What's wrong with politics ?

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  • DafydDafyd Shipmate
    Russ wrote: »
    But there's a chance that this line of thought will expose the inconsistency in some people's attitudes. That the individual consent they deem morally necessary in one context they talk down in another.
    By 'some people' you mean yourself, yes? But we've already exposed the inconsistency in your attitude to coercion, namely that you believe all three of:
    The end does not justify wrong means;
    Coercion is wrong means;
    The end of preventing greater coercion justifies coercion.

    But you seem to want to drop that line of exploration...

  • RussRuss Shipmate
    I note that even in the course of an example that seems specially selected to support your position, you say 'removes that wrong' - thereby you posit that there is a wrong due to offending your listener: that the wrong as you see it consists in offending one's listener and not in the lack of consent. So that consent overrides or removes (same difference for present purposes) a consideration other than lack of consent.

    Consider another example then (one that has come up before). If you wrong Doc Tor by trespassing on his land, why is it incorrect to characterise your offence as one of failing to gain his consent for your presence there ?

    Clearly trespass involves using his land without his consent. A definition of two halves. You could have avoided trespass either by gaining consent or by going elsewhere. You may look at the act slightly differently depending on which of those two alternatives you have in mind. Maybe you see it as a wrong of going where you shouldn't ? That's looking only at the alternative of going elsewhere. Is it not just as valid to look at the alternative of getting his consent ? And therefore see the act as a form of non-consensual behaviour ?

    What is robbery if it isn't taking someone's stuff without their consent ?
  • Doc Tor doesn't give a shit about someone being on his land. I'm absolutely in favour of a wide-ranging right to roam, and someone being on anyone's land is in no way 'taking stuff'.

    That's how the landowners have stolen access to the land for centuries, and it's only slowly being turned around. Not before time.
  • And, @Russ, you seem to be confusing robbery with theft. Moreover, the essence of theft is to take someone else's property with the intention of permanently depriving them of it - that is, I think, why there's a seperate motoring offence of Taking Without Owner's Consent (TWOC) so that the intent to permanently deprive part of a theft charge needn't be proven.

    Robbery is theft with use or theat of violence.
  • DafydDafyd Shipmate
    Russ wrote: »
    I note that even in the course of an example that seems specially selected to support your position, you say 'removes that wrong' - thereby you posit that there is a wrong due to offending your listener: that the wrong as you see it consists in offending one's listener and not in the lack of consent. So that consent overrides or removes (same difference for present purposes) a consideration other than lack of consent.
    Consider another example then
    Before we move on, let's pause to consider the fact that in your first example you posited a wrong logically prior to the giving or withholding of consent which consent removes. You did actually concede the point.

    The basic difference between our expressed positions is, as I see it, that morality is made for humanity, not humanity for morality. That is, whereas you would have it that rights just are primitive metaphysical facts, most people would see rights as there to protect human interests and human goods. According to your professed position, any concordance between rights and human interests is a mere coincidence, so that it appears rights are an arbitrary whim of some (non-existent?) Nobodaddy. That attitude that on your part leads to jobsworthery and edgemanship and an attitude of adherence to the letter rather than the spirit of rights, since on your view there is no spirit beyond the letter.
    Whereas the standard opinion (the Tao, the golden rule, et al) hold that what makes an act immoral(*) is that it damages or risks damaging a person's interests. Thus trespass is immoral in so far as it risks intruding on the owners' or leaseholders' privacy or interfering with their legitimate use of the land (and not otherwise). It is that risk of harm that makes the act immoral prior to the giving of consent.

    (I'll note further that consent as you treat it is something of a legalistic term: a mere formal expression of permission, nothing more than a bare yes. The important aspect of consent however is that it acts as the expression of the consenter's wants and interests as they understand them.)

    (*) or immoral in the way that consent can justify the act that we are discussing.
  • Gee DGee D Shipmate
    Russ wrote: »
    What is robbery if it isn't taking someone's stuff without their consent ?

    I have no idea just what the law is in the UK these days, but that's not much of a definition of robbery here, nor used it be in the UK either.
  • BroJamesBroJames Purgatory Host, 8th Day Host
    From Wikipedia
    A person is guilty of robbery if he steals, and immediately before or at the time of doing so, and in order to do so, he uses force on any person or puts or seeks to put any person in fear of being then and there subjected to force.
    Force or the threat thereof is required for it to be robbery. Simply taking someone else’s stuff without their consent is merely (!) theft.
  • RussRuss Shipmate
    Dafyd wrote: »
    Before we move on, let's pause to consider...
    As you wish.
    ...you posited a wrong logically prior to the giving or withholding of consent which consent removes.
    No. Are you perhaps confusing consent with forgiveness ? Which is logically after the fact.

    The point of the example was to contrast a view of blasphemy as a wrong against God, which clearly no human consent can remove, with a view of blasphemy as being a wrong against the listener. Which is only a wrong if they have some sort of moral right not to hear their God being called a Nobodaddy (or whatever the blasphemous utterance was). If they have such a right, then they may choose to waive that right, by giving consent.

    Such a waiving of a right may conceivably happen before or after the fact. But don't confuse a situation where you have wronged me but I forgive you ('cos I know you mean well and are here to get closer to truth) with a situation where you have not wronged me because I have consented to whatever you've done.

    Perhaps trespass was a better example...
    ...trespass is immoral in so far as it risks intruding on the owners' or leaseholders' privacy or interfering with their legitimate use of the land (and not otherwise). It is that risk of harm that makes the act immoral prior to the giving of consent.
    You think it's OK for you to trespass on someone's garden if you're not doing any harm ?

    And then you think it's still OK if there is harm but it's insignificant ?

    And then you think it's still OK if the harm is a little bit significant but it's outweighed by a great good ?

    So the only moral right that anyone can ever have is the right not to have their interests damaged ? In place of consent justifying all, you would have absence of harm justifying all ?

    And then you go and vote for a political party which will advance the interests of its supporters at the expense of the interests of others ? And think that's morally legitimate ?



  • KwesiKwesi Shipmate
    I may be somewhat off piste with my following observations, though I'm finding it increasingly difficult to find it as the discussion seems to chase after random hares at the least provocation. We all seem to agree that coercion, however defined, is morally desirable in certain circumstances.
    What does that tell us about the relationship between morality and the activity of politics? Focus, pleeeeeeeease!

    I can see that trespass in certain circumstances is illegal but not necessarily immoral, though one might consider breaking the law in general as immoral.

    I fail to see why it's immoral for me to vote for a party that seeks to raise taxes from Amazon in order to improve the NHS to my advantage, for example. More generally, the supposition is that in democratic elections citizens seek to promote their own interests.
  • DafydDafyd Shipmate
    edited November 2020
    Russ wrote: »
    Dafyd wrote: »
    ...you posited a wrong logically prior to the giving or withholding of consent which consent removes.
    No. Are you perhaps confusing consent with forgiveness ? Which is logically after the fact.
    This is about what you wrote when you wrote "their consent removes that wrong": you weren't talking about the temporal priority required for there to be a wrong to be forgiven with the logical priority required for there to be a wrong for consent to remove.
    ...trespass is immoral in so far as it risks intruding on the owners' or leaseholders' privacy or interfering with their legitimate use of the land (and not otherwise). It is that risk of harm that makes the act immoral prior to the giving of consent.
    You think it's OK for you to trespass on someone's garden if you're not doing any harm ?

    And then you think it's still OK if there is harm but it's insignificant ?

    And then you think it's still OK if the harm is a little bit significant but it's outweighed by a great good ?

    So the only moral right that anyone can ever have is the right not to have their interests damaged ? In place of consent justifying all, you would have absence of harm justifying all ?

    And then you go and vote for a political party which will advance the interests of its supporters at the expense of the interests of others ? And think that's morally legitimate?
    I don't know where you're getting the second or third of your questions from in what I said? You seem to be arguing on the throw mud and hope some of it sticks principle?

    Which political party are you thinking of that requires an affidavit of party support before it advances anybody's interests? It's natural for instance for people who will benefit from lower taxes and fewer regulations on business and fewer employee rights to vote for the Libertarian Party at the expense of the interests of consumers and employees, but that's not the same as the Libertarian Party proposing only to cut taxes and regulations for businesses whose proprietors have donated money to the Libertarian Party.

    The thing is I don't see that you have any grounds for disagreement here based on your professed principles. In fact your professed principles are rather more consequentialist than mine. You've already said that you think coercion is justified if it's outweighed by what you consider a greater good.
    You have also said that you don't think there is any metaphysical fact that makes a person's possessions their property. A person's possessions are their property not because of any metaphysical fact but because the community in which they live gives general consent to a system of government that recognises a particular set of property arrangements and legitimate transfers.
    If you don't think there can be general consent to government then there can't be the same token be general consent to property.

    Fixed (I hope) broken quoting code. BroJames, Purgatory Host
  • Russ is confusing private property with personal property, most likely deliberately in order to sow confusion. They're not the same.
  • KwesiKwesi Shipmate
    Doc Tor: Russ is confusing private property with personal property,

    Is that all he's confused about?

    To my mind, there is an impossible tension between Russ' (economic) libertarianism and his obsession with objective moral behaviour. Economic libertarianism is about permitting individuals to pursue the dictates of their appetites to the nth degree with the justification, if needed, that unrestrained greed maximises goods to the benefit of all: trickle-down economics. An emphasis on morality, by contrast, is much more hirsute because it recognises the need to repress the desire for self-gratification at the dictates of a morally superior external will. Until Russ confronts this dilemma, to quote Arthur Seaton, 'all the rest is propaganda'.

  • I mean, sure. Unless Russ's morality is 'the strong do what they want, the weak suffer what they must', then there are indeed questions to answer.

    Classic libertarians don't concern themselves about other people's morality at all, just as long as those contracts are enforceable.
  • RussRuss Shipmate
    Dafyd wrote: »
    Russ wrote: »
    You think it's OK for you to trespass on someone's garden if you're not doing any harm ?

    And then you think it's still OK if there is harm but it's insignificant ?

    And then you think it's still OK if the harm is a little bit significant but it's outweighed by a great good ?

    So the only moral right that anyone can ever have is the right not to have their interests damaged ? In place of consent justifying all, you would have absence of harm justifying all ?
    I don't know where you're getting the second or third of your questions from in what I said?

    If your answer to any if those questions isn't an affirmative, then do please say so because I'd like to understand better where you're coming from.

    I talk about consent removing a wrong, in the sense that the definition of that wrong (implicitly or explicitly) includes the idea of "without consent".

    And you think I'm talking about consent over-riding a wrong, in the sense of outweighing.

    I talk about coercing highwaymen into not pursuing their coercive trade, as an assertion of the value of noncoercive relations rather than as a rejection of that notion. In the sense of self-defence.

    And you characterise that as my principles being "outweighed by a greater good".

    You're giving me the impression that you're so soaked in a utilitarian framework in which any wrong can be outweighed by a big enough favourable consequence that you interpret everything I say within that framework. And that's where those questions come from.
    It's natural for instance for people who will benefit from lower taxes and fewer regulations on business and fewer employee rights to vote for the Libertarian Party at the expense of the interests of consumers and employees

    I have to agree that such is human nature. Doesn't make it morally legitimate for a majority to coerce a minority in the process.

    (Though it's not clear what coercion you're suggesting that a Libertarian party would undertake if in government. Repealing a law is not inherently a coercive act).

    If the only way you can justify coercive acts is by blurring the distinction between what is and isn't a coercive act, maybe that speaks for itself...


  • KwesiKwesi Shipmate
    Russ:. I have to agree that such is human nature. Doesn't make it morally legitimate for a majority to coerce a minority in the process.

    In what way then do you propose communal decisions be taken and enforced?
  • RussRuss Shipmate
    Kwesi wrote: »
    To my mind, there is an impossible tension between Russ' (economic) libertarianism and his obsession with objective moral behaviour. Economic libertarianism is about permitting individuals to pursue the dictates of their appetites to the nth degree with the justification, if needed, that unrestrained greed maximises goods to the benefit of all: trickle-down economics. An emphasis on morality, by contrast, is much more hirsute because it recognises the need to repress the desire for self-gratification at the dictates of a morally superior external will.

    I see no contradiction. One type of self'gratification that has to be repressed is the appetite for making other people Do It My Way. With the opposing virtue being that of tolerance, of willingness to let other people choose their own ends and make their own decisions accordingly.

    I'm putting forward a notion of morality grounded not in the revealed whims of a superior being but in the recognition of the other person as a being like oneself. An objectively-true symmetry.

    Not sure why you're singling out economic liberty as being different from any other sort.

    Possibly some connection to Doc Tor's notion that one's garden is personal property, unless one uses it to produce vegetables (? for sale ? for own consumption ?) In which case it becomes part of the Means of Production and a different category of property over which one has fewer rights. Seems nonsense to me.


  • Russ wrote: »
    Possibly some connection to Doc Tor's notion that one's garden is personal property, unless one uses it to produce vegetables (? for sale ? for own consumption ?) In which case it becomes part of the Means of Production and a different category of property over which one has fewer rights. Seems nonsense to me.

    I've been following this argument but not engaging it so far; but tangentially, and at least historically, exclusive possession of this kind is the exception rather than the norm, a set of caveats and/or sliding set of rights over even private property was not untypical across much of the world.
  • KwesiKwesi Shipmate
    Russ: I'm putting forward a notion of morality grounded not in the revealed whims of a superior being but in the recognition of the other person as a being like oneself. An objectively-true symmetry.

    Are you now rejecting the notion of objective morality?

    I think you need to develop your notion of "an objectively-true symmetry".

    So we now have two individuals who recognise each other as being similar in nature, but what is the character of that nature that might lead them to accept an agreed morality, particularly if they are competitive with each other in the market place? In Hobbes view they would be at each other's throats or seeking to rig the institutions to gain an advantage over the other. In short: beings like oneself have a fallen nature.

    In accepting that you, Russ, are like me and the rest of us contributing to this post, is to recognise your integrity as an individual and that you have personal desires and social objectives that may well differ from my own and others. It is also probable that we have differing views as to what constitutes moral behaviour. In the absence of an external reference point there is no way of determining which moral code is better than another. As social creatures we recognise that our society for common purposes has to come to decisions binding on us all. Political structures are, therefore, necessary to determine which view as to what to do prevails. That process inevitably means that a certain proportion of the population will be coerced, forced, constrained or whatever word one might consider appropriate to accept measures it regards as immoral. However much the members of a polity are essentially the same does not mean that everyone gets their own way.

    ISTM that you are critical of the political process because it is is some way fundamentally immoral. Some of us may think that politics is a necessary aspect of social life that can improve or impair the life of citizens. If that is the case an approach to morals and ethics which sees politics as inherently immoral is perhaps less a criticism of politics than the weakness of the moral framework that comes to such a conclusion.
  • DafydDafyd Shipmate
    Russ wrote: »
    Dafyd wrote: »
    Russ wrote: »
    You think it's OK for you to trespass on someone's garden if you're not doing any harm ?

    And then you think it's still OK if there is harm but it's insignificant ?

    And then you think it's still OK if the harm is a little bit significant but it's outweighed by a great good ?

    So the only moral right that anyone can ever have is the right not to have their interests damaged ? In place of consent justifying all, you would have absence of harm justifying all ?
    I don't know where you're getting the second or third of your questions from in what I said?

    If your answer to any if those questions isn't an affirmative, then do please say so because I'd like to understand better where you're coming from.
    We've been arguing with each other for several years: if you don't understand where I'm coming from by now it's because you don't genuinely want to. You have a history of ignoring answers you don't want to hear and you're not asking questions like someone who wants to understand; you're asking questions like a lawyer trying to trip up a witness.
    (The answers to your questions are respectively: It depends; No; It depends; I reject the presuppositions; and, If only life were so simple.)
    I talk about coercing highwaymen into not pursuing their coercive trade, as an assertion of the value of noncoercive relations rather than as a rejection of that notion. In the sense of self-defence.
    There are two ways of looking at this. One believes that, to cite a principle you yourself have cited, intentionally harming someone is worse than allowing someone to be harmed; it is absolutely wrong to kill someone but it may be permissible in some circumstances to allow another person to be killed, if for example saving them involves committing an absolute wrong. (Self-defence does not allow one to intentionally kill an aggressor, although the rules around double-effect come into play. In any case, self-defence wouldn't allow one to pre-emptively kill someone or retrospectively kill someone.)
    So: if coercing someone is absolutely wrong then it remains absolutely wrong to coerce someone into not coercing a third party, because coercing is worse than allowing someone to be coerced.
    This way of looking at things doesn't assert the value of anything.

    The other way is to say that the value of noncoercive relations is the same regardless of who is acting, and so one acts to maximise the value of the relations that obtain. So it's ok to coerce someone (lowering the total value) if that eliminates more coercive relationships elsewhere). Another word for value is utility: it is not an accident that the early utilitarians were all laissez-faire economists. Coercing people as a way of asserting the value of noncoercive relations is not the logic of self-defence but the logic of utilitarianism.

    I'm not saying you're a utilitarian:
    I'm just saying that you can't simultaneously assert that coercion is an absolute wrong that can never be justified, and also assert a policy of coercing people to prevent coercion.
    It's natural for instance for people who will benefit from lower taxes and fewer regulations on business and fewer employee rights to vote for the Libertarian Party at the expense of the interests of consumers and employees

    I have to agree that such is human nature. Doesn't make it morally legitimate for a majority to coerce a minority in the process.

    (Though it's not clear what coercion you're suggesting that a Libertarian party would undertake if in government. Repealing a law is not inherently a coercive act).
    Preventing unions from organising would be coercion. Preventing social democratic parties from campaigning for what the libertarian party deems coercion would be coercion, in line with the view that a libertarian dictatorship is better than a social democracy. And of course our libertarian dictatorship is going to keep a penal system in place to enforce property rights, no trespassing, etc.
  • DafydDafyd Shipmate
    Russ wrote: »
    I'm putting forward a notion of morality grounded not in the revealed whims of a superior being but in the recognition of the other person as a being like oneself. An objectively-true symmetry.
    The recognition of the other person as a being like oneself has the potential to ground a good deal more moral duties than you're prepared to recognise. For example, an employer who recognises their employees as beings like themselves would presumably award them each a share of the profits like that they award themselves.
  • RussRuss Shipmate
    Kwesi wrote: »
    In Hobbes view they would be at each other's throats or seeking to rig the institutions to gain an advantage over the other. In short: beings like oneself have a fallen nature.

    Yes. And if it's meaningful to talk of rigged institutions then it's meaningful to want unrigged institutions. To want to deal fairly with others, to agree that social contract that I won't do you down and you won't do me down. That we'll respect each other's person, possessions, reputation, rights.

    In the understanding that we may find ourselves competing for the same profit, the same honour, or the same person's affections. That our interests may conflict.
    In the absence of an external reference point there is no way of determining which moral code is better than another.
    There may conceivably be more than one moral code that is internally logically coherent and consistent with all universal human experience, such that there is no way of choosing between them. But that doesn't mean that any moral code is as good as any other. One can be obviously wrong. It's just hard to choose between those views that pass all the tests of consistency and universality.
    As social creatures we recognise that our society for common purposes has to come to decisions binding on us all. Political structures are, therefore, necessary to determine which view as to what to do prevails. That...
    ...does not mean that everyone gets their own way.

    Yes there need to be collective decisions on some things in order for society to function at all. What I'm suggesting to you (in this part of the argument) is that it is an abuse of power if those elected to take those necessary collective decisions start imposing on everyone their decisions on matters which are not in that "necessarily collective" category.
    Some of us may think that politics is a necessary aspect of social life that can improve or impair the life of citizens.

    If you're at a meeting of some group that you belong to (church, sports, musical, whatever) and the meeting becomes very political, is that good or bad or neutral ?

    Note first that the question is only meaningful if we clarify that the widest possible meaning of "political". Is not intended. The one in which every meeting and every social act is political.

    Seems obvious to me that it is a bad thing. That being political is to do with factions, with treating your neighbours as allies or enemies, rather than people who just like to (worship, play cricket, sing, whatever) together.

    But some people get a kick out of being comrades in arms, united in struggle to realise our shared vision, etc.

    Those whom you want to act immorally towards, you first define as your political enemies...

    Being political means there's an in-group and an out-group.

    I'm reminded that some Catholics objected to newspaper coverage of the election of the Pope. On the basis that the journalists were covering it like any other election, as a matter of politics. When the objectors wanted to think of their spiritual leaders as men of God seeking to discern the will of the Holy Spirit.

    I think the objection misplaced. But the distinction between treating an issue as political or not, a real distinction. And the preference for not, a reflection of the goodness of those objecting.

    Sorry it's not more coherent, @Kwesi. I started this thread because I really struggle to define what it is that's bad about politics.



  • Russ wrote: »
    Those whom you want to act immorally towards, you first define as your political enemies...

    Well, no. That really isn't the case, is it? I don't see insisting that everyone pays their due taxes is either acting immorally, nor making them my political enemy, when I'm applying the exact same yardstick to myself and my allies.
  • KwesiKwesi Shipmate
    Russ:. What I'm suggesting to you (in this part of the argument) is that it is an abuse of power if those elected to take those necessary collective decisions start imposing on everyone their decisions on matters which are not in that "necessarily collective" category.

    Respecting this discussion, IMO the scope of a government's competence is a matter for a polity to decide for itself, and you are quite justified in arguing for a heavily restricted role for the state, if that is what you consider desirable. In the case of the United States, of course, such provisions are enshrined in the Bill of Rights. In most states, however, the competence of governments tend to change due to circumstances, including the USA.
    Russ: If you're at a meeting of some group that you belong to (church, sports, musical, whatever) and the meeting becomes very political, is that good or bad or neutral ?

    The government of any association can be described as 'political'. What ISTM you are questioning is whether is should be party political, which I, personally, would generally regard as undesirable. On the other hand, a musical society having to decide the content of a forthcoming concert might appropriately experience temporary lobbies for this or that programme. I suspect, however, that if such voluntary associations become too partisan the organisation will split or/and collapse. (Voluntary bodies are different from states in that members can easily opt out for whatever reason).
    Russ: I started this thread because I really struggle to define what it is that's bad about politics.

    Politics is a fact of life, but is no more good nor bad than other facts of life. As to what's bad about politics is in the same category as "when did you stop beating your wife?" We could write reams and reams about it! There ain't no solution, apart from trying to make things better rather than worse once we've agreed what better is.
  • Would it be fair to define "political" as a situation where one or more participants in a process or decision have their view swayed by matters beyond the substance of the issue being decided?
  • DafydDafyd Shipmate
    Would it be fair to define "political" as a situation where one or more participants in a process or decision have their view swayed by matters beyond the substance of the issue being decided?
    Yes and no. The problem is one wants to use political in several different ways, for example, whatever it is we employ politicians to do (legislate, govern, etc), or any collective decision that deals with conflicting interests, or the process by which politicians persuade people that they are most competent to administer, or any attempt to deal with systematic problems or oppression (as in, the personal is political), or so on. The problem comes when you introduce an opprobrious meaning of the word, in that the opprobrious meaning comes to colour all the other meanings.
    This then leads to people being able to insinuate that all attempts to challenge systemic oppression are as such plays for personal power swayed beyond the substance of the issue decided, without having to come out and say so explicitly.

  • RussRuss Shipmate
    Would it be fair to define "political" as a situation where one or more participants in a process or decision have their view swayed by matters beyond the substance of the issue being decided?

    That's definitely part of the "what's wrong".
    Kwesi wrote: »
    On the other hand, a musical society having to decide the content of a forthcoming concert might appropriately experience temporary lobbies for this or that programme.
    If the successful faction then allocate all the solo parts to members of that faction, instead of on the criteria they would have used had the decision-making been less politicised, then that seems to me a bad thing.

    Indeed, if they feel obliged to divvy up the solo parts between those who voted for and against the eventual decision, then that's still a distortion, albeit a more well-meaning one. If such a distortion is felt necessary in order to heal divisions, why can we not hold the existence of such divisions against the politicization that created them ?
    I suspect, however, that if such voluntary associations become too partisan the organisation will split or/and collapse. (Voluntary bodies are different from states in that members can easily opt out for whatever reason).
    I think we agree on the impossibility of opting out of the core activities of the state. But where non-core activities which could be run on an optional basis (whether opt-in or opt-out) are made legally obligatory, then that's coercion that isn't justified by consent. Is it possible to say this in language that's not seen as about my personal preference, but rather as putting forward a proposition in moral philosophy ?
    Politics is a fact of life, but is no more good nor bad than other facts of life.
    True of some of the meanings of the word. I applaud Dafyd's attempt at distinguishing some of those meanings. Without of course thinking that he's got it entirely right... :)

  • RussRuss Shipmate
    Dafyd wrote: »
    The problem is one wants to use political in several different ways, for example, whatever it is we employ politicians to do (legislate, govern, etc), or any collective decision that deals with conflicting interests, or the process by which politicians persuade people that they are most competent to administer

    Yes, there's a sense that references the business of government and the formal process for choosing who wields power. That is neutral. If you talk about the French political system you're not inherently slagging off the French.
    The problem comes when you introduce an opprobrious meaning of the word, in that the opprobrious meaning comes to colour all the other meanings.

    One of the opprobious meanings derives from the behaviours that political systems incentivise. Getting elected means getting large numbers of people to vote for you. Which means developing habits of insincerity. Pretending that he's more interested in what you think than he really is. Exaggerating what he's willing and able to achieve for you if he wins.

    Politicians are synonymous with evasiveness, avoiding making commitments they can be held to. Avoiding an answer to questions where they know that their real views are unpopular.

    Once elected, the pressure is to develop a sense of self-importance. One's time is too valuable to waste.

    The charge is not that all politicians are self-serving careerists. Probably most aren't. It's more that they have to oversell themselves in order to succeed.

    But that's not the worst...







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