There are speakers, presenting, around the world, the notion that there is a revolution brewing, in all democratic countries. I suspect that they are seeing one side of the great surge of uncertainty and disillusionment that exists now in most countries that profess to be a ‘free’ western style government.
The big names doing this circuit are mostly right biased pontificators, proclaiming the virtues of nationalism, and tariff protected capitalism.
They may or may not be reacting to the real undercurrent of dissatisfaction that ordinary citizens of these western democracies are experiencing, where the benefits they expect and desire are being pushed relentlessly away from their reach.
The advent of the ‘great disrupter’ in the USA, has alerted not only the citizens of that country, of the danger of complacency, and being negligent of their democratic responsibility. The whole western world has realised that their freedom is a tenuous right that must be actively and zealously preserved by direct involvement.
At all times the forces that would usurp the individual rights of citizens, are sniping at the edges of the freedoms that were hard fought for, and so easily lost.
The devils are from both the right and the left.
The right are the national forces of the wealthy and powerful who believe their prosperity is symbolic of the health of the nation.
The left are the disenfranchised who have only belligerence and violence to express their malevolence to the system oppressing them.
Not so obvious is the alternative revolution. The coalescence of the ordinary citizen into a cohesive force that passes all issues through a filter of tolerance is idealist. The realisation that individuals can be different within a social order that is equally available to those who can contribute without denying others their right to also do the same, is plausible.
Although the revolution of the centre is by definition the most potentially powerful, representing the greater number of individuals, it is also the more difficult to define.
It is problematic to gather followers for a movement that is described by what it does not stand for.
There are immediately obvious obstacles to the confederation of the centre which are manifest in the political systems existing in each particular constituency and in the control of the media that exists in all its forms. It is in these areas that the revolution needs to be achieved. Embedded in our present flawed methods of distributing information and expressing opinions, is commercially influenced treatment of information and even government control of publicly financed media.
The enemy of democracy is autocracy and political polarisation, which is so much written into the DNA of politicians and bureaucrats. Politicians should represent their constituents not their party.
Public policy needs to be analysed by a non governmental authority who should present, in a public forum, an impartial assessment of its appropriateness and impact on the status quo; before being presented to a parliament for voting on and for the constituents to appreciate (understand).
This idea alone is more of a revolution than what has happened throughout history and will be a continual ‘work in progress’. It may not be the classic definition of a revolution but it represents something more challenging to implement and even more problematic to convince the populace to endorse.
A party of independents is the natural first step in what may be just ‘too optimistic’ to hope for.
It will be a start and may lead to somewhere as yet conceivable.
See: NoneOfTheAbove4AU