Month: September 2004

Steven Clift’s Minnesota e-democracy project, one of the earliest e-democracy efforts on the web, and still one of the most effective, has published a fascinating analysis of the profile and opinion of its users.

Unsurprisingly, the majority of users are politically interested and better-educated than average. More interesting are the positive effects both for themselves and for the political process that the forum participants identify.

I’ve just finished reading John Lloyd’s new book, What the Media are Doing to Our Politics. Although I agree with Lloyd’s general thesis – that the media, particularly in the UK, have too much unchecked power – the book itself is not altogether a satisfying read. It makes a convincing case that parts of the media are behaving irresponsibly, but doesn’t really offer much of a plan for change.

One of Lloyd’s main worries is that the media, particularly the press, are now taking an automatically hostile line against politics and politicians, and that they are setting themselves up as arbiters of truth and public opinion, making themselves out as superior to mere elected politicians or scientific experts.

As if to confirm this, tonight’s Newsnight began with Kirsty Wark standing in front of her desk and excoriating the Government. This quote is not exact, but is a fair approximation of what she said.

The Government has not banned smoking in public places, or forced the food industry to reduce the amount of fat and food in the food it sells. Are they really concerned about accusations of the nanny state? Or are they more worried about the interests of big business?

No-one who heard the introduction would think that the Government could possibly have a good reason for not cracking down on salt and smoking – is that really the way to introduce a news (rather than a comment) programme?

The message here is “everyone but us is stupid and evil”. The unintentional message is “and we are insufferably smug and self-righteous”.

Jon Lebkowsky rightly points out the moral element of democratic reformation in this post.

Morality is a tricky topic – perhaps more so in agnostic Europe than in the US, where religious morality is still politically important. Democracy is not a religion, requiring moral orthodoxy from its adherents, but if a more participatory democracy is going to be possible, it needs an agreement between its participants on standards of honesty and debate, as well as shared values of equality, openness and personal liberty.

The term “50:50 nation” – meaning, one that is evenly divided along party lines – is sometimes applied to the US at the moment. Surely, in this fraught election season, this is far too centrist a name. The trench warfare nation, or the pyrrhic victory nation, perhaps. 50:50 implies everyone is near the centre. That may be true about the American population in general, but as the Washington Post discusses today, the arguments between the different sides of the political spectrum are bitter and personal.

There is great danger in too much attack politics. Every political system depends on a certain level of trust – the idea that we are all good chaps, and good chaps know what good chaps are expected to do and will never push things too far, in the words of Peter Hennessy. Without that, politics becomes a zero-sum game, popular respect disappears, and factional interests grow in importance until they overtake national interests.

As Orwell says in Notes on Nationalism:

For those who feel deeply about contemporary politics, certain topics have become so infected by considerations of prestige that a genuinely rational approach to them is almost impossible.

Are the politics of hate a permanent feature of American life, or just a reflection of the attitude to the current President?

(Thanks to Doug Masson for the pointer)