The Third World Beckons

Making the implicit explicit is the one thing that people this century will be remembered for. People today no longer feel the need to cloak their true intentions in innuendo. Our music is brash. Our clothing leaves little to the imagination. Our novels are thinly-veiled propaganda. Similarly, our politics is being stripped of its “noble lies” in real time.

Midwit commentators wax incessantly about the “polarisation” and “division” between people today. There is usually some reference to the degradation of “our institutions” or “norms.” To be clear: their whining masks what they really mean to say. What they are really complaining about is the death of their noble lies. They want you to see everything happening around you and smile. They want you to believe the military wants to protect you instead of launder your money. They want you to believe that Big Pharma’s donations merely support science rather than buy influence. They want you to believe that the media are bastions of truth, so long as they don’t embarrass those in power.

We have come to a point in history where power is being wielded with more brute force than ever. The ruling cadre have abandoned any attempt at threatening violence implicitly. Instead they directly show us the consequences of dissent, or deviation from their commands. Our leaders’ lust for repression and sadism is explicit now. It is they that have dispensed with their own noble lies, not the people. The people, in turn, have had to learn the new rules of the game.

These same midwit commentators bemoan the increasing “Americanisation” of our politics. They point to rabble-rousing conspiracy theorists and race-obsessed corporate brahmins as alien influences on an otherwise cohesive politic. They want you to believe that we can return to the old days of God Save the King and hedgerow disputes and subsidised hatchbacks. They are wrong. To do this, we would have to pretend everything we have just seen never existed. We would have to forget the glazed stares and dilated pupils on our rulers faces; the frenzied glee that flashed like stars in their eyes when they rewrote the old social contract. We saw them for who they are.

There is never any going back from this.

However, the term “Americanisation” hints at something very profound that is happening. Dissolution of the noble lies — those old promises of civility and respect — means that our discourse can be far more honest. We are no longer bound by the pretensions of civility. There are no more lines left to cross. The honesty I am referring to can only be found in countries whose people understand the following: institutions are only as good as the people who run them. This was an uncontroversial position in a time when the populace did not see their institutions as oracles.

Europeans and Anglophones have become far too accustomed to this kind of blind faith. They have buried their heads in cheap debt and mock virtue. They have only the roughest idea of what their upper echelons do. They do not bother to scrutinise their leaders because they assume someone else is. They have watched debates on TV between their elected representatives and stern journalists and assumed this is the sum total of politics. They are only now coming round to the notion that there are far more political actors than they are being told about.

But this awakening is not “Americanisation” per se. It is broader than this. It is the realisation that our politics are methodologically the same as that of the Third World. I use the word “methodologically” because our immediate concerns in Britain are not the same as those in, say, South Sudan. We have plenty of schools and plenty of running water, for example. But what exists within that water? Within those classrooms? Our scepticism is now akin to that of the Sudanese when the white man comes to bring them novel inventions. This is because we have learned the rules of the game — in particular, four assumptions:

1. Government is kleptocracy. There is no such thing as “public service.” We assume that those in power are merely those who have beaten others in a competition to be able to systematically loot the population. Consequently, we should not expect or hope any government projects to benefit the people as promised. Taxation is not a reciprocal understanding between generous state and generous citizen — it is a tangible symbol of submission. Redistribution of wealth is designed to reward the regime’s supporters and validate the cadre’s own looting. We assume that leaders will sell us out at a moment’s notice. We should only respect the rulers that loot quietly and govern lightly.
2. The rule of law is not an absolute good. The regime is only as powerful as its presence on the ground, in villages and towns. In any Third World country, you can get around government diktats by bribing local officials or policemen, or relying on your family connections with them. This practice subverts the rule of law: laws may not be applied equally amongst the population, and the course of justice has been perverted by outside influence. However, abandoning the rule of law means you can live freer than what the law as written would suggest. We must resolve to follow the laws we like and seek to avoid the laws we dislike. There is no such thing as being good citizens anymore.
3. Politics is about winning. As much as our leaders like campaign on lofty slogans, the key objective for any political movement is to seize access to the military, the media and the treasury. It tries to ensure its own survival. Today’s cadres entrench their position by changing the composition of the population. They make them weaker by taking away their protein, dividing man from woman and pumping chemicals inside them. They tie their livelihoods to government largesse. The regime does this because they believe it good for its own future, not yours. Each policy comes with its own platitude; an invented moral imperative. Rapidly, citizens are learning that these platitudes are merely pretexts — whether or not they agree with the policy. They understand how the policy sustains the regime.
4. There are good people and evil people. We are learning just how tribal people can be with one another. Often, this takes form explicitly across ethnic lines. More frequently, this tribalism operates across socioeconomic lines. Regardless, the speed at which tribal consciousness is developing is baffling. Many people now understand themselves to be within an “out-group.” The regime currently sustains itself by aggressing upon and looting self-sufficient tribes, using weaker ones as sycophantic foot soldiers. It is only a matter of time before the self-sufficient understand themselves to be the good in a sea of evil. Then they will begin to bear arms, adjudicate private disputes and aggress upon the regime’s pet tribes themselves.

The Third World beckons. Are you ready for it?