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You Took The Words...
Mar. 4th, 2010 09:39 pmOne of the reasons I don't post long rants about things any more is that I tend to get passionate... which leads to overenthusiasm/excitement... which leads to ~ at best, bias or ~ at worst, incoherence.
Which is why I love Jack Marx's work so very much. He has the confidence, cohesion & candour I seem to lack when it comes to complaining about the fucked-up state of the world in general, or a specific sector in detail. This is his piece today, which I unapologetically reproduce in full. The original article, complete with links to substantiating stories, is here
Why I hate every politician’s guts
Jack Marx
Thursday, March 04, 2010
Yesterday, this ridiculous ‘scandal’ about a nude photo of a some low-achieving celebrity being circulated without her permission (as if the paparazzi don’t serve us such stuff every day of the week) drew the attention of the bosses at the AFL. It is stupid enough that they are concerning themselves with it, but, as if they had nothing better to do with our money, Australia’s politicians rose from their chairs to weigh in with their own opinions on the matter. Tanya Plibersek, so-called Minister for the Status of Women (could there possibly be a more nationally divisive portfolio?) said she would not respond when asked about it. “But I would like to make a general comment,” she said, non-responsively, “that if anyone takes a photograph of someone...”, and the rest of her comment doesn’t matter. A similar face-fart blurted from the mouth of our Deputy Prime Minister, no less, followed by – I kid you not – John Howard, who appears to have forgotten that he’s been mercifully dead to Australia since November 24, 2007. These people no longer know what they are. They need to be reminded.
The argument most frequently raised against anarchism is a question: Without organised government, who’d remove the garbage from the streets and sweep out the sewers? It’s a very compelling point, and its the best reason I can think of for why we have politicians at all. We need public servants to keep the fundamental machinery of society turning. Thus politicians, at their most basic and useful, are, quite bluntly, shit shovelers. Not celebrities, or spokespeople of a nation, or “power brokers” or “rising stars” of the left or right, but lowly shovelers of our shit. That is what we need them for and, ideally, that is what they are. The “MP” that prefixes their names should be replaced with the letters “SS” (maybe Hitler was cleverer than we know).
Of course, politicians don’t see it that way. They believe that the reason they are politicians and we are not is because they are clever where we are not. Their wisdom, they believe, is what elevated them into government, rather than their ability to manipulate people and kiss party ring. They think we need their guidance in all matters. They don’t imagine – or can’t imagine – that the reason we didn’t raise our hands for their jobs is because we’re not pigs like them. We don’t want to dwell in what is clearly a sewer. We don’t have the stomach for it. Most people are not so dishonest and cynical as to accept an important job they have no intention of doing.
It seems something of a worthless cliche to say that politicians are “all the same”, but it logically must have some basis in fact. For it takes a certain type of arrogant bigot to assume the post of the public servant, only to presume the right to govern the lives and liberties of others. I’m grateful that I’m not one of those people.
The one time in my life when I’ve been granted power over others revealed me as a complete failure at it. As an editor of a national magazine, I found I just could not bring myself to tell writers how to write, photographers how to photograph or artists how to design. Staff in my employ came and went as moods overcame them throughout the day, emboldened by the knowledge that their boss didn’t have a riot act in his repertoire. The magazine scarcely survived my tenure, and for years I beat myself up for the fact that my impotence as a captain had sunk the whole ship. It took me a long time to realise that this “weakness” was in fact one of the few admirable books in my shelf, and, today, I’m more than comfortable that I don’t even feel the right to tell my own kid to do his homework. The idea of bossing another human being about makes me literally sick in the guts. The only people I imagine are good at it are people who don’t really like other people.
Politicians are people who enjoy the experience of telling others what to do. They are the kids at school who volunteered to be prefects and put forward their names for those gormless “school councils”. They always seemed to know the ‘right’ kids to befriend and the ‘right’ ones to belittle or ignore. They sucked up to the teachers without fear of how they were perceived by their peers, because they respected authority more than they did their friends, or themselves. Only one with such a chicken-shit affection for authority would ever dream of becoming an authoritarian, or bother to join a political party that demanded loyalty in spite of any personal views. How they can stand in front of a nation of people and say things they themselves don’t believe is something I can only reconcile by reminding myself of some of the things I did for drugs. Ambition and desperation must be very similar items. At least I only robbed people one at a time.
Which would all be tolerable if a single politician stood up and performed an act of brave and remarkable good every now and then, but that doesn’t happen. Proof that it doesn’t happen can be found in the beds that aren’t in hospitals, the homeless who aren’t in beds and the decent people who languish in prisons for ‘crimes’ that hurt nobody but themselves. To reverse these obviously unacceptable ills should be the daily chore of any elected government, and they should not “take time”, as our Prime Minister is fond of saying. Such things take no time at all when politicians put their minds to them. In times of war, governments all over the world – including our own – have marshaled unimaginable volumes of money, resources, logistics and infrastructure, practically overnight. It can be done.
But not if nobody wants it done, and, evidently, that is the case. Today’s politician would much rather indulge in these childish delusions of being some kind of cosmopolitan medicine man, reading the public mood like a con artist, pontificating about the worthiness of light entertainment and the morality of comedians, telling us what we can and can’t put in our mouths, what we can and can’t utter, what we may masturbate about and what we may not, partaking in fraudulent exhibitions of ‘parental concern’ that are little more than thinly-disguised tricks turned by hookers on the road to the polling booth.
We don’t need to know what politicians think of Brenden Fevola and Lara Bingle – we’ve got gossip columnists for such tripe. What we need is for them to shut the @#$% up and dig us out of the stink, like the shit shovelers they are.
Which is why I love Jack Marx's work so very much. He has the confidence, cohesion & candour I seem to lack when it comes to complaining about the fucked-up state of the world in general, or a specific sector in detail. This is his piece today, which I unapologetically reproduce in full. The original article, complete with links to substantiating stories, is here
Why I hate every politician’s guts
Jack Marx
Thursday, March 04, 2010
Yesterday, this ridiculous ‘scandal’ about a nude photo of a some low-achieving celebrity being circulated without her permission (as if the paparazzi don’t serve us such stuff every day of the week) drew the attention of the bosses at the AFL. It is stupid enough that they are concerning themselves with it, but, as if they had nothing better to do with our money, Australia’s politicians rose from their chairs to weigh in with their own opinions on the matter. Tanya Plibersek, so-called Minister for the Status of Women (could there possibly be a more nationally divisive portfolio?) said she would not respond when asked about it. “But I would like to make a general comment,” she said, non-responsively, “that if anyone takes a photograph of someone...”, and the rest of her comment doesn’t matter. A similar face-fart blurted from the mouth of our Deputy Prime Minister, no less, followed by – I kid you not – John Howard, who appears to have forgotten that he’s been mercifully dead to Australia since November 24, 2007. These people no longer know what they are. They need to be reminded.
The argument most frequently raised against anarchism is a question: Without organised government, who’d remove the garbage from the streets and sweep out the sewers? It’s a very compelling point, and its the best reason I can think of for why we have politicians at all. We need public servants to keep the fundamental machinery of society turning. Thus politicians, at their most basic and useful, are, quite bluntly, shit shovelers. Not celebrities, or spokespeople of a nation, or “power brokers” or “rising stars” of the left or right, but lowly shovelers of our shit. That is what we need them for and, ideally, that is what they are. The “MP” that prefixes their names should be replaced with the letters “SS” (maybe Hitler was cleverer than we know).
Of course, politicians don’t see it that way. They believe that the reason they are politicians and we are not is because they are clever where we are not. Their wisdom, they believe, is what elevated them into government, rather than their ability to manipulate people and kiss party ring. They think we need their guidance in all matters. They don’t imagine – or can’t imagine – that the reason we didn’t raise our hands for their jobs is because we’re not pigs like them. We don’t want to dwell in what is clearly a sewer. We don’t have the stomach for it. Most people are not so dishonest and cynical as to accept an important job they have no intention of doing.
It seems something of a worthless cliche to say that politicians are “all the same”, but it logically must have some basis in fact. For it takes a certain type of arrogant bigot to assume the post of the public servant, only to presume the right to govern the lives and liberties of others. I’m grateful that I’m not one of those people.
The one time in my life when I’ve been granted power over others revealed me as a complete failure at it. As an editor of a national magazine, I found I just could not bring myself to tell writers how to write, photographers how to photograph or artists how to design. Staff in my employ came and went as moods overcame them throughout the day, emboldened by the knowledge that their boss didn’t have a riot act in his repertoire. The magazine scarcely survived my tenure, and for years I beat myself up for the fact that my impotence as a captain had sunk the whole ship. It took me a long time to realise that this “weakness” was in fact one of the few admirable books in my shelf, and, today, I’m more than comfortable that I don’t even feel the right to tell my own kid to do his homework. The idea of bossing another human being about makes me literally sick in the guts. The only people I imagine are good at it are people who don’t really like other people.
Politicians are people who enjoy the experience of telling others what to do. They are the kids at school who volunteered to be prefects and put forward their names for those gormless “school councils”. They always seemed to know the ‘right’ kids to befriend and the ‘right’ ones to belittle or ignore. They sucked up to the teachers without fear of how they were perceived by their peers, because they respected authority more than they did their friends, or themselves. Only one with such a chicken-shit affection for authority would ever dream of becoming an authoritarian, or bother to join a political party that demanded loyalty in spite of any personal views. How they can stand in front of a nation of people and say things they themselves don’t believe is something I can only reconcile by reminding myself of some of the things I did for drugs. Ambition and desperation must be very similar items. At least I only robbed people one at a time.
Which would all be tolerable if a single politician stood up and performed an act of brave and remarkable good every now and then, but that doesn’t happen. Proof that it doesn’t happen can be found in the beds that aren’t in hospitals, the homeless who aren’t in beds and the decent people who languish in prisons for ‘crimes’ that hurt nobody but themselves. To reverse these obviously unacceptable ills should be the daily chore of any elected government, and they should not “take time”, as our Prime Minister is fond of saying. Such things take no time at all when politicians put their minds to them. In times of war, governments all over the world – including our own – have marshaled unimaginable volumes of money, resources, logistics and infrastructure, practically overnight. It can be done.
But not if nobody wants it done, and, evidently, that is the case. Today’s politician would much rather indulge in these childish delusions of being some kind of cosmopolitan medicine man, reading the public mood like a con artist, pontificating about the worthiness of light entertainment and the morality of comedians, telling us what we can and can’t put in our mouths, what we can and can’t utter, what we may masturbate about and what we may not, partaking in fraudulent exhibitions of ‘parental concern’ that are little more than thinly-disguised tricks turned by hookers on the road to the polling booth.
We don’t need to know what politicians think of Brenden Fevola and Lara Bingle – we’ve got gossip columnists for such tripe. What we need is for them to shut the @#$% up and dig us out of the stink, like the shit shovelers they are.
