Did it ever occur to them that better policies might have produced better societies and a governed populace less prone to revolution? – The Word of Damocles
I asked that question last time about the governing elites of France in the 18th century, but it applies to almost any government any time, including our own.
For governments across the Western world today, Job 1 seems to be the squelching of speech, the better to hide governmental bungling. Until Elon Musk publicized reams of documents showing the Biden Administration leaning on social media platforms to curtail speech, few in the U.S. would have known about just how anti-Constitutional the effort was. Plainly protected speech was targeted and much of it, unsurprisingly, criticized the Administration. Biden’s “solution” to his incompetence and lousy policies wasn’t to better execute better policies, but to shut down debate.
Prohibitions against “hate speech” in the U.K., Germany, France and elsewhere likewise permit censorship of criticism of governmental policies. How? Consider: If unchecked immigration from the Middle East is state policy and criticizing immigrants therefrom is hate speech, then – voila! – criticism of immigration becomes criticism of immigrants, i.e., hate speech that can send the speaker to prison. Don’t believe me? Ask U.K. citizen David Wootton who faces two years in prison for attending a Halloween party dressed as an Islamic terrorist.
The Australian government has passed a law permitting it to fine social media platforms up to 5% of their total world revenue (not net profit, but gross income) for failing to comply with the dictates of governmental censorship. It’s not only an outrageous infringement of Australians’ basic right to speak and hear, but encouragement to state actors to zealously seek out violations by the platforms. Meta took in about $135B last year, so a decision by it to allow disapproved-of speech could pay a whopping $6.7B to the government. Nice! How many such fines might there be in a given year? Just 20 and they’d have every dime of Meta’s income.
So, throughout the Western world, governments are ratcheting up their innate tendency to shut down speech that threatens, or even criticizes, their power. But there’s pushback. Everyday people in Western Europe – places like France, Germany, Italy, Poland, the Netherlands, etc. – are getting fed up with the incompetence, dishonesty and condescension of governing elites.
“I used to think politicians had basic honesty. That’s over,” said Gérard Brauchli, 72 years old, a retired ear, nose and throat doctor from central France. “They are not honest, not capable and they aren’t courageous.”
Opinion polls in country after country echo Brauchli’s thoughts.
In a Forsa survey of German voters published last week, 54% of respondents said they didn’t trust any party to solve the country’s problems. Only 16% said they trusted the government. Another survey of voters in France, Germany, Italy and Poland published by Sciences Po, a Paris-based university, earlier this year showed 60% of respondents had no trust in political institutions.
Wow. Over half of voters in four major European countries just aren’t buying what their political systems are selling.
Meanwhile, here in the U.S., trust in government to do the right thing is at an all-time low. In the late 1950s, it hovered between 75% and 80% but has been on a long slide down ever since until, today, it’s barely above 20%. And with good reason. Consider the lies and failures of the Viet Nam War, the Nixon scandals, Carter’s fecklessness, Clinton’s peccadilloes, the lies and incompetence of the Iraq invasion, the gutting of the U.S. manufacturing base, the failures of the Affordable Care Act, the mortgage-backed-securities debacle, the lies and incompetence surrounding COVID, and on and on.
Hence my question from last time. Elites plainly assume that they can commit any atrocity of public governance they please and the only choice for the rest of us is to shut up and swallow our medicine like good children. It never occurs to them that they might try to do something on our behalf or even do what they do in a competent manner. A secure border, perhaps. Fixing and improving our roads, bridges, dams, etc? Better schools?
No, their approach is to ignore all that and silence criticism. If Britons are enraged about the depredations of immigrants, call it hate speech and incarcerate them. But by no means consider the possibility that they might have a point, that the nation would have been better served by better immigration policies.
Are Americans angry about the needless COVID shutdown, the damage it did to their children, the blatant misrepresentations by governmental officials about masks, social distancing, fatality rates, the origins of the virus? What about the spike in inflation brought about by overspending necessitated by the original shut-down? Yes, but any speech, regardless of how supposedly protected by the First Amendment and how defensible, must be sidelined when and wherever possible.
It’s just how lousy governments behave. Why do the hard work of constructive policies competently administered when they can just let the censor hide the whole bloody mess?
But there’s a problem with that too. European pollsters are saying some very telling things.
“It could be that we are reaching the limits of political compromise,” said [German political scientist Herfried] Münkler. “That’s not a good sign because this could push a majority of voters to call for a strong man or a strong woman. One who wouldn’t compromise but just decide.”
It may be coming to that, but past incompetence, flawed policies and rampant mendacity aren’t the only problems. Another is that governing elites show precisely zero awareness that most of our problems stem from their own decision-making. So they just keep on keeping on, ensuring nothing will change.
Will Münkler prove prophetic? Will we see the rise of a dictator? Dictators? We’re not there yet, but one thing is certain: if a dictator does come to power in some country, the accepted wisdom peddled by governing elites and the press will be that the cause was extreme right-wing rhetoric – not bad policies, not elites who ignore everyday people but strident language used to criticize them. How do I know?
They’re already doing it. Münkler again:
Herfried Münkler… said he thinks the lack of trust in government is partly the product of strident populist rhetoric, whose alarmism creates a sense of urgency that no government can ever get ahead of.
Maybe he’s applying for a job in the next German government. His instincts appear to be just right.
This article originally appeared at The Word of Damocles.
