If You Tolerate This

For about a decade I've politically identified myself as a Marxist. That happens to coincide with my existential crisis at the age of 14, so naturally I'd find revolutionary upheaval appealing in a world of shit. I read 1984 at roughly the same time, which I understood as a very obvious criticism of Stalinism, which makes me a Trotskyist, though my own thoughts about the failure of the Soviet Union (which I'll be posting later in the year) align me closer to Council Communism than any Leninist strand.

However, I frequently come to the misanthropic conclusion that any change is doomed because the main problem is humanity itself. Why bother when someone is ready to fuck it up for their own gain. Bankers and corporations (in Goldman Sachs we trust) nuke the economy and now there's no money to pay for social welfare. I'll admit I was caught up in Obamania, I stayed up till 6am to watch his acceptance speech. Retrospectively, I republished his acceptance speech that night in order to hold him to that promised change, and I do think he's an intelligent representative, just that he's in an unintelligent system of government. Which is why change has yet to come.

Back at home, when the Scottish Socialist Party came on the scene during the first term of the Scottish Parliament, I had two thoughts: 1) Here's a party I can vote for, 2) Please don't succumb to factionalism. It's some sort of unwritten rule that any left-wing party that gains momentum has to fall apart. Lo and behold it came apart in a very public way. A general election is due by this June and I'm without a party to vote for. In fact, I'm not interested in being represented. I want to speak for myself as they do in Switzerland. No lies for votes - we are the state. Politics is supposed to be about the citizen's role in state affairs, which is what they try to sell the current system as in school. In reality you're permitted to vote every four to five years. That's the limit of your involvement in the process and that's one of the reasons turnout is around 30%. Voting is basically a cargo cult ritual.

"Politics" is all bullshit anyway. PMQ is essentially pantomime, all booing and hissing. Come to think of it, perhaps the MPs wouldn't have gotten away with expense claims if the media had kept their eye on them rather than on celebrities - which is the other reason turnout is down. If you think journalism is still alive, just glance at the celebrity stories in the Daily Telegraph, the vanguard paper of the expenses row. I have a theory about celebrity, I made a graph:

Until fairly recently, the only way you could become really famous was to be royalty, or a writer, actor, preacher or politician - and even then, most people had knowledge of you only through words or printed pictures. Television, with its insatiable hunger for material, has made celebrities into "content",' devouring their lives and secrets.
-Roger Ebert, The Truman Show review

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