Rage Against the Machine – Result!
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I’ve been in two minds whether to publish this post, as I have no doubt it will be perceived in some sectors as elitist. And then I thought oh, what the hell…
According to the excellent Marina Hyde, in the Guardian, Simon Cowell is planning to revolutionise politics by introducing a “political X Factor“, in which hot topics are voted on by members of the public in instant referenda.
Judging by some of the comments in response to that article, we’re screwed if this ever comes to pass, especially if politicians actually take it seriously (oh, some will pretend to, the boy Cameron for a start).
Democracy does not, simply cannot ever, include involving the “people”* in telephone polls that might affect how the country is run, when any fool can see that they’d vote down anything that meant spending money, infringing their liberties, civil or otherwise, or raising taxes. S’human nature, innit?
*By whom I mean the people who never vote because they don’t understand the issues, or think that politics doesn’t concern them, or just can’t be arsed, or, quite possibly, can’t spell X but who, nevertheless, would be likely to be drawn to Cowell’s concept.
And please, don’t try and tell me this is bringing politics to the masses – it’s nothing of the bloody sort. It’s a cynical, money-making gimmick. Not that Cowell needs any more money, but that hasn’t slowed him down so far.
Or, perhaps, all of the above, because they belong to UKIP. Trust me, the day those morons get a major say in how the country is run, we’re well and truly over.
A few days ago, I listened to a member of UKIP rambling on in the pub, in a badly-misjudged attempt to drum up support. To say the guy was stupid would be wrong, he was just intelligent enough to have a large and varied collection of prejudices, but not intelligent enough to make a reasonable fist of justifying them. And it’s that guy, and his ilk, who will be first on the phones – the nutters and the extremists.
True, there are very many people who could make a valuable contribution to such debates, but they really are a minority (and probably have better things to do than sit glued to the TV). If you want to see what, and how, the average person thinks, check out the contributions in the readers’ comments sections of online newspapers – that can, all too frequently, be a truly disheartening experience.
There’s a leavening of reasonable and intelligent comments, but only a leavening – the rabid and unreasoning tend to dominate – the retards who believe that everything wrong in the world is the personal fault of Gordon Brown. The sort of people who believe there is only ever one valid point of view, and it’s theirs. The sort of psychos, in fact, who will be moved to post abusive comments here (tip – don’t bother, they won’t even be read and they sure as hell won’t be published). There was a time when the intellectual level of debate in the Guardian’s Comment is Free section exceeded that in the main paper; these days, though, it’s mostly Troll City which, sadly, is all too typical these days.
There is a very good reason why most MPs, from whatever party, are university graduates these days – intelligence. Politics is no place for the hard of thinking. That’s why Gordon Brown is such a perceived disaster – he simply can’t think on his feet, or speak coherently ex tempore. And he’s a very intelligent guy. Imagine what a stupendous disaster the sort of X-Factor fan who thought Jedward were cool would be.
This country is run, primarily, by the very intelligent but semi-skilled (though I find the fact that anyone can get into parliament with zero experience of politics, at any level, worrying), and for the most part all parties make a pretty good fist of things. Imagine what a shambles politics would become, though, if they had to factor in the telephonic input of people whose principal knowledge of the issues under discussion is what the presenters on Cowell’s show choose to tell them. Or the Daily Mail.
OK, Cowell can have his show, why the hell not (one more nugget of Cowell-inspired crap won’t make a big difference in a veritable landslide of drivel), but that’s all it can be allowed to be – entertainment. It simply cannot be allowed to influence government policy.
Why? Simple – if they had to consider the views of every hobbledehoy with a telephone and too much time on their hands, they’d never get anything done at all.
If Cowell really wants to get involved in politics, though, let him stand at the general election. If he stands as the member for the Fuckwit Party he’ll be a shoo-in! He won’t stand, though, because his priority is making money – that’s why he’s pitching his wizard wheeze as a reality show. Politics reduced to its lowest common denominator. This is way beyond dumbing down – to get this low you’d have to dig a hole half-way to China.
Karl Marx said that religion was the opium of the masses* – these days Simon Cowell has assumed that role, the role of the anti-intellectual antichrist. . .
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*Yes, I know he said “people” (volkes), but it’s usually rendered as “masses”
