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Clinging to reality under a post-truth government
This stuff has a corrosive effect on the brain. When you step back from it you realise how profoundly and unalterably weird it all is. But when you're involved in it day-after-day you start to go native. You give up on the idea that he would ever tell the truth and simply evaluate whatever today's comments are in terms of possibilities for future strategy.
Does this mean he's planning an election? Does it mean he'll expel MPs from the party? Does that mean he'll trigger a vote of no-confidence in himself? We lose the wood for the trees. We become so cynical ourselves that we don't even realise what we're losing.
Politics descends into a game of strategy with no values and few means for people to hold power to account, because they have no idea what the government wants or how it seeks to achieve it. People keep on referring to this as some sort of chess game. In fact it's more like Cluedo.
The game could go several ways. At the moment, Johnson is losing. But later things might improve for him. And yet whichever way it goes, conducting government like this means we all lose something. We lose the basic notion of any objective truth in the manner government is conducted.
That is a process which always helps the powerful. If there is no empirical basis to assess government behaviour, it cannot be held to account. There is no action to evaluate, or goal to compare it to.
Does this mean he's planning an election? Does it mean he'll expel MPs from the party? Does that mean he'll trigger a vote of no-confidence in himself? We lose the wood for the trees. We become so cynical ourselves that we don't even realise what we're losing.
Politics descends into a game of strategy with no values and few means for people to hold power to account, because they have no idea what the government wants or how it seeks to achieve it. People keep on referring to this as some sort of chess game. In fact it's more like Cluedo.
The game could go several ways. At the moment, Johnson is losing. But later things might improve for him. And yet whichever way it goes, conducting government like this means we all lose something. We lose the basic notion of any objective truth in the manner government is conducted.
That is a process which always helps the powerful. If there is no empirical basis to assess government behaviour, it cannot be held to account. There is no action to evaluate, or goal to compare it to.
[link:https://www.politics.co.uk/blogs/2019/09/06/week-in-review-clinging-to-reality-under-a-post-truth-govern|]
The language used and the characters on stage may differ... but seriously this is one of those times of - You like potato and I like potahto - Dunt could equally be talking about the impact of Trump in the US.
You like tomato and I like tomahto,