Friday, October 31, 2014

The Recalcitrant Minority

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4 comments:

Anonymous said...

The problem is that people expect their MP to act like some feudal lord. X says the MP has allowed Y to have a permit for this so i want one too etc etc. MPs are there to represent their constituents not have them build their retaining wall. Too many of the citizens are complicit in this little arrangement and just think for themselves. More power on local works and improvements should be done at local council level. An an example the government should own responsibility for maintaining the main road but as soon as it goes to the town, local government should have plans to ensure local works are done, but subject to budgetary limits established by the central government. By allocating resources to each constituency and some power over how it's exercised, people will have to learn to co-operate and prioritise what needs to be done.

The writer makes many good points.

November 1, 2014 at 11:39 AM
Anonymous said...

We pretty much saw this behavior under UWP leadership where people who never work construction was awarded contract and they in turn employ the young people and pay them low wage or don't pay them at all, I am happy that inspite of uwp loyalist trying to derail what has been good governance can't see good legislation, But things cannot happen the way it has been. I am in full support of the writer.

November 2, 2014 at 3:13 PM
Anonymous said...

John,
Your quote of Lippman complete ignores the context from which it was issued: the many newspaper articles he wrote to serve as primers for career politicians to reach their goals of selling their services to oligarchs while usurping the collective power of the common citizen (ensuring the masses stayed inchoate), under the guise of a democracy (in name alone).

Very little had changed in the American model (there is no Caribbean model; we have monkey see - monkey do politics) till it could no longer be sustained through the manufactured consent (a result of propaganda and subliminal suggestopedia) in the form of a monolithic public opinion. These days, control of the masses is accomplished through the use of social media to break up the monolith of public opinion into smaller, more manageable cross-sections of passive citizens who are ardently obsessed by single issues; they are made to fight each other for attention and servicing by government (the squeaky wheel syndrome), who can always claim that crises beyond their control prevent them from being able to meet the demands of every citizen (note that the demands of those who underwrite their election campaigns always come first - even if they are never spoken of).

One more point: try to define what you term democracy. I am willing to bet that what you really mean is a series of elections (bought by a prescribed ration of rum and chicken, in the Caribbean; elctronic machine vote-rigging in the US), carefully stage-managed by complicit parties having the same paymasters.

Real democracy has one goal - common aims, achieved by common action, for the common good! Thus, your article can be summed up as an irrelevant personal anecdote of vanity!


November 2, 2014 at 4:07 PM
Anonymous said...

John,

I could not in good conscience offer criticism of your "F" grade article without providing you with remedial reading/viewing (reward for your effort), so that you can come to grips with the political reality of the day.

Visit the link below to get you on your way (copy the entire link, as is, and paste it into your browser):

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=832&Itemid=74&jumival=1250

November 2, 2014 at 4:18 PM

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