourish.  Eventually they too will turn into ponderous dinosaurs, by which time they will be big enough for the politicians to detect, to ride them into the sunset, and so begin the whole process again.

This kind of micro politics represents a return to roots.  Politics means literally ‘things to do with the city’; it refers to the time when Greek city states were the fundamental social and governmental unit.  Politics was conducted through open debate among enfranchised citizens.  Policies were decided by the ebb and flow of argument, and by the merits or otherwise of their ideas - at least until superficial oratory took over.  Micro politics operates under the same dynamics as that original pristine form; it provides an intellectual forum for debate, for the sifting and selection of ideas that eventually emerge to form the next political agenda.  And it is the micro politicians who wield the real, though hidden power to shape the future.  Macro politicians owe them everything - which is why they are the ultimate hollow people, people without a centre, resonating noisily to the sound of superannuated arguments.

(9.12.89)

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