February 04, 2003

In the politicians we trust?

The politicians are asking us to trust them at a time when we are about to go to war with Iraq. Yet we know from bitter experience that one of the first casualities of war is truth. Our governments will lie, dissemble and spin in order to persuade us that going to war with Iraq is a good thing. And they will do this by fair means and foul. Thats what war does---standard operating procedure.

Do we trust the politicians? Not really. Politics has been marked by a loss of trust the commentators say. Mistrust is the norm. We expect the politicians to be untrustworthy. Lets face it, they have blood on their hands, they have an intimate relationship with rat cunning, treachery is a dear friend and they live in world woven by webs of deceit. Mistrust and betrayal is the norm in political life.

Is that not the moral of the Tampa incident and the children overboard affair in the last federal election? That governments don't come clean about their dirty hands.

The politicians, being good professionals who realize they need to have a few spin doctors (journalists) to advise them, tackle the mistrust by endeavouring to reduce the level of suspicion. They work away at the edges, smoothing the sharp distinction between trust and distrust, so they sort of blend through painting their grey on grey.

Does it work?--is the image of the Australian Prime Minister as honest John a successful one in reducing the mistrust? Who knows for sure. He looked good on gun control but he is offside with public opinion on the war with the Iraq issue. Many citizens reckon that Howard committed to the war with Bush many months ago and is unwilling to come clean. So he is playing us for mugs and is seen to be untrustwothy on the war issue.

Journalists and publicists are probably even more mistrusted and despised than politicians are. Very few of us place trust in the stories we read in the media these days. The everyday practices of the media probably heightens the distrust, and creates an overall public mood of suspicion.

Yet trust is there in the background holding things together at a deep level. Consider the war with Iraq again.

The Australian Government has gone along with the fiction that if Iraq presents such a threat to the security of a superpower that the latter requires a defensive shield from incoming ballistic missiles. Little evidence has been presented. Or alternatively, if Iraq is not disarmed then its weapons of mass destruction (biological and nuclear weapons) might fall into the hands of terrorists and Australia's national security is threatened. Again little evidence has been presented.

What is said over and over again is that there will be no stability and no security for the US , Britain or Australia---nay the international community--- until Iraq is disarmed of its weapons of mass destruction, totally and permanently.

The argument? It goes like this. The war politician points to Iraq's history of training and supporting terrorist groups and its use of weapons of mass destruction (biological weapons) against Iran and its own Kurdish people. Then a nightmare scenario is outlined: the ultimate nightmare for us all must be that weapons of mass destruction fall into the hands of terrorist organizations. Why is that so? Because these are rogues states, part of the axis of evil. So we cannot stand idly by and allow the possession of such weapons of mass destruction by rogue states because it is more than more likely that these rogue states will help the terrorists to acquire and ultimately use the weapons of mass destruction.

The argument has a certain logic that a lot of people find convincing. But many citizens in the US, Britain and Australia are not convinced. But it doesn't matter because there is an emotional undertow that glues it together and gives it weight. It is fear and trust. Fear of the terror. Trust in politicians to provide the national security to ease the fear. Democracy is ultimately founded on trust; and though we know that there is no one to protect us from the politician/guardians, at some point we accept that trust is required to ensure the liberal polity keeps working. We know at some point that we have bit the bullet and stare the terror down.

We trust the politicians even though they have let us down so many times in the past, and they have breached our trust by breaking so many promises. Oh we remember the clever distinction between core and non-core promises. And we remember the hands in the till, the shady deal, the kickbacks, the conflicts of interest and the hand out for the cash. And we remember that many of them get away with it with a bit of help from their powerful friends with bending the rules and regulations of accountability whilst they talk about governing the country in the public interest.

Yet we continue to trust. We will go to war with Iraq soon, even though the politicians are dealing from a crooked deck. The majority of Australian citizens will place our trust in our liberal political institutions provided they get a mandate from the United Nations. The United Nations is the litmus test---for all its many flaws. The majority of Australian citizens will put their trust in the United Nations to make the right call (judgement) about going to war with Iraq.

Are we wrong to do that? To rely on trust rather than the simple power politics and muscle of a great power to get the problem presented by the current Iraqi regime sorted. Well, the hawks certainly think so. The trust stuff is for girls, the chicken hearted and the sissies. They are all for handing the job of getting things sorted over to the military and their smart technology.

But the gungho hawks trust the military to sort out the Iraqi's fast and with a minimum of fuss and resistance. This allows them to present their distorted version of why we want to bomb a people back to the stone age--its good versus evil folks.

A liberal polity works on trust. Even in the gun culture of the US that works on fear and violence. The politicians know this: they paint a picture of pure terror and then promise to protect us and our democratic rights from anthrax. Terror can only be averted through trust is the message they want to convey to us. Then they say that we citizens have a duty to be alert---not alarmed--- and to be active by keeping an eye out for terrorists and the various acts treason. The politicians say they have good grounds to believe that we are in danger. And we have to trust them on that one. It is our duty to do so.

Of course the Americans take it much further. They know that they have God on the side and in God they trust. He guides them in their manifest destiny. They trust that world history is moving towards that destiny.

That is a big trust in dark times. It deals with absolutes in a world of terror. So it requires lots of bulletins and briefings from the White House and mind-numbing slogans and half truths about evil and absolute freedom delivered in a folksy style for the cameras in highly staged settings. The big metaphysical trust is counter the destruction of everyday trust by a terror unleashed on the world.

The terror unleashed recalls the historical memory of the terror of the French Revolution. Today's is a different kind of terror to that earlier modern one ---it is international rather than national, and it uses weapons of mass destruction rather than the guillotine. Both forms of terror strike at the very heart of the social order, work to split it violently asunder and so create a crisis of trust in the political institutions.

Then as of now we citizens ask: can we trust our politicians? How can we call them to account? How do we recreate a culture of public service and ensure that the professional politicians are free to serve the public weal of citizens?

We can suggest one answer: only when the politicians and the senior public servants freely serve we citizens can we begin to replace our mistrust with trust.


Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at February 4, 2003 10:29 PM | TrackBack
Comments

I tend to lean to the view that the public get the political leaders they deserve. To quote PJ O'Rourke, every parliament is a parliament of whores, but in a democracy, the whores are us!

Posted by: Scott Wickstein on February 5, 2003 10:48 AM

Do we also get the opposition we deserve? Cos if so I want to know what we did to deserve Simon Crean...

Posted by: James Russell on February 5, 2003 03:30 PM

I think you are right that this crisis of trust is a consequence of international terror, and I would say that it is an intended consequence. We are now being tested to see if the liberal polity can withstand an attack from those that don't share its fundamental principles. How much are we willing to bind ourselves to rules of fair play against an enemy who does not recognize such rules? At the same time, what happens to us when we engage these people on their own level?

Posted by: Eddie Thomas on February 6, 2003 12:42 AM

Thomas Jefferson understood that we shouldn't put our trust in any politician. Irony was not intended when he said we should bind them down from mischief "by the chains of the Constitution." And a truly honest man wouldn't even ask you to trust him.

Those politicians who I met and still admire have never asked me to trust them blindly rather they prefered to be questioned and challenged. Vaclav Havel, Czechoslovak dissident a.k.a. Philosopher-President, John Hatton Australian Independent politician for 23 years in NSW Parliament, Anne Symonds ALP politician in NSW, Andrew Tink, Liberal Party Politician ...

A few people have put it as well as Pope John Paul II (exceptions being journalist O'Rourke and playwright Havel) 'Even when the truth has been reached – and this can happen only in a limited and imperfect way – it can never be imposed. To try to impose on others by violent means what we consider to be the truth is an offence against human dignity.'

'The dissident does not operate in the realm of genuine power at all. He is not seeking power. He has no desire for office and does not gather votes. He does not attempt to charm the public, he offers nothing and promises nothing. He can offer, if anything, only his own skin -- and he offers it solely because he has no other way of affirming the truth he stands for. His actions simply articulate his dignity as a citizen, regardless of the cost.'
-Vaclav Havel
· This Morning I Farewell My Teenage Hero [http://jozefimrich.blog-city.com/readblog.cfm?BID=17754]

Note a link is provided to this article in my favourite newspaper the Sydney Morning Herald:
· Engaging Margo Kingston's Webdiary
[http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/02/05/1044318667024.html]

Posted by: jozefimrich on February 6, 2003 05:06 AM

Josef,
I've run out of time this morning. I will follow up the leads and get back. I do like binding politicians by the chains of the constitution. I would add and by the federal system of checks and balances in which a US -informed republicanism was sneaked in by the Constitution framers to temper the Westminster system of responsible government.

Contrary to those who who see the Senate as unrepresentative swill, I would give more power to the Senate (eg in terms of its committees etc) to throw the doors and windows open on what can only be called secret means business of executive governance.

Posted by: Gary Sauer-Thompson on February 6, 2003 09:16 AM

The horror,the horror,(terror)Saddam must go,
Trust us, your leaders,God told us so
Blair and Howard and the Saintly Bush,
Hope of the Godly in this unselfish push
Have made a Crusade, "out evil foe!!"
BUT
Have Al-Qaeda invented the re-curve bow?????

Posted by: Duncan on February 6, 2003 09:38 AM

Josef,
Havel strikes me as a philosopher politician. He reaches back through Rousseau to the ancient Romans and brings that whole philosophy in political life tradition back to the present and makes it speak to us about the lives we live.

I love that bit about the dignity of the citizen.

I must read Havel. Any suggestions about which books to read?

Posted by: Gary Sauer-Thompson on February 7, 2003 10:29 AM

Eddie,
I agree that liberal nation states currently are tested by non-liberal ones----I'll leave Islamo-fascist to one side.

I do fear what is going to happen to liberal states. I see the 9/11 and the Bali bombings are being exploited for partisan political ends--getting a political party re-elected; citizens are becoming anxious and fearful through security alerts often deployed as a partisan political isntruments; liberal freedoms are being squeezed in the name of national security that has lots of old fashioned law and order attached to it.

There is a domestic dynamic to this as well as an international one.

Posted by: Gary Sauer-Thompson on February 9, 2003 09:19 PM

James,
the comment is a bit late, sorry. But when you boil it all down we got Simon Crean as ALp Opposition Leader because we didn't elect Big Kim---Bomber Beazley to the Treasury benches.

Its one of those big historical ifs isn't it. What would things be like now if Big Kim--- or Al Gore in the US---had been elected instead of Howard and Bush.

Any different?

Posted by: Gary Sauer-Thompson on February 9, 2003 09:26 PM
Post a comment