THE
BAD MEN
Here's the basic idea; the
majority of people in the world want a comfortable, low-key existence with loving
family and friends. As far as power and responsibility is concerned, they're
quite satisfied with the power they have over minor sales staff and the homeless.
Having children or pets is quite sufficient responsibility for them. They don't
want more. This is a truth not included in either of the ideologies of capitalism
or Marxism; the latter believes that all people instinctively want to revolt
in order to take the government's power directly into their own hands; the former
that every individual desires wealth and to be more powerful than others, and
that anyone who doesn't achieve this is lazy and deserves to be milked like
a cow. Any number of frankly brainless 'social experiments' have successfully
proved both of these points to be true to a sufficient degree to please someone
who's never met anybody without a PhD in social engineering.
If it weren't for the fact
that the vast majority of people do not give a fuck, then most political systems
we see today wouldn't exist. Communism and socialism wouldn't exist, because
the people would revolt on a weekly basis, in order that the people above them
weren't able to control them. Capitalism wouldn't exist, because everyone would
be so power hungry, bloody and vicious that we would be unable to cooperate
over anything. Republicanism and the modern form of democracy wouldn't work,
because we would be unable to give power to anyone but ourselves; on election
day, everyone would stand for president. And as for Monarchies - forget
about it.
The reason why we have pyramidical
structures in society isn't because, as Marxism would have it, people have been
oppressed into slavery by the upper classes, that the people want power over
their own destinies, and that they just (for some unknown reason) haven't happened to
have a go just yet. The real reason we have pyramidical structures is most people
don't give a fuck. They don't give a fuck just as long as someone delivers the
papers in the morning, keeps the stray cats from overbreeding and protects the
country from invasion by the forces of darkness. The people at the top of the pyramid, generally, are those who provide these services; for a profit, of course.
The
goatee-bearded Marxist gets excited over this; he thinks the people have been
duped into a sluggish, cowlike existence by the media or whatever. They haven't.
They just like it this way. I like it this way. It's not apathy; apathy
is what happens when people don't care. In fact, people do care. They just care about
things which matter, and which impact them on a daily basis. They might be apathetic
about central government, but honestly I'd steer clear of anyone who wasn't
at least a little apathetic about central government. Especially if they have a goatee beard.
So, therefore, are capitalism
and fascism right; do we have pyramidical structures because the people at the
top have earned their place there, and deserve to have power over the less righteous/more
lazy majority of the citizenship? Well, no. Rich people, by in large, are neither
intelligent, hard working, nor particularly righteous. Mostly they're just rich.
Wealth in society is largely accumulated through generations in a kind of self-perpetuating
snowball effect. Certainly, somewhere along the line someone worked
really fucking hard; chances are they worked really hard slaughtering the native
population or beating the crap out of the next princedom across the river, but
they were at least proactive. Their descendants, finding themselves rich, found
it fairly easy to continue to be so, having finally arranged social and economic
systems (capitalism and fascism) whereby the rich and privileged all got together
and fucked everyone over en masse.
So, just like the monarchies
of old, today's rich are by in large a load of freeloading bastards, living off
the hard work of their forefathers and riding high on government subsidies.
So let's overthrow them! Burn their towers of glass, and take back power into
the hands of the people! Come on! Revolt!
Oh, wait. We forgot. We
don't give a fuck, do we?
Apathy, then. Bad. Well,
no. A lack of interest in world politics is not something which should be admonished
in a struggling single parent, overpressed teacher or the bloke who empties
my bins. This may come as a shock to some, but world (or for that matter national)
politics don't really matter that much. Of course, it would be nice if 90%
of the population voted of their own free will, and took the same amount of
time to choose their candidate that they spend selecting their lottery number
or what DVD to watch at the weekend, but all things considered people who are
apathetic about national or international politics are not the people who I'm
scared of. It's the people who show a fervent interest in global domination
that we should be worried about.
Idealists are fun people,
but let's not forget they're also abnormal and dangerous people. People who
want to change the
country or the world for the better are, by in large, really not the sort of
people you want in government, for the simple reason that what they consider
'better' doesn't often coincide with what most people would consider 'better'.
Or, if it does sound like a good idea, invariably the execution of it will,
well, execution is often involved.
Idealists aren't the worst,
though. Lenin was alright. It's those interested in the power for its own sake
who are the real, serious problem. Most people don't care a great deal about
government, but that isn't why dictators get into power. Plenty of tyrants were
voted in democratically, or at least had the support of the people at the start
of their reign. The reason why people who are mad for power get into office
is because they're mad for it. If they weren't mad for it, they wouldn't
be up there in the first place. These people are the Bad Men.
These
people are the problem. It's not hard to think of a few good examples in recent
history; Pol Pot, Kim Il-Sung, Slobodan Milosevic, Robert Mugabae, Saddam Hussein.
These kinds of people really do need to be got rid of. These people are the
problem. They can't be negotiated with or persuaded to be nice, and they'll
do anything to protect their own power. They are utterly convinced that what
they're doing is for the good of their country, because as far as they're concerned,
they are the country. Getting rid of them is rarely easy, because they
will always have the support of a minority in their population who want to be
close to the power. People might not care much about central government, but
once these kinds of people get into power, they'll be forced to begin to, when
their homes are raided in the middle of the night and their sons taken away
to be tortured and executed.
Here's the problem, then,
with Iraq. The problem is that it's no good replacing one power-obsessed exploitative
regime with another. Anyone who's under the illusion that the United States
aren't doing just that should take a look at their history. During the first
Gulf War, a perfect situation for the removal of Saddam and the installing of
the U.N.-backed Iraqi government was created, when the Iraqi army surrendered
and the people rose up against their dictator. Or they tried. The U.S. clearly
decided this wasn't quite what they wanted, and so they left, leaving Saddam
to come right back into power. It was like the Allies left Germany in 1945 with
Hitler still alive, then were surprised when he was back a week later.
And now the U.S. are back,
and this time the Iraq people didn't overthrow Saddam, the U.S. did. And this
time the U.N. are uninvolved, and the Iraq people are too confused and bombed
out of their houses to organise a government. So the U.S. are going to kindly
do that for them. That's nice. Which is the trouble here, really; is George
W Bush and idealist, or is he mad 
for
it? I think he's so mad for it he can't see straight, and I'm frankly amazed
they let him pilot that fighter jet in his condition. I think that while his
regime will be an improvement over Saddam's (even MTV, Disney and oil-for-food
is better than mass graves, torture and Iraqi State TV, and it's stupid to suggest
different), that doesn't alter the fact that he's in it for the power, just
like Saddam Hussein.
But, ultimately, the people
don't give a fuck. Saddam managed to keep the schools, hospitals and roads running;
so the far the U.S. have spectacularly failed at this. But if they can succeed
in maintaining order (or, for that matter, obtaining order), and run
the country to a satisfactory degree, then the Iraqis will be happy, just like
we're happy in the West. We're fucked over every day by the corporations and
our own elected (or unelected) governments, but at least we have running water
and someone comes by to empty the bins.
Related
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Why
This War?
