The Failures of Democracy

Of course, democracy does have a lot of problems, but by far its biggest drawback is that it does tend to cause politicians. In the past, this was not so much of a problem as it has since become as the proliferation of the media does seem to have enabled politicians to escape their natural habitats of government legislative assemblies and local council chambers to spread out amongst the population in general, infecting almost everyone without natural immunity with the belief that something must be done and politicians should be the ones to do that thing – whatever it is.

There was a time during the post 1960s global naivety outbreak when some of the more hopelessly naïve claimed that everything is politics. However, we now know that almost nothing is politics and that that is politics should be eradicated before the infection spreads to otherwise normal people.

In the past, this was achieved by keeping politicians away from normal people, who could be left to get on with things while the politicians bickered amongst themselves and – occasionally – with the opposing parties in order to find out the most expensive way of making things worse. Now, though, through the media, and other such carriers of the political infection it seems that politicians are everywhere and multiplying at an alarming rate.

But, what makes it worse is that as the number of politicians increases so does the number of things that they believe are any of their business. There hardly, these days, exists any sphere of activity that has not got some politicians or others sniffing around it trying to find some way of infecting it with legislation that will create the ideal habitat for the breeding of yet more politicians.

Of course, we all take the usual precautions of hygienically disposing of election leaflets as soon as they come through the door, and of turning the TV off when party political broadcasts appear. Unfortunately, however, this is no longer enough as politics worms itself into more and more of our daily lives.

Some did hope, in the past, that the sheer incompetence of politicians would – ultimately – bring about their own downfall through some form of natural selection. But, such is the widespread nature of the political infection now, it has caused some evolutionary scientists to question the whole idea of survival of the fittest, developing a new theory of the survival of the incompetent, claiming that once a certain level of politics infects a society it becomes self-sustaining and almost impossible to eradicate.

However, we must never give up the fight, or one day – horror of horrors – we may see our own children or grandchildren themselves infected with this deadly and debilitating disease, thus bringing about the end of humanity as we know it.