IS IT NOT insulting to our intelligence to have people get up on a makeshift stage to tell us what to think of other people, things or events? For decades most of us have been independent. For decades we have been educating our populations “for free”. By now have we not graduated from the politics of: “If I shout loud enough, you will come to believe what I am saying.”
Well, no, many see it as quite the opposite. The tradition of putting up an issue, then posing some hard questions about it, playing it through, putting up some cool game-like challenges, comically or cleverly or vociferously pounding through those, to end up crescendo-like in some deep characterisation of a person, event or transaction, is seen as the highest sort of politics, no matter how annoyingto the residents in the communities.
That present-day politicking finds something tangible to explore, something important to people, makes it still a useful preoccupation, in much the same way that a book, a poem, a movie or a song would. But the playing of politics, is it just about the art of telling stories? Rolling dice? Or is there a qualitative or quantitative judgement able to be wrested from these staged shows?
At the very least a romantic notion would frame it into making connections, one on one, one on 20 or 30 – especially abling when seen in terms of who can wield the greatest influence over – if this type of thing thrills you. Even less appealing is the tragic notion of political stage, i.e.: believing your world a composite of persons to be cleverly duped.
Yet another is the journeyer of self-discovery, focusing on why people do what they do. This person’s style of politics is one of character creation and decreation, a tad different to the “politician” who focuses on the most dramatic, heartless ways to hurt people. And then there is the “moralist” who is known for the kind of choices they make in the face of ease or adversity.
Of course there are many types of political man, many seeming to have as their greatest endeavour, to cloud, the actual question on folks’ minds: “What can you achieve?”
Of course one can also view political parties and people through a social sciences lens.
For instance, what are their social or economic values? Are they putting forward any – apart from their one issue here and there. Are they liberal on issues or conservative? What caused them to design their campaign? Was it a majority grassroots effort, or a private sector effort, or other? Was it/is it because of a moral issue or not? Many campaigns can have more than one style. For example, it is not out of the ordinary to find campaigns based on character exploration and interaction, then crawling about in the muck of character assassination or innuendo or humorous anecdotes about yon and yither. We are known here in the Caribbean for our hybrids.
As for the people choosing people to put in positions to handle getting their needs met, there is no logical continuum to this, there is not even a big overarching plot; rather, people choose people to represent them based on how these characters address and negotiate their surrounding world. Without the time to sidle through the nuances of each and every issue, we seek to elect the person who will best take care of those decisions. Sometimes we think about who will best represent the average voter’s perspective. It is not rocket science figuring out why rich and/or successful people are generally the candidates. Folks generally want to have over-achievers taking care of their business, not under achievers.
People realise that no one can be purely objective, and would therefore be very uneasy to vote for someone without an opinion or convictions on topics that concern them. So representational democracy is a tip more utilitarian than absolute democracy, one might conjecture.
