Democratic Gods
There’s an election going on across the Atlantic and as one wisecrack tweeted, the real winner will be capitalism. Which is frighteningly true. In reality, the best the other political party in that two-party system could muster was another retirement age fogey and a Palestine hating sidekick. Which by the time you read this — might be the Cheese and Deputy in the land of the free white-male and rabid capitalism.
Or they might not and the incumbent might just stay on.
The thing is, even if the supposedly good guys win — and implement every policy change they propose in the first 100 days of office — the reality is that we will have very little real change.
Ok, so the Cheese won’t be sporting a significant paunch and a mop on his head and maybe the Deputy will be of actual interest to people but the business of rabid capitalism and classic American imperialism in the country, the region and the world; will remain wholly intact.
Sure, they will close down fossil fuels — but replace this with what? Renewables? Wonderful. Stay with me here.
Will they also make sure that all the new infrastructure and related technology that will be built for this change-over to renewables does not involve using The Congo as a global slave labour camp?
Will they tell their corporations making sneakers in Vietnam and wherever else to shut down their sweatshops and pay fair and just wages to workers?
Will they immediately ban the import of palm oil from plantations replacing virgin Amazonian rainforest?
Will they question IKEA and the like about where they get the wood from to make their crappy flat-pack tables? Will they ban furniture sales made from illegally logged virgin forests in Mozambique?
Will they immediately take steps to shift the habit of routinely murdering their own black citizens under the guise of policing?
Will they immediately put an end to the total destruction of Yemen and the genocide of its peoples?
And I could go on and no doubt others will have lists as long as our arms joined together — but I suspect you might get the idea. I doubt that any election in that nation is likely to produce the kind of leadership that will turn down the wick on rabid capitalism in favour of a more humanist approach.
The choices present in this current United States election (and probably a few others the world over) remain rooted in making sacred and offering whiteness, patriarchy and rabid capitalism on the altars in the temples of democracy.
We might want to look at what and whom we make sacred and offer on the altars of our democratic temples — our best might be a start. We have little reason to bemoan the painful and ugly fates that many nations, nationalities and peoples bear witness to daily. A dear friend not usually taken with reaching out to God for help, recently let me know that she felt ‘the Gods have forsaken us.’
She described the state of the world, the raging fires in the United States, approaching natural storms, the deepening political divides and the general sense of economic foreboding that the COVID-19 outbreak has intensified.
She added the current levels of plastic pollution and the unabated production of single-use plastics. The loss of natural habitats that has endangered the humble wombat in Australia; the felling of sacred trees and violations of ancient indigenous sites in forests in diverse parts of the world.
Listening to her, the picture of the state of the world in 2020 is at best bleak — in reality, we are as the scientists repeatedly warn us, moving inexorably closer to a series of climate tipping points and we’re likely to start seeing the dramatic effects of such events as early as 2030.
That’s just a decade away.
It’s sobering and terrifying and yet I am increasingly coming across people in my daily life who are blissfully peaceful about the state of the world.
I envy the bastards.
I too want to keep this looming dread and foreboding in the background and continue with daily life in a state of peace and bliss.
It’s taken me a few days to process my friends words and I wonder if it is not God who has forsaken us; but us who have forsaken the Gods by offering up to the altars of democracy our weakest compromise candidates, as offerings in the five-yearly rituals of the rabid capitalism owned democracy circa 2020. By doing so, we might not be giving ourselves the best chance at not stuffing up this planet and our very existence.
It might be time to leave behind the outdated notions of how we govern ourselves and what we consider the valuable qualities needed in (and for) political leadership. The track record of the current beliefs and practices leaves much to be desired.
The time may be opportune for renewal; of ourselves and the institutions we build to attend to the admin.
