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Excerpt from Reflection on the Climate Trials: Politics Qua Social Transformation, by Dr. Lucrecia Machiavelli (Oxford University Press).
One of the biggest problems with democratic political governance in the late 20th and early 21st centuries was the way citizens tended to conflate politics with activism. Politics, per se, has absolutely nothing to do with making the world a better place. It is true that politicians often have very strong opinions about things like the civil rights, inequality, the Climate Emergency, etc, but they are invariably strongly constrained by various systems and conflicting groups working within those systems. It’s often said that elected leaders aren’t “kings”, but the fact of the matter is even absolute monarchs were constrained by the aristocracy, the clergy, the state of the economy, tradition, etc. Our Presidents and Prime Ministers are similarly constrained by the rule of law, the bureaucracy, the party they represent, other leaders---federal, provincial, municipal, tribal, international---and so on.
The result of these limitations is that most political leaders simply cannot lead. Instead, the most they can do is choose to follow some other group in society that has managed to garner enough support to represent a significant constituency. A probably apocryphal statement attributed to a Canadian Prime Minister---Pierre Trudeau---states that “The art of leadership is to stay exactly seven inches ahead of public opinion.” Certainly everyone has heard of Bismark’s dictum that “politics is the art of the possible”.
The real “leaders” who change society are never elected to public office. Instead they stay outside of power, using their communications and organizational skills to spread a specific worldview. Insofar as they are capable of expanding the percentage of citizens who share their point of view, they become leaders of one of the constituencies that elected officials have balance off against others in order to create a functional government.
To illustrate this point, consider the civil rights movement during the 1960s. There were many different players, but let’s look at three: Martin Luther King Jr., George Wallace, and, Lyndon B. Johnson. King wanted to see the end of the Jim Crow laws---as did Johnson. The problem was, however, that the New Deal Democratic party that Franklin Delano Roosevelt had put together depended on white racist working class support to retain power. This meant that if Johnson managed to pass a Civil Rights Act, he knew that it would damage the Democrats for an entire generation---or longer.
George Wallace, oddly enough, really didn’t have a deep-rooted personal animus against people of colour---he’d actually been endorsed by the NAACP for his first (lost) election where he spoke out against the KKK. And after he left politics eventually became something of a recognized “ally” of the Southern black community. But he had learned from his first run that he had to have the support of racist whites if he was going to ever get elected to high office.
King needed to build build enough support to repeal Jim Crow among Northern liberal whites to make it worthwhile for Johnson to walk away from the New Deal coalition with racist Southern whites. In effect, he had to convince the President that the gains to be made were worth sacrificing other goals that he also strongly believed in---such as his “war on poverty”. King succeeded, but when enraged Southern voters left the Democrats the Republican Party proceeded to vacuum up their support through racist, “dog whistle” campaigning and more subtle forms of Jim Crow based on voter suppression and gerrymandering. This is what’s called their “Southern Strategy” and it became the basis of the “Reagan revolution”.
Wallace developed a “third option” when he realized that he could retain power on a state level by pivoting away from the unpopular Civil Rights Act by “branding” himself as an independent overtly racist leader. The “Segregation Today, Segregation Tomorrow” speech that he gave after being elected Governor of Alabama was written by the leader of the state KKK and ensured that he would receive racist support until the end of his long and successful career as a state politician.
In effect, a battle was waged by two activist groupings: the NAACP versus the KKK. Each sought to “gain the ear” of elected politicians. King managed to get Johnson to make a huge political sacrifice in order to end the Jim Crow laws. That was because his groups had built a significant national coalition between Northern liberal whites and blacks. In contrast, the KKK had built a strong enough local coalition to convince Wallace that the only road to state power in Alabama came from appealing to racists.
Someone concerned about “right” and “wrong” might fixate on the fact that racism is a bad thing. Indeed it is. But successful politicians are almost by definition not concerned about right or wrong, instead they are concerned with the possible. Where morality comes into play is within the wider public arena that creates support for particular points of view.
It might seem odd to talk about the KKK as an activist organization pushing a moral agenda, but truth is the overwhelming majority of racists believe they are actually standing for something right and proper: the protection of the “white race” and “Western civilization”. It’s not really the job of a politician to choose which set of moral values are or are not “correct”. Instead, it’s her job to negotiate compromises between the groups holding these different points of view in a way that prevents society from descending into violence.
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I heard an expert on neo-fascism talking on a CBC podcast the other day. He talked about how important it is to have local news sources in every community so people can develop a personal relationship with journalists. That way, they can't so easily dismiss ideas outside of their "filter bubble" as just being "fake news". But the reason why local news has become so tenuous is because there's no functional funding mechanism for it. That's why I'm asking for money in each post. It's to get some money so I can pay for various things I need to do to keep this blog running. But just as importantly, it's to get people used to the idea that they need to pay for local news if they want it to exist.
Luckily, it's easy to buy a subscription and the amount of money you need to give is trivial. If you can afford it, why not sign up through either Pay Pal or Patreon?
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The Climate Trials created a unified set of reference points and catalyzed a general concern many members of the body public felt about the Climate Emergency. The feeling was “Why is nothing being done about this clear and present danger to our civilization?” If you had polled politicians anonymously you probably would have found a similar concern among many---if not most---of the very leaders who held high office. The problem was they didn’t feel that they had enough support from the voters to take bold moves. And in the absence of being able to make sweeping policy decisions, they ended up being prone to accepting the “half-measures” and “necessary compromises” invariably offered up by lobbyists and bureaucrats who had spent their lives learning that no one ever lost their job because they were too cautious.
A more charitable---but ultimately more damning---way of looking at the situation is to borrow a term used in economics: opportunity cost. Whenever we make a choice to do something in one way, we really should consider what other options we are giving up by doing so. Unfortunately, politicians usually don’t have the luxury of considering opportunity costs. That’s because their lives are time poor. They have to ration what they read, who they talk to---even how much time they spend thinking. If their doors were ever really “open”, they’d never be able have time to do anything else but listen to people’s complaints. Every information source that they rely on has to be rationed and “dumbed-down” by “gate keepers” protecting them from information overload. This means they never hear anything that isn’t part of “conventional wisdom”. And if there is no “conventional wisdom” warning of the profound opportunity cost that comes with ignoring the Climate Emergency, elected officials are going to be the very last people to understand this point.
The Climate Trials changed what passes as conventional wisdom
in society. This gave politicians the freedom to think about the
consequences of inaction, simply because the issue finally became
something that a large enough fraction people took seriously. In
political science, this is usually described as being a case of the
“Overton Window” expanding. And this allowed professional
politicians the freedom to seriously consider an idea without
suffering a catastrophic loss of support among voters.
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Interesting comment about George Wallace: "George Wallace, oddly enough, really didn’t have a deep-rooted personal animus against people of colour---he’d actually been endorsed by the NAACP for his first (lost) election where he spoke out against the KKK. And after he left politics eventually became something of a recognized “ally” of the Southern black community. But he had learned from his first run that he had to have the support of racist whites if he was going to ever get elected to high office." I lived in Alabama for four years and appreciate that historical footnote.
ReplyDeleteI was surprised myself. My wife---who is American---found it hard to believe, so I did a quick "triple check". But it is true, which is why I thought it important to put in that little factoid.
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