Ouch.

If I wanted to be completely abrasive, I could just have written a Facebook status saying, “You should really stop obsessing about what I wrote on Facebook and find something else to do,” which is essentially me giving the finger to those I have most clearly upset. But no, I am typing a blog, using so much of my incredibly limited spare time (I have lots of spare time), labouring over my keyboard like an exhausted Victorian factory worker (because typing requires equal manpower to making steel) to produce the finest explanation man has ever known – it will make the King James Bible look like a children’s book.

I read the news a lot, either out of interest or my futile attempts to be with the times. It’s sort of my daily routine. I check the BBC, the Guardian, the New York Times, maybe see how far I can get through The Times website without having to pay for it, and then I see what’s trending on Twitter. So when you see the same subject appear over and over again, to be talked about in a way that seems over-the-top for a television programme, it starts to grate. If one of my favourite comedies were talked in a kind of fashion that mimics the end of the world nearly every week, it would be marvellous. And then you do some pretty elementary mental arithmetic, showing that the maximum potential audience is quite low due to the fact that the 5 in 6 of those who don’t have Sky and those who don’t subscribe to Netflix won’t watch it, believing either that it’s not worth switching to watch it or that the TV licence is quite enough each year to pay for television. It’s a minority programme, for which I personally believed that the promotion it was given was slightly unjustified. Considering the way that everyone went silent when Mad Men was taken off the BBC, and I liked Mad Men for its accuracy of the attitudes and events of the increasingly turbulent 1960s and the way that it influenced the direction of the show, it annoyed me.

The type of promotion it was given, I felt, was that akin to the release of a revolutionary new document which would have answered every question that philosophers and scientists have been asking since time immemorial. What the programme seemed to me was a bit of visual fiction, like most television programmes, no different to Sherlock, no different to Luther or any other drama made in the UK or the US.  I don’t know if it’s because American network television is becoming increasingly sanitised thanks to the boob incident by Janet Jackson, but it seems that there are some who seem to deduce the quality of a television programme solely on how much a cable network gives the FCC the two fingers. I’m not one for extreme violence, and the episodes that I watched had a lot of it, such as the beginning of one when one meth-riddled dealer punched his sidekick to death in a junkyard. If that is revolutionary, five-star television, we all need enlightening. Things are “revolutionary” when something becomes markedly different to the previous status quo. That is why we have the French and the American Revolutions and the revolutions that took place in Eastern Europe at the fall of the Berlin Wall: a huge change from a previous situation. In my opinion, what is revolutionary on television is our increased awareness of foreign-language television. The showing and success of The Killing, Borgen, The Bridge, Spiral, Inspector Montalbano and The Returned in the UK, a country intimidated by mainland European culture thanks to a half-inferiority complex, half-mild xenophobia, is revolutionary. And what is more, that these are shown to a much wider potential audience, as BBC Four, unlike Sky, is free, means that their impact will be much more felt, even if they appear at the moment to be undetectable tremors.

Of course, the elephant in the room is sneering. My status was sneering because I believed a certain contingent of the audience to be fools, fools because the show was the greatest thing since sliced bread, fools because they were the kind who thought literature can’t get any better than American teen literature – indeed, there is an increasing blur between teen and adult literature – fools, because they think that a hamburger with wasabi instead of mustard is cutting-edge cuisine. But my argument is that their sneering is made worse by the fact that they sneer at those who are barely above them in social status. You would probably find that their interests would largely match. And yet, they laugh at people with slick jaws, with southern drawls and drink sugary sweet ice tea, gently mocking them. There is a Colbert Report about a small town in Kentucky holding a gay pride parade in respect of their mayor, the town’s hairdresser, who is gay. The voiceover is satirical, mimicking the Republicans who worry so much in vain about a fall in traditional values. But the audience weren’t laughing at the voice but the whole southern stereotypes. They howled; I was disgusted. On the other hand, sneering is not that bad. Indeed, it is human. Dickens sneered relentlessly at the middle classes, mocking their unrefined tastes, just as I did regarding that certain contingent of their audience. It doesn’t mean that I’ll become one of the most famous writers in the English language, but everyone is capable of it, even the son of someone who ended up in debtors’ prison.

I hope I managed, at least half-heartedly, to clear some things up. But I should probably finish by saying that most of the world’s greatest cultural contributions are made in hardship. The Italian Renaissance was the by-product of ruthless rulers like the Borgias and the Medicis. Tolstoy wrote under the authoritarian tsardom in 19th century Russia. The best in French literature was from the Second Empire, as was the reconstruction of Paris, which produced some of the most amazing cityscape. The Moscow Metro and its opulent decoration was the brainchild of Stalin. The 1970s produced a plethora of stunning music and film when the western world was in industrial and political strife. And all I can say is that so far, as the squeeze on living standards continues, and as various political scandals continue to be leaked into the public eye, where we increasingly live in fear of the dying out of the middle-class, is that I am generally disappointed. I am so disappointed. And all of what we are producing culturally overall is not good enough, and you should know that. 

Debased debate and discussion: my take

Laurie Penny, ardent feminist and writer for the New Statesman, wrote an article about the ridiculous set-up of many television interviews. They are often men in suits, broadsheet columnists and thus working in a dying industry, but the most concerning of these was that the producers seemed to egg them on into bear-baiting. That this technique is one used on the Jerry Springer Show, so that the guests in a ‘roid rage can beat up his adversary as rigorously as possible, is not favourable to those working on BBC Newsnight which claims to be a show of high debate with experts on current affairs. But it shows a trend that is becoming more prominent; debate about serious issues which may have dire consequences on the poor, ethnic minorities, gay people – the underdogs of society – is being downgraded in reputation and downgraded in quality, leaving for a vacuum of show and vanity.

It’s probably why I hardly watch any serious programmes on television at all these days, for the pure reason that it’s not serious anymore. If we are talking about a benefits cap which hinders most those, for example, who work poorly paid jobs in London we spend less time on the issue at hand and decide that the debate itself should be treated as a WWE match but with more dialogue. Indeed, the arrangements for a WWE match are similar to television debates. Each one seems fixed, it’s a jolly good show, and we commiserate the inevitable result. The columnist from the Telegraph delivers his poisonous rhetoric while the Social Studies expert from the University of Sussex loses, even if she were to point to all the evidence proving her point, while the referee/adjudicator simply watches on, before reading us the FTSE and the exchange rates. It pains me to make this comparison, one that would not be possible if, perhaps, the rules and the customs were changed.

What has also happened is Twitter. As much as I use it, I hate it with every cell in my body. The reason is because if we believe Twitter to be a democratisation of debate, then it would senseless to compress serious points into 140 characters, unless we were to introduce short-hand as an alternative alphabet. Indeed, the mixing of cheap jibes, instantaneous outrage with attempts to serious challenges to the mind is toxic. By nature of human vulgarity, the jibes are most numerous, drowning out those who are serious and generally interested, leaving those who use Twitter to conduct their business, be it politics, disappointed, ignorant and disdainful. I imagine that when a politician receives messages on a regular basis expressing their rumoured phallic tendencies or about how X could do their job better than them, you don’t feel better about or, more importantly, responsible in, your role of power. Like Peter Mannion had said in The Thick of It, “That’s the problem with the public, they are fucking horrible… I’ve met them.” Indeed, it’s one of the reasons why I think that a universal dislike of politicians is harmful for society and democracy, because once someone in power knows that they are disliked, it only makes the powerful one stronger due to the extreme stoicism that comes with constant hate on all sides. After all, Machiavelli said that it is better to feared than to be loved if your intention is to get people to do as you want.

But there is something that I find especially abhorrent; instead of offering solutions, the world of debate becomes a series of blame games and attacks. The TED talks, whereby idiots with no lessons in rhetoric or public speaking give crappy lectures to pseuds, are guilty. Russell Brand tweeted a link to one of these talks:

@rustyrockets: This is interesting. People are preventing us from taking over by making us all bored.

It’s not only that I disagree from him, but it’s a very vague attack (“people”) combined with a bold statement, intended to gather thousands of retweets in his name. It’s not comical to analyse, just very bad. And this trend in modern discussion is widespread, whereby people are invited on television or to write in a newspaper and make these very bold but vague statements under which lies very little evidence or very shallow thought.

And the worst part, it’s that we accept it. Bernard-Henri Lévy, despite his numerous appearances on television and in print, is decried each and every time for his appearances by actual intellectuals i.e. by those who spend their time doing research as opposed to building a media profile. We may not have one equivalent figure; we have many, and in English-speaking countries we accept it, and we shouldn’t. Considering that this country has one of the finest  debating chambers in the world, it is a shame that, be it because of spin and because of an intellectually deprived audience or one that has yet to think for itself or have its own values, it makes no sense whatsoever that we should stand for the drivel that has become public discourse, serving only one purpose; to undermine a dissenting but sensible view in order to keep the status quo, be it for better or for worse.

On espionage and the changing nature of the internet

I have kept rather quiet over the recent international current affairs, despite their huge significance. I have not said anything about the Guardian publishing the story about PRISM or the National Security Agency, and gloating about it, and I have not commented in the slightest about Edward Snowden who has just been granted asylum in Russia - apparently, the place to go if you want to protect your liberty (it's not like the Cambridge Five, who thought they were Marxists and arrived in Moscow, very disappointed). I have simply watched and observed, and I have glanced over the pages and pages of information and comment columns that have been released in the newspapers. And so, I have come to these three conclusions.

Firstly, the scandal is part of a realisation that the World Wide Web has changed dramatically since its inception. First, it was seen as a place only for the recluses and geeks, who bothered to go and buy a computer and a modem; a place where they would talk about computer games or Dungeons and Dragons, far away from the eyes of Joe Bloggs. But when consent was given to allow the internet to become a medium for commercial transactions was the moment which created the internet that we know today. Amazon, eBay and Ocado led to Myspace, Facebook and Twitter in showing that the internet was profitable by getting everyone and anyone to buy a computer, to get connected, and let them shop from their own homes, where they would be then hooked onto this new technology, making social networking viable. So, compare: the dens of nerds and geeks; the virtual public forum. The internet has evolved in less than twenty years into something out of a 1960s prediction of the future - we have Skype and FaceTime and we really never need leave the house to complete errands. However, the public forum nature of the internet means that it contains the sinister nature of the public forum, bringing me onto my next point.

The world of military intelligence has changed with the internet, and rightly so. When the latest in telecommunications was the telephone, MI6 and the CIA were phone-tapping, as they should have done, and as was required by them. When we were writing letters, we were intercepting them, as what should have been done. Spies continue to park outside people’s houses, following people on the streets, take pictures of them entering and leaving buildings, and we have accepted this as a means to stop crime being committed, be it child sex gangs, huge drug networks spanning the globe, or human trafficking. And so, when the internet appears to be an efficient means of communication for transferring files and documents, it is only logical to profit from the cracks in the security of the internet, this one being that the majority of data flows through the United States due to its de facto position as “Head of the Internet”. I’m not going to go into specific details on the efficiency of the intelligence-gathering, but I would say this: the mass collection of metadata as seen through PRISM was not done to keep tabs on every single person, but because it was cheaper; maximum efficiency for a smaller price. I can imagine the conversation in the Oval Office when it was decided.

“Mr President, we have two options in order to monitor the flow of data in and out of US territory, so that we can ensure the security of the State. The first option is that we force the telecommunications networks through the courts to allow us to access all of the metadata, and we survey it in case anything we see as dangerous comes up. The second option is that we pick through the specific metadata in separate instances. However, this option is much more costly.”

“So the first one is cheaper?”

“Yes, Mr President.”

“I would choose the first option.”

The third thing that I have noticed is that the majority of Americans, regardless of political stance, are seriously deluded. They are absolutely certain that their country has never been on the wrong side of any conflict; that every conflict is like the Second World War: fighting those bad guys over there (I’ll give them that – the Nazis were properly bad), and protecting the liberty and freedom of the world. They are convinced that the United States is the best country in the world for everything. Every single Op-Ed piece has criticised either the Obama administration, either because he was the enemy of America and a terrorist, or because he was supposed to save us from Bush-style foreign policy, or they have cited a return to American “liberty and justice for all”. It is this mantra that has led to the incredibly naïve reaction from the internet to PRISM, who think that the internet should be stuck in its own little box, away from any real-world problems. We hear of people immediately jumping to encrypt their data, which is a bit like wearing plate armour in public: people immediately notice you and think you have something to hide, which ultimately defeats the purpose, and it becomes such a pain to wear that you just give up. The fact that the US is the “head of the internet” leads to the incredibly stupid circle-jerking when we talk about this; all these people reciting the American Constitution to show that it is wrong, when compared to the Stasi, where 1 in 50 people were informants in a country of around 16 million, this all looks a bit tame.

So, what do I propose to challenge the way we look at the internet? Firstly, let’s treat the internet differently, not drastically, but because we respect the changing nature of the internet. Don’t go encrypting everything and anything, but think about what you post and say as if you were shouting it out loud. If you were to shout on Trafalgar Square “There’s a bomb and you’re all going to die,” and someone was concerned, what will happen - possible arrest and mass evacuation of a busy place in London? Likewise, don’t show your genitals on the internet, just as you would not in a public square. Secondly, get real: espionage has existed in every single civilisation. We are no better morally than any civilisation before us. It’s a case of plus ça change. Thirdly, and most importantly, the Americans need to realise this: they are just another power like the Soviet Union, like Great Britain, like France, like Spain, like the Romans, like the Greeks, and like China will be; the fear of losing power and cold-hearted pragmatism always triumphs any moral conscience or romantic values, because we’re human. And humans are bastards.

Yours sincerely, Alexander

This article has been sitting in the Documents section on my computer for some time now under the name À publier lorsqu'il est grand temps, or "To publish when it's about time" because French is posh, innit. But now, I think it is indeed the suitable time that you were able to read this. 

Perhaps it’s easier if I start this post by getting to the point:

I'm gay; or in more complex terms, I would rather a relationship with a man over that with a woman.

I've been reading something that is not only interesting but which specifically spoke to me. The term has been called “Best Little Boy in the World", originally the title of the autobiography of Andrew Tobias, published in 1973. It stipulates that people who are gay but still in the closet try to make up for the shame that is brought by homosexuality by aiming to achieve in everything else; education, sport, hobbies, in order to gain the respect of people due to the fear of rejection and isolation, and to deflect attention away from speculation of your sexuality. It's a way to say, "See, I'm a good person" on constant transmit. 

The traits described are rather poignant to me because it suddenly occurred to me that that’s what I have been doing for longer than I can remember. I work constantly. I live to work; I get too little sleep and then burn out on the weekends, spending them mainly in my dressing gown like an alcoholic on a day off. I just keep my head down and don't complain. I also find that the times when I get mild illnesses - colds, fevers, general aches and pains, and nervous twitches - is when I am at my most stressed. I set myself tough goals and high standards, and I get very upset or frustrated when I don’t satisfy them; one of those goals was getting into either Oxford or Cambridge, one that I had my eyes fervently upon since the Fourth or Fifth Form. And it’s only now, after having been told by those around me countless times to relax or to stop doing what I was doing, that I realise that I should not be stressing myself to breaking point. It's why I am coming out: to take it easy. 

Nevertheless, because I still like to not follow people's advice to the letter, I still have a range of goals to reach in the coming years, as a sort-of checklist:

• To climb onto the career ladder at a respected institution.
• To live and/or have property in a “great city” like London, Paris, Berlin, New York etc.
• To know people who enjoy what I enjoy: debate, good wine, nice dinner parties, attending art exhibitions, and all that kind of metropolitan middle-class milling around. 

And last but not least:

• To be recognised for what I contribute to the world, and to become thus an influential figure on par with the other Great Minds of past and present.

(Sidenote: I'm also coming out as an awful, vicious narcissist, and a Machiavellian while I'm at it. Maybe you already knew that but I'm sure to die a horrible death or suffer a crushing downfall as a result.)

But don't think that just because I work hard doesn't automatically mean I'm gay, because underneath all the layers, I was extremely busy denying something a personal trait. It may not be the most obvious, but it is relatively important, ranking between eye colour and your automatic choice of drink (advertising has compelled me to say "Coke" almost as a reflex). I think of all those nights getting off to images and thoughts of men before a tidal wave of guilt. I think of watching gay films, and pausing and replaying the bits where they hold hands, and hug and kiss each other. I would be saying to myself, “I want that," but you can't buy relationships on Amazon or eBay because this isn't Black Mirror, and Charlie Brooker is not writing the script. I don’t know whether all of this is pathetic, stupid or just plain sad; it is most likely a mixture of all three

Because ultimately, dear readers, being gay and being a teenager is just very hard. To deny this is to deny harsh reality. You can be given all the support by the people around you, and yet there is always a part of you somewhere that says that what you are and what you want is sordid, depraved, debauched and deviant. It goes beyond the idea of not “fitting in”, because this is something that most likely can’t be changed; I could lie about liking a band or a specific person because I know that fads, trends and people come and go. Sexuality is not a fad or a trend – it’s permanent, which means to consciously lie about who I'm attracted to would be consciously lying about it, permanently.

It is also hard because all the traditional teenage rites of passage like having a relationship for the first time, or awkward sexual experiences leading to a lifetime of in-jokes among close friends; they are just off-limits when you're actually a teenager, and this will continue to be the case even if the gay rights movement gets stronger and the age at which people come out continues to decrease. Why? Because gay people will always be in the minority and thus it limits the pool of potential partners by about 90%. Instead, you have to wait until some time later if you do want to start going to gay bars or until university or perhaps even later in life for the eventual rumspringa to take place. At the same time throughout your adolescence, the hormones and the energy normally used for other things get used to work and commit that extra 10% in order to make up for the perceived shame, and back to the "Best Little Boy in the World" syndrome.

Ultimately, the fact that this is a post where I come out to all those who seem to be interested in this blog is so that I can add a goal on the list, that embodiment of Narcissus himself. It's not too bold, and I do hope that it will not require any Machiavellian manoeuvres. 

• To not be ashamed of declaring the kind of person with whom I wish to spend a significant amount of life.

The current Mayor of Berlin Klaus Wowereit said prior to being elected in 2001, “Ich bin schwul und das ist auch gut so” – I am gay and that is fine. I can only hope that you, dear friends and readers, agree.

Perfecting the art of procrastination

1. Before sitting down to carry out your fruitful labours of remembering sections of text, feel an inevitable moment of doom.

2. Having sat down, open the book you wish to study, and read. *Ping*. But wait, let me just check my phone. 

-- 30 mins later, texting someone about your impending revision. --

3. Now, let's get to work, I need to get that A. But before all that hard labour, it's better to check the current affairs. Always good to check the news.

-- 2 hours later, having gone from a sensible BBC News article to a website about nuclear weapons via Facebook and Twitter. --

4. Oh yes, it's 12 o'clock, time for lunch. Have an enormous smorgasbord of various breads, meats, cheeses, salads, coffee, tea and other pleasantries. Use a cliché like "An army never marches on an empty stomach" in order to justify your terrible actions.

-- 1 hour of eating an amount of food equivalent to your body mass, then watching an hour of daytime TV that is usually a combination of houses being sold at auction, antiques being sold at auction, auction houses being sold at auction... --

5. Return to your position of study. You're tired and are suffering from meat sweats from gorging yourself on delicious protein. Take a nap so that you're refreshed later for all that revision that's piled upon your desk.

-- 4 hours later of blissful, undeserved mental relaxation--

6. Now, you are refreshed in mind and spirit. You are zen. You can truly get to work. But wait, You need some Polo mints to help you concentrate, and for that lovely minty breath.

--Out to shop wanting Polos, come back with Polos. And a bar of Dairy Milk. And some Jelly-Tots. And some crisps if I get really hungry. And a can of Coke in case I get thirsty. --

7. OK, you now have your necessary revisionary aids. Let's get to work. 

--1 hour later of 1/2 hour revision, plus 1/2 hour suffering from an intense sugar rush where the concentration rate is essentially nil. --

8. Oh, it's six o'clock all ready. Time for dinner, perhaps.

-- 20 minutes eating dinner, plus 40 minutes raiding the fridge for the yoghurts you like and making another cup of tea. --

9. Now, time for revision. But look, it's seven now, and the sun's starting to set. Plus, you've been told that you've been working so hard and that at the end, you're going to get great grades. May as well go downstairs for a bit

--Go downstairs and watch TV, or generally stare at a computer screen for four hours in despair of the sham of a life you're currently living. --

10. Wow, it's eleven already. 

--Continue browsing the internet etc. --

11. Gosh, is it really two in the morning? Do some revision in bed. Get that text book and look through it. Then you can say that you worked all day and night.

-- Read book for half an hour, fall asleep. --

12. Ten o'clock in the morning? Hrrumph.

(Go back to step 1; repeat 21 times until you're back to school, when you say how hard you revised, something confirmed by your parents.)

(P.S. I most certainly, at all, did not do some or any of these things during the school holidays. I always work hard, and regularly show it through my 100% committal to all my studies, at all times.)

(P.P.S.  I never lie.)

De administratione populoque Part II - About securing power and maintaining stability

I did say that stability is becoming more inherent in the world. Nevertheless, when governments come under attack from their own citizens – it does happen every so often in times of upheaval and change – the government needs an alternative plan, should things go wrong. The plan must do these things.

1. It must re-affirm government control.

2. It must stop dissenting voices.

3. It must regain people’s attention.

The answer is not sending the riot police into the streets. It is not about sending tanks and soldiers to massacre its own people. Instead, the long-term, stable solution proves to be the most effective. That solution is bureaucracy, a system of functionaries and administration to insure that administration itself is protected. It is why every single developed stable country has one, and is only destroyed by military combat, itself prevented by bureaucracy.

Bureaucracy and public servants are the most important group of people in any government or institution; elected politicians, elected for the sake of stability no less, come and go. Perhaps there is a correlation between grand buildings such as the Houses of Parliament, and the non-descript offices of Whitehall. The Houses of Parliament, and indeed other Parliament buildings and grand palaces, act as a façade, in order to display importance and thus hide the contrary truth. Meanwhile, the real important figures of government are situated in ordinary offices which blend into their surroundings in the form of rows of either glass-and-steel boxes or typical Victorian blocks. Or perhaps the headquarters of the Highways Agency or Public Health England have the most extravagant building in London that I haven’t found out about, I digress. Meanwhile, those unelected worker bees continue to sort files, formulate and realise government policy, without a single blink of an eye by any journalist or enquirer. That is the beauty of bureaucracy.

Alexis de Tocqueville said, “The most dangerous moment for a bad government is when it begins to reform.” Thus, for a bad government to reform a bureaucracy is a move only the stupidest of fools dare make. It is why the 19^th century bureaucracy of Russia in all its imperial glory would be the foundations of the bureaucracy that would allow Stalin, the epitome of despotism and hated by his own family and some would argue by Lenin himself, to protect his power even during the most horrifying moments of his rule. If there is one thing that Stalin can be credited for in Russia – and the Russians themselves can think of many other things – it is that Stalin created stability after the October Revolution and then after the death of Lenin through mass industrialisation and the rebuilding of Soviet cities. However, part of his plan was to increase his own power and in doing so, he made the Soviet Union an extension of his own character. The means in which he reached this goal were barbaric – the famines in the Ukraine, the deaths of thousands of political prisoners some of whom died during construction of projects such as the Moscow Metro, the executions and ill-treatment of at up to a million Soviet officials and the attempted Doctor’s Plot whereby Jewish doctors would be blamed for a string of high-profile deaths and subsequently lead to an anti-Semitic movement, the latter cancelled only by the death of Stalin himself.  You can see the papers drafted by bureaucrats detailing the death warrants of hundreds of functionaries and generals, with Stalin’s signature of approval. The same system in Russia is used by one Vladimir Putin today, a man like many of his Soviet predecessors; revered by his people sometimes to the point of cult following, helped by a strong bureaucratic state, and, combined with the increasing incomes of the Russian middle-class, his leadership is kept strong and his power continues to be consolidated, much to the chagrin of the rest of the group of oligarchs of which he himself was once a member.

The use of bureaucracy as a backup can even develop, or mutate, into an outright scapegoat. It is why, for instance, Adam Curtis, the BBC blogger and filmmaker who continues to fascinate me, described Yes Minister as propaganda, citing that the Civil Service, the neutral functionaries responsible for the execution of government policy, were betrayed as obstacles to good government and thus their absence would allow the government, such as that of Margaret Thatcher, to push on her suppression of the miners’ strike with popular support or the equally divisive policies. Indeed, the use of bureaucracy as a scapegoat is widespread in British government, considering that they are required to be non-partisan. It is even said that the Blair Government, upon entering office in 1997, seemed to have based their approach to civil servants on Yes Minister, to outfox and subvert them. The failure in the West Coast rail franchise was blamed on the mistakes of civil servants, even if the Transport Secretary had been replaced. The ability of bureaucracy to prop up and to protect a state is invaluable to any government, good or bad.

Stability and bureaucracy go hand in hand – they are both symbols of a self-aware post-ideological world. Centrism, a mixture of left- and right-wing philosophies at the top of the horse-shoe political spectrum, seems to be the dish of the decade in world politics, and sets to continue into this era. Indeed, it is the most pragmatic option: to keep both sides of humanity – the individuals themselves and the organisations in which they operate – happy. It does not matter for any country or its system whether there is a formal declaration of public approval or not; people still feel, in a democratic or undemocratic country, that their view is important. It is just that most of the time people have no opinion; democracy can be considered unnecessary in the right conditions, such as states of emergency and war. However, we can still sleep soundly in the clear correlation that an intense dislike of a government leads to its eventual removal; it does not need to mean that the surface may disintegrate, the skeleton of government may remain, such as bureaucracy; however the muscles, the organs and the soul of power will have disintegrated nonetheless. Who can say that the Communist Party of China is truly communist, either in the traditional Marxist-Leninist or the derivative Maoist context? How many political parties have the words “democratic” or “democracy” in the name, regardless of actual conviction and practice?

However, that does not mean that I am in favour of an authoritarian banana republic-style dictatorship in this country, nor for any country in the Western world, for that would be fundamentally unstable. 

De administratione populoque (On administration and the people) Part 1: About stability

Prologue

When I come to writing these blog posts, I don’t sit down and say to myself, “Let’s talk about X today, that will get people interested”, or at least not very recently. Often I’m sat on my bed, reading some sensationalist column in The Guardian which makes out that humans being bad and doing bad is something completely new, when I suddenly decide to document my own novelty in thought and type away into this account of my own immaturity. This is exactly what has happened in the last fifteen minutes. And so, here is another one of these documentations, perhaps to be one day thrown in front of me by a journalist on a mission to proscribe against those who speak against majority-dictated voices, and for which I shall have to explain myself. So, what spoon shall I use to stir the great cauldron of discontent today, you ask? Today, I am going to write about power.

                                                                 

About stability

There seems to be a great myth which circulates in all four corners of the world. It is one which has incited many tumultuous events that have marked civilisations, and continues to do so this very day, where we consider ourselves, even in financial crisis, the pinnacle of human advancement. The myth dictates that, at some point in human history, there was a “golden age”. It is an age where everyone, rich or poor, white or black, or whatever extreme you wish to use, was happy and prosperous, and that it is our job, as human beings, to recreate and then to supersede this period of supposed equality, wealth and customs. This “golden age” has produced the most harrowing events in human history. Why? It is because every single political group, moderate and extreme, is unified by this one single desire and end, and it is the means that are used to justify this outcome, that differ. Such equality among the political groups has allowed the technological revolution, the improvement of living conditions and the overall organisation of the human race to co-exist with such depraved acts as the Holocaust, the Soviet purges of the 1930s, the Irish potato famine and the brutal conquests of Genghis Khan, Alexander the Great and other famous military masterminds in ancient times.

Thus, the pursuit of the “golden age” is like taking a high-risk investment; the rewards may be plentiful, but so may the losses. Indeed, a financial gamble in a recession, such as the one we undergo, is one to be avoided if one takes the gamble completely blind and devoid of background and information. Instead, we look for “stability”; we place our bets on something reliable, and we accept that the results will not be as sweet, but that the losses are much easier to bear. It is also something that is currently being accepted in a wider sense within society, not just within the Western world but globally, in a spirit of fear and, at the same time, of tolerance.

An example: parliamentary democracy suits the United Kingdom well, in a balancing act of autocracy and popular tyranny. A federal presidential republic suits the United States in a balancing act of democracy and the acceptance of leadership. Suppose that we swap the systems around; would the people of the United Kingdom like to have their prime minister become president, or the people of the United States like to have a non-partisan leader for a supposed goal of advancement? The answer would most likely be no. Both systems are accepted as stable, and we see no reason to change it. Although we look to where advancement may have been beneficial in hindsight, such as where people argue that the alternative vote may have stopped the rise of fringe parties, the role of stability is very rarely challenged.

At the same time, our opposition to alien forms of governance of a country seems to be lessening. Since the world was awed by both the Olympic Games in Beijing in 2008, and by the substantial growth of China as a country through investment in infrastructure and business, our criticism of the system known as the “people’s democratic dictatorship” has waned whilst instability in Europe is on the increase. The traditional western point of view, built on a correlation between capitalism and freedom, the title of Milton Friedman’s book advocating a free market, does not understand how people who are not allowed to express a dissenting voice against the government can have a prosperous and more accessible middle-class, buy Gucci and D&G dresses and handbags and Rolex watches, drive high-end European cars, and can eat well for so little money. But all of these conundrums are dwarfed by the fact that they remain loyal and patriotic despite a perceived heavy-handedness of the government. It makes the western mind shriek “Does not compute”. The fear created by the economic problems in the western world, combined with an increased awareness of global events through new mediums of communication, have meant that respect for foreign methods of governance have meant that such methods have managed to survive.  At the same time, the “liberal interventionism” which succeeded in Sierra Leone and the Balkans, has largely been shunned, especially after the failures of Iraq and Afghanistan.  

But this is not purely due to hard work on behalf of the Chinese people. I do not deny, however, that they do work hard, for they work harder than anyone west of the Urals. However, it is also due to, not in spite of, a largely competent and pragmatic government in a post-ideological global society. Thus, it is possible to subsidise those who continue to work on farms or casual labours through a robust welfare system, funded by an urban middle-class. Hunger for political change is much the same as those who are physically starved, and each can be replaced. The French Revolution has proved this, whereby a people who previously respected the aristocracy, upon food shortages and conspicuous consumption, changed the political landscape of France and then of Europe, leading to mass executions and discontent. Marshall Aid succeeded at preventing revolution by funding the rebuilding of Western Europe, contrary to the Soviet sphere of influence and the uprisings of 1956 and 1968. China has learnt the lesson from previous western regimes, and for good reason; a revolution in China by starved peasants would be a disaster for each of its 1 billion inhabitants, just as the 1970s have proved a factor for the disaster that was the decline of British industry. Stability has to occur both on a governmental level and on the ground. A stable society must have a people who feel as if they belong not only by being fed, sheltered and clothed, but feel as if they play a role. Indeed, the Scandinavian social democracies largely fulfil that role, not least in comparison to the United States.

To conclude this first half, “stability”, in a more cosmopolitan world, is taking more importance over a wish for “advancement”. I view neither states as good nor bad; it is a case of a lesser of two evils. Advancement has benefitted a small part of humanity.