“See how your income would change with the Renua Ireland flat-tax tax calculator,” my local Renua candidate tweeted today. That’s how Renua is planning on winning votes – literally: click a button and see how many quid you’ll save.
I went to a Dublin civil society group meeting recenty where, among other things, the art of talking to canvassers was discussed. “They’re politicians,” one of the organisers said, “so you can’t talk ethics with them. You have to make financial sense.”
It stayed with me, that idea of politicians as cold-hearted sales people with euro signs in their eyes. Not because I don’t think there’s a smoking gun – but because I found the attitude disheartening. There it was, right at the heart of one of Ireland’s major campaigning bodies: the disillusion.
I don’t mean to say that you get what you deserve. But as much as I take issue with idea that we can think ourselves happy in a flash, I think that there’s a lot to be said for the power of expectation.
Parents have all heard it: don’t tell a child that they’re bold; explain how a specific action is wrong. We must describe kids in positive ways as often as we can, because our perception and expectations of them will make up their sense of self. If they hear often enough that they are bad, pretty soon they will be.
There’s a narrative about politics as corrupt bullshit, about politicians as greedy, power-hungry liars. Then they turn up on our doorstep, and they’re asked: “What’s in it for me?”
I wonder what kind of politicians this rhetoric attracts. I wonder what happens to those deeply devoted to democracy. We can talk about a political class void of ethical concerns, but if we want to talk ethics, we need to put it on the agenda. If we want to live in a world where politics is about more than a transaction of vote for personal gain, we have to start talking about that world when the politicians come knocking on our doors. If we play the neoliberal game and start talking individualism and financial gain the minute they ask us to vote for them, all we’ll get is a flat-tax tax calculator.
“Real change, not spare change,” goes the poster slogan of local AAA candidate, Michael O’Brien. I hated it when I first saw it, found it over-simplistic and banal. The closer to election day it gets, the more profound it seems.
