Other horrors are so useful that sometimes they need to be
manufactured
 On
the eighth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, i.e. September 11, 2009, I
introduced or rather gave name to what seems to be a standard
image-enhancing political ploy. I called it ‘The long and short of
politics, or ‘The Sarkozy Principle’ (Daily News, September 11, 2009).
That article was inspired by a news item. It was reported that French
President Nicolas Sarkozy had ordered 20 short people to stand behind
him while delivering a televised speech, just to make him look taller.
These persons, apparently, had been vetted by aides of the President to
make sure that they were all less than 5ft 5ins in height. It made him
look taller and might have made him feel good about himself too.
Regime-changing agitation
‘Feel good’ is important in politics, as important perhaps as ‘look
good’. There are no perfect societies but there are degrees of
imperfections. Some will be suffered in silence, some protested and some
so insufferable as to provoke regime-changing agitation or at least
cause enough instability to bring a lot of things to a halt, sometimes
for years. This is why politicians, even as they put in place policies
that extract and impoverish, toss some goodies now and then by way of
compensation.
Culture of charity
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French President Nicolas Sarkozy |
Goodies are useful things. They keep hope alive and that’s very
important; once hopelessness sets in, nothing-left-to-lose takes up
residence. That’s a potent virus, needless to say. The trick to
governability (not good governance) is keeping a polity safe from
nothing-left-to-lose, or to be more precise ensuring that a critical
mass is not afflicted with that disease.
Promises work but only for a time. Politicians can piggy-back on
things that make people proud of their nation, again only for a while.
If a thorny issue is sorted out, those who can take credit acquire some
political fuel. Sports and entertainment help distract. A culture of
charity also helps because it diverts energies otherwise expendable on
protests. The need for charity remains untouched nevertheless.
There’s another way of making a polity feel good about themselves,
their societies and their countries. It’s the ‘Little Mercies Syndrome’.
There are always things to be grateful for. There are always reasons to
tell ourselves ‘it could have been worse’. The smart regime periodically
feeds the comfort-need of the masses and goes about doing business as
usual, i.e. exploiting, humiliating and in other ways abusing the
people, their trust and the mandates they regularly give politicians.
The smartest regimes are able to make you believe that you should be
thrilled about being exploited and humiliated.
Not all regimes are that smart though. They use a multiplicity of
mechanisms to keep things sober, even if life calls for active and
concerted disruption of ‘business as usual’. This is where the ‘Little
Mercies’ tool can be employed.
It is simple. You don’t have to claim that things are all hunky-dory.
You can even admit that things are bad. You can insist, however, that
things are far worse elsewhere. So you turn the national cameras on
people who are going through hell, territories that actually resemble
hell, or you just play cut-paste-misquote-misrepresent. You can take
umbrage about crimes against humanity allegedly taking place in some far
away land with an exotic name, never mind whether or not your ancestors
robbed them to the bone, engaged in by-threat-and-force religious
conversion and never mind whether or not the described hell was
prescribed by the describing nation/regime.
Weapons of mass destruction
Some choose to define some place as hell and then set out to demolish
it and create a living hell (as opposed to the imagined one), not
forgetting to call it ‘heaven’ of course. Blood flows. Blood has flown.
And, as Dostoevsky reminded us through the voice of the character
Raskalnikov in his classic ‘Crime and Punishment’, it flows like a
torrent in the capital and tyrant crowned as benefactors of mankind’.
No one goes about eliminating weapons of mass destruction. They use
pretexts to secure access to resources and markets. The use weapons of
mass destruction. No one unseats tyrannies. They use tyranny to oust
inconveniences or conveniences that have become inconvenient, and
typically consecrate tyrannies of their choice. Bucks are made. Applause
is manufactured. There is enough theatrics in the before, while and
after of such adventures to entertain a harassed public out of
protest-mode.
Prisoner interrogation
‘Horror’ in some other place has a role. It makes the insufferable
sufferable. If horror does not exist, horror must appear to exist. If
that doesn’t work, horror must be manufactured, either on the ground or
on television.
I am not naming names here, but the world is not as ignorant as some
people think it is. Those who practice torture as routine procedure in
prisons and those who script in torture in manuals on prisoner
interrogation don’t tell this to the people who elect them. They pretend
that it doesn’t happen. They say others do it or they offer the
consolation of such methodologies being practiced on other peoples,
usually brown-skinned and not on their own citizenry.
All things considered Sarkozy’s ‘let-me-look-taller’ is benign. As
for those who get high on ‘Other Horrors’, I would humbly suggest that
they watch some other genre of film, hopefully something that tells them
some home truths about their rulers.
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