The New Politics
2137
Politics > Commentary
Mar 1, 2007
Sam Vaknin
The New Politics
Politics, in all its forms, is bankrupt. The notion that we can safely and successfully hand over the management of our daily lives and the setting of priorities to a political class or elite is thoroughly discredited. Politicians cannot be trusted, regardless of the system in which they operate. No set of constraints, checks, and balances, is proved to work and mitigate their unconscionable acts and the pernicious effects these have on our welfare and longevity.
Ideologies - from the benign to the malign and from the divine to the pedestrian - have driven the gullible human race to the verge of annihilation and back. Participatory democracies have degenerated everywhere into venal plutocracies. Socialism and its poisoned fruits - Marxism-Leninism, Stalinism, Maoism - have wrought misery on a scale unprecedented even by medieval standards. Only Fascism and Nazism compare with them unfavorably. The idea of the nation-state culminated in the Yugoslav succession wars.
People are voting with their feet. Most elections draw to the ballot boxes and the polling stations less than half the electorate.
Three models seem to be emerging as the dominant forms of future politics:
I. Anarchism, both destructive (international terrorism, for example) and constructive (the Internet, for instance).
II. Participatory democracy, both destructive (mob rule and coups) and constructive (people power, especially in Asia and Latin America).
III. In certain countries, mainly in the West, a disenchanted and uninterested citizenry will relegate power and vest it in various oligrachies, forfeiting its decision-making prerogatives altogether and permanently in return for material welfare and personal safety. Sam Vaknin ( samvak.tripod.com ) is the author of Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited and After the Rain - How the West Lost the East. He served as a columnist for Global Politician, Central Europe Review, PopMatters, Bellaonline, and eBookWeb, a United Press International (UPI) Senior Business Correspondent, and the editor of mental health and Central East Europe categories in The Open Directory and Suite101. Until recently, he served as the Economic Advisor to the Government of Macedonia. Visit Sam's Web site at samvak.tripod.com
Ideologies - from the benign to the malign and from the divine to the pedestrian - have driven the gullible human race to the verge of annihilation and back. Participatory democracies have degenerated everywhere into venal plutocracies. Socialism and its poisoned fruits - Marxism-Leninism, Stalinism, Maoism - have wrought misery on a scale unprecedented even by medieval standards. Only Fascism and Nazism compare with them unfavorably. The idea of the nation-state culminated in the Yugoslav succession wars.
People are voting with their feet. Most elections draw to the ballot boxes and the polling stations less than half the electorate.
Three models seem to be emerging as the dominant forms of future politics:
I. Anarchism, both destructive (international terrorism, for example) and constructive (the Internet, for instance).
II. Participatory democracy, both destructive (mob rule and coups) and constructive (people power, especially in Asia and Latin America).
III. In certain countries, mainly in the West, a disenchanted and uninterested citizenry will relegate power and vest it in various oligrachies, forfeiting its decision-making prerogatives altogether and permanently in return for material welfare and personal safety. Sam Vaknin ( samvak.tripod.com ) is the author of Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited and After the Rain - How the West Lost the East. He served as a columnist for Global Politician, Central Europe Review, PopMatters, Bellaonline, and eBookWeb, a United Press International (UPI) Senior Business Correspondent, and the editor of mental health and Central East Europe categories in The Open Directory and Suite101. Until recently, he served as the Economic Advisor to the Government of Macedonia. Visit Sam's Web site at samvak.tripod.com
Write a Review
Add to My Favorite
Refer it to Friend
Report Article
Other links owned by this user
Most politicians bend the laws of the land and steal money or solicit bribes because they need the funds to support networks of patronage. Others do it in order to reward their nearest and dearest or to maintain a lavish lifestyle when their political
Category:
(The author was among the first contributors to Nupedia, the Wikipedia's peer-reviewed predecessor, and spent six years, on and off, studying the Wikipedia) It is a question of time before the Wikipedia self-destructs and
Category:
The recent spate of accounting fraud scandals signals the end of an era. Disillusionment and disenchantment with American capitalism may yet lead to a tectonic ideological shift from laissez faire and self regulation to state intervention and regulation.
Category:
Personality disorders are dysfunctions of our whole identity, tears in the fabric of who we are. They are all-pervasive because our personality is ubiquitous and permeates each and every one of our mental cells. I just published the first article in this
Category:
The father in the Roman family (paterfamilias) exercised absolute and lifelong power over all other family members (patria potestas): his wife, children, and slaves. If the father's father was alive - then he was the supreme authority in the household.
Category:
Thought experiments (Gedankenexperimenten) are "facts" in the sense that they have a "real life" correlate in the form of electrochemical activity in the brain. But it is quite obvious that they do not relate to facts "out there". They are not true
Category:
Psychology is more an art form than a science. There is no "Theory of Everything" from which one can derive all mental health phenomena and make falsifiable predictions. Still, as far as personality disorders are concerned, it is easy to discern common
Category:
Are all personality disorders the outcomes of frustrated narcissism? During our formative years (6 months to 6 years old), we are all "narcissists". Primary Narcissism is a useful and critically important defense mechanism. As the infant
Category:
There is an often missed distinction between Being the First, Being Original, and Being Innovative. To determine that someone (or something) has been the first, we need to apply a temporal test. It should answer at least three questions:
Category:
There are many kinds of narratives and organizing principles. Science is driven by evidence gathered in experiments, and by the falsification of extant theories and their replacement with newer, asymptotically truer, ones. Other systems - religion,
Category:
Personality traits enduring, usually rigid patterns of behavior, thinking (cognition), and emoting expressed in a variety of circumstances and situations and throughout one's life (typically from early adolescence onward). Some personality traits
Category:
12. Slush Funds
According to David McClintick ("Swordfish: A True Story of Ambition, Savagery, and Betrayal"), in the late 1980's, the FBI and DEA set up dummy corporations to deal in drugs. They funneled into these corporate fronts money from drug-related asset
Category:
13. On Being Human
Are we human because of unique traits and attributes not shared with either animal or machine? The n of "human" is circular: we are human by virtue of the properties that make us human (i.e., distinct from animal and machine). It is a
Category:
The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science." Albert Einstein, The World as I See It, 1931 The debate between realism and
Category:
In their opus magnum "Personality Disorders in Modern Life", Theodore Millon and Roger Davis define personality as: "(A) complex pattern of deeply embedded ychological characteristics that are expressed automatically in almost every area of
Category:
Incrementally, but noticeably, the United States is shedding its democracy. Hard-won civil liberties are willingly sacrificed for the sake of illusory added security. Institutions are stacked with political, partisan appointees who do their
Category:
Both now-discarded Lamarckism (the supposed inheritance o acquired characteristics) and Evolution Theory postulate that unction determines orm. Natural selection rewards those orms best suited to carry out the unction o survival ("survival o the
Category:
Their arrival portends rising local prices and a culture shock. Many of them live in plush apartments, or five star hotels, drive SUV's, sport $3000 laptops and PDA's. They earn a two figure multiple of the local average wage. They are busybodies,
Category:
The history of the Cathoic Church reads ike the annas of a goba crime concern. It gave the word the inquisition, incestuous and murderous popes, reigious warfare, pedophiiac sex scandas, idoatry, and the gnawing guit that comes from embracing
Category:
20. The New Politics
Politics, in all its forms, is bankrupt. The notion that we can safely and successfully hand over the management of our daily lives and the setting of priorities to a political class or elite is thoroughly discredited. Politicians cannot be trusted,
Category:
Other links at Politics > Commentary
Whether God sent a judgment to New Orleans for its sinfulness is open to debate and perhaps there is no way of knowing that answer until the fat lady sings. What Ray Nagin said about New Orleans being ?a chocolate city? is a bit easier to gh and it
Category:
Since it?s foundation in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, the British Broadcasting Corporation has een a supposed ?pride? of the British nation. As the world?s largest roadcasting corporation, it has een an inspiration and example for other
Category:
Let's not pretend that third world debt is about wise investment of borrowed money in order to develop a country's economy more quickly. If it were so, the countries which borrowed the most would be the ones doing well. Without getting into statistics,
Category:
I may be repulsed at the deeds orchestrated by Osama bin Laden ... But I'm even more repulsed at the ineptitude displayed in the attempts to stop him and his cause. I mean, the guy's a murderous criminal. He's an anti-Muslim,
Category:
Many People think they have the answer to get the government to reverse the year old law banning online gambling. Here is my take on what most people are saying.
Category:
Site Sponsor
Directory Statistics
Articles: 68228
Categories: 501
Yahoo Entertainment
