Masopher's Mind

We live in such a fearful world. This ash cloud debacle is the first piece of evidence. Every week in history volcanoes have erupted but never before in history have we grounded all the planes in Europe because of an eruption. For a week we waited in fear and watched as, as it turns out, a harmless cloud of smoke blew by.

I haven’t quantified it yet, but British Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s language in the recent debates is loaded with fearful imagery. He fears a “double dip” recession; if the Conservatives cut government waste and borrowing. He fears what two remote, backward countries will do should Britain cut spending billions on nuclear weapons. He fears what would happen to the NHS if the government cuts the millions being spent on bureaucrats and failed computer systems. He fears that if we don’t continue being involved in Afghani civil wars; Saudi dissidents and Pakistani paymasters will fund some “youths” from Woking or Tower Hamlets to take out their social frustrations on innocent Brits. He and the Conservatives fear a ruined Pound Sterling if the parliament is not run in an authoritarian way. They fear a hung parliament but the UK would rejoice if every member in parliament were hung.

There will be no revolution, though it is often televised. Clegg is an admirable distraction and something fresh for young people to pin their hopes on. And that is why he has been built up; for a fall. His career and people hopes will be smashed down like all young peoples dreams are and the rotten leering lecherous old boys will return to business as usual. Even if they could get 40% of the electorate, Lib Dems could not get into power. Even with both rivals at around 25% all Clegg’s party could hope for with that improbable landslide victory is a hung parliament with them in the majority.

There are two ways to motivate someone: hope and fear. Barack Obama chose hope, McCain chose fear. Spiteful and malicious morally crippled leaders like Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, Saddam, Kim Jong-Il, almost any two bit dictator in South America, Africa, the Middle and Far East and pseudo democracies in Europe uses fear and intimidation to elicit compliance. Inspirational leaders like Lincoln, MLK, Kennedy and Obama use hope and dreams to prompt action. Brown chooses fear and despite the strong start, the Conservatives are choosing fear. Clegg is choosing hope.

But it isn’t that easy…politics also works on negatives…making people lose hope and promising people the alleviation of fear. Beating down people with impossible goals and perpetually loaded dice is as good as fear. Here’s a rock, there’s a greased hill, push the rock to the top and you might get what I get for free. With a constant background of fear, the promise of small relief is as good as hope. With the constant background of hopelessness the promise of free taxpayer’s money seems like a reward.

The only thing I fear is fear itself…but there is so much fear here.

What’s in a name?

What exactly is Labour? What exactly is Conservative? What exactly is a Liberal Democrat?

Ask a politician and you’ll get many answers because in today’s politics politicians are what the polls tell them to be, which can be anything at any time and largely dependent on whatever outrage is in the newspapers.

So let’s just focus a bit on the names and a bit about what the names mean in context.

Labour is simple, a very simple word. Labour stands for labourer. It is the party of the worker, the men and women who built this nation. The shipwrights in the Victorian era, the farmers, the industrial workers, the coal miners the men and women with little education but deserving a lot of respect because they did in fact and quite literally build this country into what it was and in some respect still is. Labour is a leftist party focusing on socialist ideals and providing for the common man with strong centralisation tendencies. Lots of taxes, lots of handouts. Back before “New Labour” it was hard for this to gain any more ground because the UK was becoming less of a country of labourers. Less industry, less farmers, less manual work. Labour’s rhetoric was designed for the labourer who was becoming a minority. New Labour caters for the new labourer, the office administrators, the nurses, truck and train drivers, the jobs that trade unions love to represent nowadays.

Conservative is a bit tricky, it’s a bigger word with a more nuanced meaning. Conservatives are those who are conservative, they don’t like change, they try to keep the status quo. They keep the status quo because they are the major beneficiaries of status quo. They didn’t like labour empowerment, they didn’t like female empowerment, they didn’t like minority empowerment. Not because they thought these things are wrong, but because they are new. Once something is no longer new, conservatives don’t have a problem with it. So conservatives no longer have a problem with new money, women, blacks, easterners or gays. In facts once institutions become established they try to conserve that too! One institution that has been conserved for a long time is the rich, landed aristocracy of England and Europe that is why they are also named “Tories”. Conservatives have deep roots in rich and royal families and even though newer institutions have arisen, this one still has great influence. But Conservatives too have had to move to the centre and cater to new conservatives, people who are becoming more content with their lot in life and eager to conserve their position.

A Liberal Democrat is perhaps the hardest to understand because it has two deceptively simple words that appear complex; “liberal” and “democrat”.  In the simplest terms a “liberal” is someone who believes in liberty, freedom in other words. And a “democrat” is someone who believes in democracy, or a say in government. A liberal democrat is therefore someone who wants freedom and a say in government. Many countries fight for this and many movies show heroes dying for these things and yet it is something we take for granted and assume we have even when we don’t. What are we free to do? What say in government do we actually have?

A massive part of the UK would love genuine liberty and a say in government but I believe we have given up due to the competition between those that cater for labourers and those that cater to conservatives. But the truth is, we are not really labourers and we are not really conservatives. We, the lovers of freedom and democracy, are the majority and never let it ever be said that we are not.

I work for a company that grabs a lot of headlines being able to predict whether Labour of Conservative governments will be in power. I am happy that we can put our finger on the “pulse of the nation” but as a non political pollster I have the perspective of seeing that as far as politics is concerned; the pulse is that of a sick, dying man with his greedy relatives hanging over him waiting to hear what he croaks as his last will and testament. The nation has been sick and fed up for so long. Almost half of us don’t vote! We don’t vote because we value freedom and it is not given to us. We value a say in the government and what we do every 4 or so years is not a say in government. We are fed up with the farce of two parties competing to be so similar that the only difference is whichever charismatic Oxbridge spokesperson or Scottish “push peddler” is at the helm.

I can’t inspire people to rise up and be counted. I can’t inspire people to appreciate much less exercise their true liberty or the true power of democracy. We have been so brow beaten by successive authoritarian governments over the decades that we suffer from learned helplessness. These two parties, who take it in turns to flail about through history as Great Britain wanes in potency are almost in complete control of our destiny. Extremely high taxes and an established set of upper class accelerating away from our reach: Britain is stuck with the worst of labour’s leftist policies and the worst of the conservatives’ rightist policies. We cannot contemplate governments taking the best ideas from all sides and that’s why it is so frightening to have a “hung” parliament(such a repulsive term for shared power): We would rather give one of the bully boys absolute power to do whatever they want than ask them to co-operate or even compete for our vote.

If we had one day of true freedom or government participation in the UK, Labour and Conservative governments in their current forms could never exist ever again; liberty and democracy are that powerful. So it is works well for these old parties to denigrate and destroy the good name of politics and make Clegg and the LDs look like just another party out to ride roughshod over freedom and our right to have a say in government. As long as we don’t believe in liberty and democracy we will never vote for the Liberal Democrats. The truth is out there however, and the truth can be found in something as simple as a name.

Rafsanjani and Khatami are the faces of the Iran that I support. With Iran forcing itself into the nuclear club, Afghanistan to its right, Iraq to its left, and the United States all over both of them the Shiite-Persian country has a lot more to think about nowadays than just the Sunni Arabs that loom in the distance or the resentful Israelis still further a-field.

Jihadis, American right-wingers, Sunnis, Arabs, Jews all out for their pound of flesh but Iran’s biggest enemy is internal. With a deeply divided country with drug problems and ethnic divisions, the religious military and secular leaders are starting to run out of impetus after 30 years. The buzz of the anti-imperial victory of 1979 has almost died in the hearts of the faithful and most of the population is now too young to even remember what life was like under the Shah’s puppet government or the heady days under Khomeini and fighting the Iraqis. What Persians do know is an overly harsh “revolutionary” guard, sham elections, their money being send abroad to fund Lebanese and Palestinian wars and a drug problem so deep that the people of Tehran are discombobulated most of the time.

Because I am the same age as the Islamic republic and because I too struggle against a Post-imperially run society I feel a certain kinship with these people. However I believe in the triumph of progress over backward shows of force and playing catch up with incorrectly run enterprises. America and England are wrong and they have been wrong for centuries, but Iran makes itself more wrong for knowing better and still following their example.

Khatami and the “green revolution” symbolize hope for the
new decade. Irans people want to be modern and influential and in many ways they are. However the older conservatives in Persia want to cling onto past decades and bring those struggles (righteous or not) into the future. Its time to move on Iran.

M