beyond good and evil - politics today

Religion is, among other things, concerned with good versus evil. In a post-religious age the struggle between good and evil is transferred to the field of politics. No matter how rational we like to think we are we see politics as a struggle between the White Hats and the Black Hats, the good guys and the bad guys.

The problem is that in politics today there are no good guys. Perhaps there never were. But there certainly aren’t any today. Modern politics is more like a struggle for power between rival organised crime gangs. The apparent ideological differences between political rivals are more like different approaches to organised crime. It’s like the gang war between the North Side Mob and Capone’s South Side Mob.

The bigger problem is that ordinary people have not yet realised this. They still think that at least some politicians are on the side of the little guy. They’re still looking for heroes.

Democracy these days at best offers us a choice of which mobsters we’re going to be exploited by.

Take Brexit. Starry-eyed Leavers thought that leaving the EU would mean a return to traditional Britain. The Britain of cricket matches on the village green, a pint of bitter at the local pub, cod and chips, plucky little Britain standing up to Hitler, decency and common sense.

In fact Brexit is a dispute between two rival gangs of globalists. You can call them the Brussels Mob and the Washington Mob. You can have a choice between the globalism of bureaucracy and the globalism of deregulation and law-of-the-jungle free markets. The globalism of Tony Blair and David Cameron or the globalism of rootless cosmopolitans like Boris Johnson. Some billionaires will be better off under one brand of globalism while other billionaires will find the other brand of globalism to be more congenial. Ordinary people will still get screwed either way.

There’s no good vs evil in modern politics. Just internal disputes among the bad guys. Just because Tony Blair was a Black Hat doesn’t make Boris Johnson a White Hat. They’re both Black Hats. Hillary Clinton was a Black Hat, but so is Donald Trump.

I’m not saying that there is no such thing as good and evil. I’m just saying that it’s naïve to see politics in those terms.