Ignore this, just using the board to clear my head.
Just given myself a little antidote to all this crap by reminding myself that we are all victims of hypernormalisation. We know our politicians aren’t in control, we know they lie to us to give the impression that they are in control, and we go along with it, because the alternative - radical change - is just too scary to contemplate.
But will hypernormalisation keep the floodwaters back? There are now millions of people who know that the old promise of capitalism and it’s modesty screen liberal democracy isn’t working for them. It was meant to make their lives better and it isn’t, but it is conspicuously enriching some people. Capitalism/democracy doesn’t offer anything more than the possibility (no guarantee) of material improvement and a kind of ersatz individual freedom (within very strict limits unless you can buy your way out of them), no visions of something better to aim for collectively, no sense of belonging. The terrifying ideologies of left and right provide that vision, but always with the caveat that many will need to be forced to obey in order to deliver the bliss of the vision. I thought these old ideologies were dying, like old religions, that the void of fake individualism had won, but now I’m not so sure, many people betrayed by capitalism/democracy yearn for a vision. At the moment visions promised from the right seem more likely to gain followers, but ultimately they have the same impact as ideas from the left.
So, continue as we are, hypernormally, try to tinker with capitalism/democracy to make it limp on and hope that we are improving lives for everyone, go back to the old promised land ideologies, or try to imagine something new?
Keep your eyes on the middle class, the ones who have done alright economically. If some of them start attaching themselves to big ideas, even involving sacrificing some of the things they have got, then change might actually happen.
Or the whole thing might just be a con. Politicians of whatever breed are only there to make us angry, to generate clicks and posts, to add to the coffers of the tech companies…….
No answers here, at least in terms of politics. Adam Curtis has a lot to answer for…..