I am sure Futureworkers are anxious to know how my Christmas Dinner went
yesterday. I have to report that I cooked everything perfectly -- except
for the turkey. I overlooked it for a couple of hours and it came out of
the oven a shrivelled object, a peculiar shade of brown and almost
inpenetrable by our sharpest carving knife. My better-half, returning from
Christmas singing, pronounced the vegetables to be perfect however. On
balance therefore -- but only just -- the dinner was a success.
Later in the evening I turned to one of my Christmas presents, a 630-page
book which would break your foot if you dropped it. "The Arrogance of
Power: The secret world of Nixon" by Anthony Summers, is a fascinating
biography of a particularly corrupt and mentally disturbed politician.
Adverting to my comments of yesterday about the increasing irrelevance and
corruption of governments and high-flying politicians, here's an
interesting quote from Len Garment, a former law colleague of Nixon who
knew him well. Here's what he says about politicians in general and
American Presidents in particular:
(page 99)
<<<<
They've nearly all been strange. I mean they are the *strangest*. Just to
go through all that to become President of the United States. With the
exception of most of those who sort of inherited the office -- George
Washington, Harry Truman and Gerald Ford, who turned out to be men of
exemplary character and (for politicians) decency, courage and common sense
-- so many of them were very weird.
Those who campaigned for the presidency have to have been among the
strangest of Americans. Their life is a combination of lying and cheating,
nobility and patriotism, and cowardice. There's a sort of presidential
gene, a predilection in people who become President that makes them very
strange. And Richard Nixon just happened to be one of the strangest of a
very strange crew.
>>>>
But the Presidential system has continued -- and become stranger still --
in the last 30 years, and so have all the governmental systems in all the
developed countries. In England, only a minority of voters actually turned
out at the last General Election, never mind voting for the Labour government.
The business slot on the BBC radio this morning also illustrated what I was
writing yesterday. "Never before," said one economic journalist, "as in
2001, have so many immensely large firms collapsed either completely or to
a fraction of their former selves."
Well, you could say that some of these IT corporations were stranger than
any government system that you could imagine, and I couldn't argue against
that. But the fact is that business corporations, large and small, are much
more subject to reality than governments have ever been. To mix metaphors,
governmental systems sail on for generations beyond their sell-by date (and
always have done, throughout history).
In particular, young people are increasingly not voting for politicians any
longer. The generation of anti-globalisers and anti-corporationists may be
confused as to their ideas (in my opinion), but at least they know
instinctively that the present type of governmental systems, national and
international, cannot cope with today's complex problems.
I'm appalled by some of the violent tactics used by a minority of some of
the a-g a-c protestors, but the demonstrations themselves are a healthy
sign that something is badly wrong, and long may they continue. Governments
and politicians ought to take notice that we need to change the whole
process so that we can be assured that we have people of integrity (and
intelligence) in charge again.
It's time for my second pot of tea.
Keith Hudson
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�Writers used to write because they had something to say; now they write in
order to discover if they have something to say.� John D. Barrow
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Keith Hudson, Bath, England; e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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