Who is popular today?

THE EDITOR: The rather innocuous retort of one American to another, the latter remarking on the “load of bull” spewed by someone in high office and the other responding, cynically so, with the rhetorical question, “He is a politician, isn’t he?” gives a slice of the nature of this thing called politics.
Perhaps a politician can spew “bull” out of sheer cognitive insufficiency, having acquired his position through the usual servility, like unquestioning loyalty, or putting self before service for a mess of pottage.
But there is the other who, endowed with some measure of cognitive capacity, would use the latter to be cunning, manipulative, to lie and cheat, sharing common ground, however, with his intellectually less counterpart above, being only concerned with the self, never with service to the people, bereft of any self-respect and utterly shameless.
Basdeo Panday would have tried to rationalize this Machiavellian mode of thinking with his now famous, or “infamous,” tenet of “politics has a morality of its own,” attempting to justify behaviors such as the above.
But the thing to note about politics is the way it negates that conventional sense of “right and wrong” which has been the cornerstone of civilized behavior as we know it, replacing it with a new paradigm akin to the mode of the beast: “survival of the fittest.”
And why this indifference to a sense of right and wrong? Because politics is power and power corrupts, absolutely (Lord Acton, 19th-century historian).
Which is why Hunter Biden could defy the subpoena sent to him, inviolate as such a summons is, and not attend the hearing, likely because he comes from a circle of power, of which his father Joe Biden is President, who himself is dismissive of the may allegations of complicity in the bribery and corruption involving his son.
Or Nikki Haley could persist in going against Donald Trump for the Republican nomination despite all the losses against him, indifferent to the allegations that she is a RINO (Republican In Name Only) and the champion of George Soros and big business, and perhaps a likely Democrat in disguise.
Or that Justin Trudeau could continue to rule in Canada despite losing favor with the people, as with his treatment of the truckers and their strike.
Or that Vladimir Putin could carry on even as allegations swirl around him as being complicit in the death of Alexei Navalny, his chief political opponent.
Or that Xi Jinping could see Taiwan as the next step after Hong Kong in his Belt and Road hegemonic ambitions.
Or that Nicolás Maduro, with impunity, can reduce Venezuela, one of the richest countries in the world, to one of the poorest.
And what of us in TT, where our leadership on both sides of the divide can do and say as they please, the one all-knowing and dismissive, and the other smilingly deceptive, both trading on unquestioning tribal loyalties to sustain themselves in power?
But in all this the “unkindest cut of all” (Antony of Brutus as Caesar’s “angel” joining in his assassination, Act 3, Sc2, 183) is when people become co-conspirators in allowing politicians to become the wolves they are, unwilling to hold them to account for the scraps to be had because of their shameless subservience.
President Abraham Lincoln in his Gettysburg address of November 19, 1863, would have spoken of “government for the people, by the people, that shall not perish from the earth.” But such is a far cry from the aberration which such a tenet has now become with government now for the self and never for the people.
DR ERROL NARINE BENJAMIN
via e-mail
The post Government for the self, never the people appeared first on Trinidad and Tobago Newsday.