Political sacrificial lambs

It's a strange thing that, in modern politics, whenever there is a difficult situation for a government that affects the whole country and calls into question the policies of that party there always seems to be some scandalous bit of trivia around individual politicians that distracts public attention for long enough for the bigger problem to become old news. This never used to be the case, and the reasons for that are interesting. The first point here is the strange phenomenon of the half life of news stories. It used to be the case that a damaging news story could finish a career, but that seems not to be the case any more. News is ephemeral. A story about corruption amongst politicians that should bring down the establishment lasts a couple of months. A scandal for an individual politician lasts perhaps a week and then everything is back to normal. It seems as though the public can't hold a thought in it's head for longer than that, and there has been a deliberate move by the mainstream media to make sure that this is the case. Look at the way the media reports a story today as against say fifty years ago. Today there is a massive hype on day one, reducing over the next couple of days before disappearing. This sets up a thought process in the reading public that indignation similarly peaks and quickly wanes.

The second somewhat strange practice is the recycling of careers within politics. It seems that even in cases where politicians are arrested and convicted of criminal offences that is no bar to returning either to the political arena or to a related corporate position. It used to be the case that a criminal conviction would end a political career and create a pariah of the individual concerned. Again we can see that this has been a gradual change created by the media by constant emphasis that criminal behaviour is merely a temporary lapse in judgement when it occurs in a senior figure whilst at the same time being endemic in the lower orders. This second feature is critical as it emphasises the gulf between those in power and those with none. It lays the groundwork for the point where the powerful can do no wrong and are successful by right rather than by dint of effort.

This brings us back to the idea of individual politicians allowing themselves to be used as scapegoats and distractions. It is interesting to note that there are very few politicians who don't have at least one skeleton in the closet. It is almost as if it is a requirement of the job, whether it be a mistress, a fondness for autre sexual activities or just a tendency to dip a hand into the till. You might be forgiven for thinking that politicians are required to engage in some activity that they can be blackmailed over when the time is right. Almost like the process of hazing found in University societies, which some have claimed exists for that very purpose. After all, if there are photos in existing of you with a bunch of strippers accepting a large brown envelope you are more easily biddable, and if necessary expendable, for the right pay-off of course.

So, who is behind this shift from responsible, answerable political movements to fraudulent, corrupt, criminal politicians? Well, the media plays a part, as do large corporates and lobby groups, but these are not natural bedfellows, so somewhere, something greater must be behind them, but who would have the power to control the press barons, the corporate boardrooms and the bank funded lobbyists? What if there really was an elite above all of this, above the money, above the obvious power, hidden in the clouds of verbiage spewed out in the press? Wouldn't that make an interesting story? One that dates back at least a thousand years, across the globe. Wouldn't that be a scary thought?