The Great Protection Racket

Political parties are in some respects protection rackets but the nature of the protection on offer has shifted in recent decades. Formerly it was protection against hard times, external threats and criminality, perhaps with a few nice to haves. Now the game has evolved towards protection against something rather odd – protection against complexity.

This has been achieved by shifting the political focus away from practical matters such as tax, the economy, employment, crime, education and so on. These traditional practical issues are still significant but are not as important as they were. Traditional issues have been parked to make way for new cultural norms, a task previously handled by religious belief. And handled better in my view, but that is another issue.

As religious observance has declined, many aspects of culture have become either politically fashionable and therefore good or unfashionable and therefore bad. Previously complex issues such as male/female relationships, health, poverty, the environment, transport, energy policy and family life are simplified into a politically fashionable or unfashionable dichotomy.

The fashionable tends to be less complex and need not be analysed too deeply. Herein lies our political protection against complexity. Men may claim to be female and so take part in female sporting events, but don’t analyse it. To analyse it would be unfashionable. And worse of course.

Moving on to the UK coronavirus debacle – the government is here to protect you is the underlying narrative. Not so much protection against the virus because that hasn’t been achieved, but protection against the complexity of what is going on. Do as we say, wait for the vaccine and all will be well is the message here. Not too scary, not complex and it works.

Insanely draconian lockdown measures squeeze out the complexities of looking up the science, checking graphs and data and weighing up personal and family risk. The government has done it all for us. Strangely enough, even though lockdowns have not been effective as containment measures, government claims to be protecting us have not proved unsaleable.

Conveniently, the UK ten point plan for a green industrial revolution also requires insanely draconian measures so the narrative is likely to be similar. Almost as if the coronavirus debacle is an experiment in social behaviour modification. Almost as if? It clearly is just that. We navigate through life by avoiding surprises. Whatever has been made familiar is not surprising and governments know it and use it.

Lunatic levels of repression may continue well into the future – that seems to be the wholly unsurprising message.