Fw: Anger in politics

[Ed Weick]

Sorry, Gail, I thought this had gone to the list, but it hadn't.  Who am I to deprive the list of my pearls?   Ed   Apart from political ineptitude, I think there are two things at play in the generation of anger.  One is a struggle for control.  Whether based on sound interpretation or on ideological premises, newly elected governments feel they have to take control of a situation that they feel has been allowed to deteriorate by the previous government (very much the situation in British Columbia).  What can then happen is a loss of control by groups which previously had considerable control.  Teachers, for example, gained significant ground in setting their conditions of work during recent decades.  Now, in several jurisdictions, these gains, seen as having been irresponsibly permitted by previous governments, are under real threat.  There is a hostile reaction and a hostile counter-reaction.  The result is turmoil in the schools that quite rapidly becomes social turmoil.   The other factor, I suspect, is the general mood.  Here I can only speak for Canada.  For a couple of decades following WWII, the world seemed like a much more open and supportive place than it does now.  Until the past two decades or so, it seemed possible for governments to initiate all kinds of public programs and social experiments.  However, productivity and the economy in general slowed in the 1970s and became even slower in the '80s and '90s.  Real income stopped rising and income disparities started growing.  Events like the high-tech boom notwithstanding, and on average, Canadians are probably no better off now than they were a decade or more ago.  There is substantial uncertainty insecurity abroad, and a general responsiveness to politicians who say they can fix things.   Who can fix things?  The left goes with expansion, not contraction.  So the general perception is that the fixers are the guys who can balance the budget, provide income relief through tax cuts, generally reduce the size and role of government by moving services to the private sector, and make people pay for the kinds of things they've become used to taking for granted, such as health care and education.  If it really is necessary, this could all be done in a planned and rational way, but politics are not rational.  It has to be done in a way in a way that shows that the fixers mean business and can club oponents (or people like welfare recipients) over the head if necessary.  But here I'm getting back to my first argument, so I had better quit.   Ed Weick   ----- Original Message ----- From: G. Stewart To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, February 06, 2002 9:38 AM Subject: Anger in politics Ed, Mike, Keith,   Having already a sufficient number of lines in the water on FW I don't want to add another or would be sending you this question on-list. (If, in response, you have a comment you'd like to put on-list, please don't hesitate. It's not a private question.)   Ed wrote: "what his government is doing is driven by a punitive and destructive ideology"  (re Gordon Campbell in B.C.) and I had recently had occasion to note on FW the "anger" with which the Harris government in Ontario had come into office and behaved.   The issue of "anger" in politics is coming to seem to me the source of more problems than ideology per se. Our political processes seem to legitimate and perhaps even foster anger -- the release of distaste, dislike and disrespect rather than the surge of empathy, compassion or thoughtfulness. The larger ties-that-bind seem to get lost. I find it increasingly frightening, likely to invite the growth of serious civil discontent and especially unfortunate in an age when so many issues concern the "commons."   Does it point, do you think, to a need to strengthening the integrative processes and temper the partisan or are such antipathetic emotions healthy, maybe even essential outlets, in a body politic? Democracies use the adversarial system deliberately and to good effect (e.g., parliaments and courts, the "balancing of powers" in the US, etc.) but by taking for granted that it is legitimate for leaders to govern "punitively and destructively" it sometimes seems to me we risk corroding the foundations of democratic politics that lie in fellow-feeling. Such leaders lose their capacity to represent "all the people" thus threatening the legitimacy of government itself. B.C. seems to me to verge on this from time to time. Were it a country and not "merely" a province, safe within the arms of a larger federation, I suspect it might be in difficulty in a system of government that requires the consent of the governed to make it work.   Perhaps all this is so self-evident as not to be worth mentioning but sometimes the necessary foundations of a situation become weakened through being taken so for granted they are not articulated?   Your wisdom on this, gentlemen?   Regards,   Gail   Gail Stewart [EMAIL PROTECTED]