Editorial Opinion: "Fools and failures" by Phillip Adams
[from The Australian, 28-August-2004]
Thanks to the expressed concerns of 43 distinguished daiquiri drinkers - and a lie-detector test - the oxymoronic idea of truth in politics is an election issue.
It should, of course, be the election issue. Until we get at least a little of it, we should replace the kangaroo and emu framing our coat of arms with a used-car dealer and a crooked cop. 'Tis said that truth hurts. Truth is, truth helps - not just a PM's credibility, but the very survival of society.
Consider the social glues, the variety of adhesives meant to hold us together. Religion was long held to be a Bostik, national pride an Araldite, and "law and order" at least a Blu-Tak. But first and foremost, there was the Tarzan's Grip of trust.
Now, pretty much across the board, both trust and Tarzan are losing their grip. The streetscape of edifices that people believed in, that seemed so solid and indestructible, now look like the painted canvas used in film and theatre.
The banks, with their Doric columns and marble halls, are now reduced to mere ATMs, their reputations for fiscal rectitude wrecked by greed and scandal.
The churches, with their Gothic windows and soaring spires, have betrayed their congregations with all those rules and regulations on human sexuality made laughable by priestly paedophiles and the hierarchies' cover-ups.
In the United States, the integrity of elections has been cast into doubt. In awarding George W. Bush the White House the Supreme Court is seen, by millions of Americans, as corrupt. Organisations charged with keeping the citizens safe - from the FBI to the CIA - have failed in their duty, apparently more concerned with turf wars than terrorism. And the misinformation they provided allowed Bush to betray the trust of the people, leading them into a war that a clear majority see as a catastrophic mistake.
Uncomfortably close to the Bush Administration, giant corporations run by executives paying themselves pornographic salaries have become the white-collar versions of Afghanistan's warlords - looting billions from staff and shareholders.
In Australia, the healthy scepticism that should be part of our democracy has become carcinogenic cynicism as people, no longer willing to trust the prime minister, are reluctant to trust the alternative. The role of governor-general, itself brought into disrepute by the events of 1975, took years of hard work by decent men to repair, only to be damaged again by a recent incumbent. And the trust that people had in their High Court was undermined by political campaigns on decisions such as Mabo and Wik, and by attempts to smear one of the judges.
And a letter from 43 members of the diplomatic and military services has been tabled. The upper echelons of the army, navy and air force resent their work being politicised and, inevitably, mired in political scandal. And our intelligence agencies, like their counterparts in the US, are seen as fools and failures.
In Britain, a prime minister has lost the trust of his voters over enthusiasm for a war they didn't want, and over the excuses he made for it. And when there were top-level investigations into the frauds and fumblings, the findings are rejected as cover-ups. And the media that report on the wars, the churches, the corporations and the politicians aren't trusted, either.
We live in a world of suspicions and conspiracy theories, of spin doctoring and manipulation. And it extends to almost every aspect of society. Scientists are suspect, seen as mercenaries for the corporations, accused of Frankensteinian experiments on everything from human life to food. And once-admired universities are seen as little more than shopping malls for degrees, and dens of plagiarism.
Can you name an organisation, an institution, that's above it all? Are doctors respected as they once were? The boy scouts? The police? Oh, the police! In almost every state of Australia the police are seen by some as indistinguishable from the criminals. At best, they're opposite sides of the same coin.
The Coalition of the Willing arrived in Iraq to save the Iraqi people from the prisons of Saddam Hussein and then, lo and behold, we see the images from Abu Ghraib. Aboriginal organisations are destroyed from within by unconscionable behaviour. Organisations established to attack corruption in public life succumb to the same temptations and are revealed as corrupt themselves.
It is in this context that two things happen. Millions in the West become passive, indifferent. Millions of others, in their disgust, embrace fundamentalisms. They see Western societies, in their self-doubt and self-hatred, as diseased and decadent. And a great polarity develops, between the self-doubters and the certain.
That's why the erosion of trust in our society, from top to bottom, is such a tragedy. That's why every political lie, every piece of spin doctoring, is a small component in a catastrophe. Lose trust and you're well on the way to losing everything.
"The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger public liberty."
This from John Adams, the first vice-president of the US and its second president.
I think the ayes have it.
[from The Australian, 28-August-2004]
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