Re: @Spartacus
There are precisely zero good guys in any if this. Nobody is any better or worse than the next idiot that gets the job. There's zero honesty in any of this.
Don Jefe,
And yet you call someone out for college level thinking, and accuse me of naivety...
Sorry, that kind of faux-worldy more-cynical-than-thou bullshit doesn't wash. And shouldn't be deployed in any serious political argument. It's demonstrably not true.
To some extent all politicians are the same. They have to engage with compromise, power and competing interests in order to get anything done. That's life. There are rarely any black-and-white easy decisions, where you can 'do the right thing' with no downsides.
I therefore make a point of questioning all the information I see, and the all the politicians I hear from. Even the ones I agree with. I also try, not always successfully, to change my opinions as the facts change, or it turns out I was wrong about what was really happening.
But not all politicans are the same. That's just a lazy, stupid point to make. You try to vote for the better ones. As an electorate we have to do that, or we encourage the most venal, lying fucks to keep at it. If you don't reward the better ones for doing unpopular things, or telling unpopular truths, then they'll all be forced to tell lies and be populists. And it will be our fault, just as much as theirs.
It's like blaming the banks for the recent crash. We, as a society, took on lots of credit we couldn't really afford to pay for. We voted for higher spending, but lower taxes - until our governments were running huge bubble-stoking deficits. Our politicians failed to see that regulation wasn't really working, and failed to act on the obvious imbalances in the global economy that had China racking up $4-5 tr trillion worth of foreign reserves in order to force down their own peoples' wages and their currency to outcompete everyone on manufacturing. And the bankers and financial industry were stupid, greedy and rubbish at their jobs too. The whole finance culture is fundamentally screwed-up and needs fixing. But it ain't all their fault. The answers are always more complicated than mere polemic allows. And we, as voters, need to look at what we can do to sort stuff out, as well as complaining - and making our politicians aware of what we expect from them. If we just call them all evil, and ignore them, then we're ignoring our responsibilities - and amazingly enough ignoring problems doesn't tend to solve them.
As for politicians all being liars, that's also not true. It used to be that lying was a serious political crime in UK politics. That could end careers. Not telling the whole truth is a different thing. It's obviously not honest, but there's a big difference. Both morally and practically.
Trust is important. If you outright deny something, then it ought to be possible to believe you. Because the consequences of lying ought to be fatal to your career, to encourage others. And also becuase it then makes deal making much more likely.
One of the problems Putin has created is to destroy diplomatic trust by continually lying. And seemingly being pleased with his cleverness for doing it. Because at some point, deals have to be done. Starting a war you have no way to end is stupid.
Putin's actions are morally and materially different to the recent actions of the US and UK. Particularly the wholesale slaughter and kidnapping in Chechnenya. Most of this not a result of a post-invasion civil war, or foreign insurgents joining in to make things worse. This a direct result of the Russian army levelling the capital city, with no care for civillian casualties, and the total lack of discipline among the Russian troops, who were making money on the side by kidnapping thousands of locals for ransom - as well as general rape and pillage.
I rate Tony Blair and Gordon Brown as unusual in British politics, in their willingness to outright lie, where evasion of the truth or silence would have served them just as well. And the electorate rewarded them with 3 terms in office, and then chose to distrust all politicians, rather than trying to look at who lied and who didn't. Which is understandable, but a real danger to the health of our politics.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
