Elevating and Entitling
In the old days of the Soviet Union, the political elite lived inordinately well, even while they exhorted the masses to produce and to be content with whatever came their way in recompense. Human beings not truly taking to living a life of constant personal sacrifice with little return for their hard work, naturally felt restrained to work less selflessly. Working professionals felt they should receive far more recompense for their educated efforts than the meagre wages they received, commensurate with those of street sweepers.Collective farms collapsed, and the Soviets had to import their foodstuffs from elsewhere to have sufficient unto the day. All the while that the glorious leaders in the Duma were expecting people to stifle their personal ambitions and continue to live lives of personal sacrifice for the entire community, they themselves somehow felt they should be exempt. And their love affair with expensive imported automobiles, and their fabulous dachas bore no resemblance to how the ordinary person lived in cramped quarters under Soviet rule.
Now that the days of Communism and a unified Soviet Socialist Republic are history, what has changed? Well, the Prime Minister, once the President, soon to be President again if he has anything to say about it, and he has, was once a member of the KGB. Oddly, or not, under his privileged tutelage, former KGB members and colleagues of Vladimir Putin, now own huge enterprises and control many state institutions, becoming vastly wealthy and living the good life.
Much as, for example, the elite of the Republican Guard in the Islamic Republic of Iran now effectively control much of the state apparatus, including the military-dominated nuclear program meant specifically for peaceful, civil means - never, heaven forfend the very thought, to produce enriched uranium for the purpose of acquiring nuclear-tipped rockets. They, the Republican Guard, have become immensely rich and powerful and it's well to remember, controlling.
But there is nothing particularly new in all of this; in failed states like Zimbabwe and North Korea and Myanmar while the people cower in fear and privation, the political elite live luxurious lives of plenty. It was ever thus. And as long as democracy and freedoms and recognition of human rights elude various countries of the world, the way remains open to such power abuse.
China, another case in point where like all authoritarian governments, a social and wealthy nobility has arisen. Comprised of government officials who have managed to manoeuvre themselves into positions of trust and power and wealth. China remains staunchly Communist, but with a clever leavening of capitalism thrown in for very good measure, whereby the country's entrepreneurial class is encouraged to produce and to manufacture and to conceptualize and to invent faster, cheaper methods of production to keep the country afloat on the sea of growing exports and national wealth.
This phenomenon has its political genesis in radical extremes; whether right-wing or left-wing. A more brutal and overt dictatorial climate appears to be common in right-wing societies, whereas in left-wing societies the climate varies somewhat toward a gentler thrust, tending toward social manipulation, convincing people that it remains in their best interests to trust their leaders for they have their best interests at heart.
A somewhat similar phenomenon can be seen in Pakistan and Afghanistan also, where the Secret Service and the military have vastly entitled themselves, particularly but by no means exclusively in Pakistan, absorbing to their private accounts vast sums of foreign investment and grants to enrich themselves at the expense of the populace. Corruption is endemic and and clearly profitable, while the great unwashed become ever more bitter and disillusioned.
Hush! Don't mention a word of this to anyone, but even in countries like Canada, free liberal democracies, where left-wing ideologies take fond root in support of the ordinary person living a modest lifestyle, convince their followers to trust them to battle on their behalf in Parliament. And where indeed, they make a great deal of noise in defence of the common man. All the while spending hugely out of the public trough for themselves.
Imagine the chagrin of a Canadian taxpayer believing he/she lives in the most open, opportunity- and aspiration-free country of the world, where politicians are to be trusted and respected, only to discover that the leader of the New Democratic Party, Canada's left-leaning party of the soberly sanctimonious and his wife, also a Member of Parliament, claim unreceipted annual expenses of $629,000 and $530,000 respectively, on top of their comfortable tax-free salaries.
Life can so frequently represent as bitterly disappointing, alas...
Labels: Canada, Corruption, World Crises
posted by Pieface @ Thursday, November 11, 2010
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