Wednesday 2 August 2023
Confessions of a former Tory candidate
Simon Marcus has a very good TCW piece on the personally destructive nature of politics.
How politics can destroy your soul – confessions of a former Tory candidate
A FEW months ago I wrote here about how William Hague had become a Davos poster boy. I explained how influence and groupthink could turn a libertarian Thatcherite into a globalist, authoritarian technocrat.
Shortly afterwards, Hague completed one of the most astonishing U-turns in politics. In a dangerous step towards a Chinese-style social credit system, he joined Tony Blair to help him force ID cards on the public.
The whole piece is well worth reading, not because the insights offered are particularly new, but because corrupt political games have become so disturbingly invasive.
Most have no idea how this kind of thing can happen. Neither did I. But things have become clearer.
MPs, ministers, civil servants, special advisers, think tanks, quangos, NGOs, industry groups, unions, MSM, charities, lobbyists, consultancies and more are all the ‘crooked timber’ of humanity.
They need to be accepted. To belong. They are greedy. Angry. Ambitious. Fearful. Vain. Vulnerable. Most of them are utterly enslaved by ego. They want what they don’t have. They don’t want what they do have. They are easily manipulated.
But how? Huge incentive levers. Emotional, financial and moral. We all want power, status, popularity and wealth to some degree. We are all vulnerable to peer pressure. Many are attracted to ideas that promise a better tomorrow. That is why the Labour Party can rely on so many youth activists. Our ability to deceive ourselves knows no bounds.
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4 comments:
Excellent piece. It has the ring of truth about it, probably because the writer was himself aware that he was in some sense succumbing to the pressures and blandishments. A "near miss", so to speak. When I read about elite theories at University, I didn't think that the tendency ran quite so deep.
I think we need to keep asking our elites why they believe what they do. All the while suspecting that the real answer is that they are needy malleable people who have been corrupted, or they wouldn't be in those positions of authority in the first place.
Sam - I assume success would have caused the guy to succumb, at least to some degree. Yet maybe success was always unlikely because he isn't quite the type to succumb. Political environments do seem to detect that and mark a person down because of it.
And I still think the historically mediated, violent insurrection is the only effective solution.
Tammly - people would have to wake up first and that would probably be enough. Not much sign of it though.
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