The Planetary Engineers assess Jovian society. One Engineer thinks that, if the subordinate class continues to be treated in the way that it is, then it will either mutiny or degenerate to uselessness. Another suggests that it must have some safety valve or outlet. This turns out to be orgiastic religious services.
The British Establishment has developed an efficient mechanism for containing discontent. The Conservatives are the natural party of government but occasionally they become so unpopular as to lose a General Election. What happens then? Labour holds the reins of government just long enough to disappoint and disillusion their supporters. Then those supporters stop voting for Labour or for anyone else and the Conservatives are back in for another long period. However, every time there is a General Election, a lot of people think that something important is about to change. Between elections, a lot of people console themselves that the governing party will lose the next election, indeed that opinion polls show that it would lose if there were an election now and that the Prime Minister is guilty of merely holding onto power for the sake of power. I have been hearing this all my life. A party leader who gets past his sell-by date can be put in the House of Lords or on a Board of Directors. He doesn't have to be shot!
This system is more effective than orgies - but the Brits have been practising government for a lot longer than the Jovians.
10 comments:
If your expectations are unrealistic, you are doomed to perpetual disappointment, because that which cannot be done... cannot be done.
Trying harder to do the un-doable just makes the problem worse. It doesn't matter how much you want an 'up down' or a 'white black', you're still not going to get it.
The solution is to reset your expectations, not engage in a more militant revolution against the reality principle.
It's 'no accident' that the only really successful Labor leader in recent British history, Tony Blair, essentially abandoned most of the traditional Labor agenda -- hence his calling it "New Labor".
-He- actually accomplished many of the things he set out to accomplish, but that enraged those with the traditional unrealistic expectations.
There aren't enough of those people to actually do much in the larger scheme of things, but they're very active in politics so they can screw up the Labor Party periodically.
Or to put it succinctly, people elect the Tories until they can't stand them any more, whereupon Labor gets into office just long enough to remind them why they elected the Tories all those times.
The real change in British politics in the last generation is the rise of the SNP.
That's taken away a big chunk of the "Celtic Fringe" that occasionally allowed Labor to overcome its structural weakness in England proper.
Combined with the increasing alienation of the actual English working class by various faddists; a new incarnation of what George Orwell called the "sandal-wearers".
Attlee and Bevan at least actually represented real English people, rather than the twittering North London types.
Kaor, Paul!
At the very least, this is better than people shooting each other as aw means of getting power!
There are real differences between Conservatives and Labourites, IMO. E.g., the most convinced Tories tend to dislike and distrust the concentrating of power in the State we have seen since 1914.
Ad astra! Sean
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I agree with your comments. And, considering how much I dislike and distrust radical leftists, I would far prefer Labor never again to have a Commons majority.
For the US my wish would be for the Democrats to be dumped on the ash heap of history. And the US alternately governed by conservative and libertarian parties competing on how best to keep the government small and humble!
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
You have suggested something more positive for the US: not (just) a denunciation of the Democrats but an idea for a new two-party system.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Ha, thanks! I would like to think even some leftists might be persuaded that maybe the US gov't has become too oppressively heavy handed, bureaucratic, and incompetent.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: bear in mind that the US government in the 19th century was so small because the US didn't have to bear the burdens of being a Great Power.
That wasn't a matter of policy: it was due to the Royal Navy. The US was an 'unofficial Dominion', sort of a super-Canada or massive Australia, and could pick and chose how much it wanted to be involved in international rivalries because the Pax Britannica reigned.
That ended in 1914; but after 1918, wishful thinkers in the Washington thought the US could crawl back into its shell and ignore the outside world. It had a considerable Navy but no Army.
We all know how -that- turned out. Without the US stepping into Britain's shoes, a half-dozen other regional and would-be global powers tried to fill the vacuum, we got the Great Depression and bloody chaos.
Ending in WW2, 1939-45, and then the Cold War, 1945-91.
Because power abhors a vacuum; if one power doesn't fill it, others will. Rule or obey.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Again, I agree. It was in domestic affairs that the US gov't became increasingly incompetent, heavy handed, and grossly wasteful, from 1933 on.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: if you think FDR was bad, consider the alternatives.
Things in 1931-33 were very, very, very bad and there was a genuine risk of collapse and civil war. 25% of the working population was unemployed, tens of thousands of farmers were being evicted -- and often using armed force to resist it.
So a quietistic response to the Depression was just not on.
Note that the only major country that actually recovered quickly from the Depression, and restored full employment by the mid-1930's, was... Germany.
The US didn't achieve full employment again until 1941 -- when the defense run-up to WW2 was well underway.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I still don't like FDR, who was STILL in many ways a bad President, as Jonah Goldberg argued in his book LIBERAL FASCISM. Nor did his policies, as you implicitly concede, end the Depression. That had to wait till after Japan recklessly attacked Pearl Harbor.
The most I will allow for FDR is that he did not allow really hard line left wing crazies from taking over. And he STILL accelerated the centralizing of power in the US gov't in domestic matters--and that was bad!
Ad astra! Sean
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