2/POLITICAL REALISM

POLITICAL REALISM//

David Cameron is a first rate pragmatist, a third rate politician and a fifth rate strategist. He is a first rate pragmatist, because he has understood the bumbling and vacuous nature of leadership in current British politics and he has concluded that anybody who seems vaguely positive would have little trouble in getting the initiative.//

Cameron is a third rate politician, because having got the initiative he has surrounded himself with lethargic journeymen, journeymen who simply can’t rouse themselves to be anything other than career politicians, career administrators. These journeymen careerists have come up with a variety of flaky hit and miss schemes, more or less based on smaller government and less taxes.//

The Education and Health schemes are just ridiculous, little more than matters of moving the deck chairs around. Ken Clarke more or less by chance has come up with something, at least based on realism. Prisons don’t work. Fair enough. What does work then?//

Clarke and indeed the whole of the chattering classes have recently muttered their agreement about being tough on the causes of crime. We know with absolute certainty that there have been no realistic suggestions about how to be tough on the causes of crime. We know this for certain, because absolutely no prominent politicians have defined the causes of crime.//

We know that David Cameron is a fifth rate strategist, because he has based the political activities of his government on flaky schemes, and on flaky nonsense about ‘a big society’.//As a background to all this is the unwinnable nature to the Afghan War. Cameron is too wilfully stupid to understand the unwinnable nature of the Afghan War, and the pointless nature of all the present systematic bullying of Muslims and of the Islamic World.//

The Western Nations in general and the leadership of the Western Nations in particular behave as if the Western system of adversarialism has some absolute basis in natural realities, or at least some absolute basis in social realities. That is simply not so.//

Western social and political norms based on corrupt and decadent adversarialism, have no more a basis in absolute realities than have Islamic social and political norms, based on social and religious bullying. Muslims can quite reasonably ask, why should we replace our nonsense with your nonsense?//

The politicians are not to blame. It is said we get the politicians we deserve. It would be more accurate to say we get the politicians we tolerate. Just following the recent general election there was talk of four year Parliaments. Almost without protests, Cameron made it clear there would be five year Parliaments. Britain possibly being the only leading European country not to have four year Parliaments.//

This is where Cameron’s first rate pragmatism comes in. The shorter and more fleeting is his time as Prime Minister, the less lucrative would his book deal likely to be when he shuffles off. Cameron’s first rate pragmatism is directed towards his personal self enrichment and is certainly not directed towards any social or political advantages for the electorate.//

However the politicians are not to blame. The politicians we have at present merely fill the vacuum produced by the lack of realism and engagement, demonstrated by the majority of the electorate. There could well have been a popular clamour before and after the recent general election for four year Parliaments, or better still three year parliaments. And then we would have got three or four year Parliaments.//

Instead we have allowed our present journeymen politicians to continue the long tradition of politicians implying that individual voters are too stupid to understand the importance of various political details. Our present politicians continue the long tradition of talking down to the electorate.//

I am resolutely opposed to capital punishment. Capital punishment promotes and perpetuates violent fantasies. However I am in favour of a referendum on capital punishment. The campaigning during such a referendum would be an exercise in our politicians learning to talk sense to the electorate.//

It should be made clear to the electorate that the pensions age should go to seventy more or less immediately. Hard Luck on disappointed expectations.//

It should be made clear to the electorate that no family with a family income of £30,000 or more should get state benefits. The Welfare State is based on the socialist idea, from each according to his abilities to each according to his needs. Fair enough. Middle class voters should not demand moronic bribes to ensure their continued support for the Welfare State. Either they are for the Welfare State or they are not.//

In the Fifties when the consolidation of the Welfare State took place, it was a cultural amusement that ‘even the Queen gets Family Allowance’, as it then was. That was fair enough Self Congratulations at the time. Now that sort of thing is an expensive and ridiculous anachronism.//

Our basic political problems are not the tiny minded opportunism of our leading politicians, but the lack of realism of the individual voters. At least two thirds of the Westminster MPs could be described as metaphorical blank slates. They would like to do well. They would like to make substantial social and political changes.//

Voters should bring about the political conditions in which their MPs can perform well. Stop considering them as social workers. Lobby them for social and political changes. An end to the Afghan War. Now. Three year Parliaments. Now. An end to immigration. Now. A referendum on capital punishment. Now.//

OUR PRESENT POLITICIANS HAVE HAD IT EASY WITH RADICAL DISSENT BEING LED BY POLITICAL HALFWITS LIKE NICK GRIFFIN AND NIGEL FARAGE. THEY WILL NOT ALWAYS HAVE IT SO EASY.//

Tom Smith, Thursday, 22nd July 2010.//