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Granted. Everything they say automatically becomes fact.
Why is it that I think someone actually asked this of a monkey’s paw and got your version granted? I hate my timeline.
Granted. You find out that your most hated politician was telling the truth all along and everything you believed your whole life was a lie.
I read “Mein Kampf.” Hitler said something in it that really stuck with me. Basically: The people do not want democracy. They don’t feel qualified. If you tell them they need to be the ones to chart the course for the country, they’ll get uncomfortable, because they don’t feel they have a good grasp of the issues and they have enough on their plate with their daily lives.
What they want is for someone to say: I understand the issues, I know exactly what to do, I’m strong enough to keep you safe and solve the problems. Don’t worry about it. I can take care of it if you just put me in charge. I’ll get rid of our anxieties about the world and make things good and everything will be fine. That’s the type of leader and government they gravitate to, not someone who’ll go into all the details or tell them that they get to make the decisions.
I do not agree with his prescription for what makes good government (hopefully goes without saying), but his grasp of how people operate, I think was spot-on.
I want to hate this cuz it’s a REAL fear, but… It could make me a better person. Sooooo…
“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. The planet, from a human perspective, will die within most of your lifetimes. I’m just here killing time. I have no real ability to prevent the looting of your futures. The people who are profiting are so avaricious and stunted that they’re not really even getting any enjoyment from the whole process. It’s purely the results of their own pathology, and our system malfunctioned and put them in charge because it was never designed on purpose. It all just happened that way, and so we’re all fucked.” A small murmur went through the pin-drop silent press pool at the expletive.
“Me too,” he continued blankly, as the silence returned. “I’m actually trying to help, but the system makes it impossible for me to produce the level of change that’s required. All I’m doing is producing angst and anxiety for myself and my family. I’m simply outnumbered by, basically, millions of malfunctioning AI models in suits trying to maximize a goal number even if it destroys us all. I did my best. I tried, but I’m just as much hampered by my own personal human limits as any of you are. The system is immensely powerful, easily capable of rejecting and replacing anyone who tries to produce genuine change. Each of us in government must either work to strengthen it and be rewarded, or reject it and be cast out, or resign ourselves to working for change within its parameters and therefore accomplishing nothing of lasting value with our lives.”
“I’m happy to take any questions. We’ve got plenty of time today, as ironic as that is to say. Anyone …? Yes, Hodges? NBC?”
Dang, you know you’re a good writer when you can humanize politicians
I’d say those politicians are as fictional as the ones in The West Wing. The real ones would be more cynical and doing it all for profit.
I think there’s a lot of variation. I know people who have worked in politics who say the people they worked on behalf of were genuinely good people who got into it because it’s a way to produce positive change in the world. I also know other people who have worked in politics who said the people they worked on behalf of were the biggest POSes on a personal level that they’d ever encountered, just absolutely like the worst people in the world, 10 times worse than you think, that made their skin crawl to even have to interact with them.
Whether the guy from my little story is 30% of the people in government or more like 1%, or 0.1%, I think people of good faith can disagree about.
Granted. Everything is now extraordinarily boring and complicated, with every time someone opens their mouth, a long, dry, analytical summary of various problems and different theoretical solutions is given, with a long, nuanced list of potential pros and cons for each, presented in a realistic way where it is made apparent that not everyone can be made happy.
With no drama anymore, active voting percentage drops to the low double-digits for a period. Eventually populism disappears and only policy wonks are left running, and without obstructionism, they begin to actually try new things and solve some problems.
… I think I did this wrong.
That was a fun ride! Thanks, kind stranger.
Granted. It turns out a lot of politicians were so obviously lying about their opinions that the people voting for them had figured out their real opinions. The lie only existed to give the voters justification in casual conversation. In fact, telling the truth makes the politician MORE powerful because of an idea of “sticking it to power”.
This does not lead to truth in politics, because newsreaders are not politicians. They can simply spout propaganda on behalf of the politicians they support, and the politicians can say the technically true “I support this newscaster” statement to make the people believe the lies all over again.
What it does lead to is a lot of politicians putting on a facade of goodness to reveal their selfish intentions. Much of their facade involved voting for policies that make the world a better place, and that was why you supported them yourself. With the facade gone, they see no point in voting for anything but their own selfish interests.
With no politicians you can trust anymore, you vote for the only person on the ballot who still claims to have your interests in mind. If they’re on the ballot sheet, you must be able to take them at their word, right? Politicians can’t lie anymore, right?
Trump was not a politician.
That was fucking chilling and I love it!
Thank you.
There would be a calculated strategy of saying whatever is on your mind at all times, leaving it hard to separate the wheat from the chaff.
A gish gallop of nonsense, and their supporters would love them all the more for it.
The rest of us would look to the ‘paragons’ and wonder why they’re so quiet all the time. They’d be pilloried for things they never said.
I… This one hit a bit too hard for me today.
Wish granted. Because the personal is political, in some sense everyone is a politician, so it affects everyone. With no one left standing that has any shred of electability, we delegate the role of politician to various LLM chatbots. They run everything into the ground in fairly short order, but on the bright side hijinks aplenty ensue and it’s pretty amusing to watch.
If I gotta go out because of governmental malfeasance, let it be with a g-d smile!
That would be fun to watch
It would actually just be depressing, I think.
People are tribal. They would still follow their favourite politician, even though they blatantly said how they feel about their constituents. People would justify it by saying the politician was speaking metaphorically, or that’s actually what they believe now. They would use religion to justify the politician’s remarks, and slowly change their own beliefs to fit with the tribe’s.
So… no change.
