medium | So what gives? What happened to this generation of leaders?
There
is something very different about many of today’s so-called leaders.
And it is not merely that we, or they, are the helpless victims of “late
capitalism”, or any other number of modish buzzwords, for, like every
kind of buzzword, that sophomoric grad-school 101 level non-explanation
does not illuminate much at all, except perhaps our own outmoded
beliefs.
It is that they are demagogues. Let’s review what “demagogue” actually means. Here’s a decent definition:
“a
person, especially an orator or political leader, who gains power and
popularity by arousing the emotions, passions, and prejudices of the
people.”
Let me explain
why that’s important, using the example of the 80s. A generation of
conservative politicians then — Thatcher, Reagan — and the like — ripped
up and rewrote social contracts wholesale.
So
what is the difference between them — and the Merkels and Schauebles,
Osbornes and Camerons, Jindals and Jebs, of today? A very great one
indeed. There was great intellectual and perhaps moral support for the
decisions the leaders of yesterday — in the age of modernity — took.
Here’s a simple example. We may disagree now over trickle-down economics, since prosperity hasn’t trickled down. But at the time there was at least a reasoned position in support of it, built on a consensus amongst thinkers. You may think of the Laffer Curve as a simple illustration: it may have been proven largely wrong now, but at least there was an effort to produce a reason to slash public services then.
The neo-demagogues of meta-modernity are very different. There is no serious intellectual, moral, or ethical support for their decisions at all. There’s
not a serious economist left in the world who agrees with their
economic policies; political scientist with their social policies;
etcetera. As a simple moral measure of how far today’s not-quite-leaders
have slunk, consider: even the Pope—in his much celebrated Laudato Si — has challenged them to rise to today’s great challenges.
Demaogues are irrational, insensible, not beyond
reason — but scurrying in the abyss deep below it. They are simply, as
the definition simply says, “arousing the passions and prejudices of
people”. Let’s take immigration as a simple example. David Cameron’s
government has literally banned immigration in the UK. But decades of
the logic — not to mention evidence — confirm that immigration only benefits
advanced economies. So demagogues do not act rationally or sensibly,
reasonably or sanely — whether in terms of economics, morality,
politics, or anything else that might justifiably be called a system of
thought. Why not? They prey on our emotions; they exploit our biases and
prejudices; like magicians, they devour our fears and dangle before us
our wishes. They are sorcerers of our animal beings. Pumping the bellows
of unreason, they stoke the dark fires that burn deep in the human
soul.
It’s true: empiricism
alone can never guide us in the human world — but still, we must
struggle not merely to be prisoners of our biases and prejudices. And
that is precisely what demagogues reduce us to.
Unthinking servants of our own worst selves. The selves that, instead
of thinking, dreaming, wondering, rebelling, defying, creating,
loving — are filled with spite, greed, jealousy, fear, and, at last,
hate, of the self and the other, of god and man, of life and death
alike.
