have politicians always been this inept?

[NosPortatArma]

hi, im 21, i obviously have relatively few years of experience observing politics. i am watching tv now about the current swedish government IT crisis, and it made me think about how utterly inept our politicians are, on both sides. not just regarding the IT crisis, but i general, and not just sweden but the whole west. it seems that no matter the task, politicians are totally clueless in solving them.

euro crisis, migrant crisis... handled as poorly as could be. EU is falling apart, eu politicians clueless.

look at uk post brexit, a total mess, no one knows what they are doing. cons thought they could win the referendum but failed, then they gambled with election and failed again. and now conservatives are so bad that corbyn labor is a serious contender.

and the usa, christ, the fact that trump got elected shows how worthless the established part elites are, but look at the gop now, cant get anything done, look at the mess in the white house, an unprecented historical failure and embarassment.

the point here is not to argue what policy is best, the point is that politicians cant seems to deal with problems regardless of the policy they choose. i wonder if politicians have always been this UTTERLY worthless?

Moved from the Mudpit due to its more general nature. ~Iskar

[Condottiere 40K]

Politicians are a reflection of their electorate.

[NosPortatArma]

Politicians are a reflection of their electorate.

so, has the electorate always been this bad?

[Condottiere 40K]

Yes.

You need interested, capable and courageous individuals to tell the truth to the electorates, and you need an interested, educated and informed electorate to choose him to represent and govern them.

[Pathfinder]

Peace in our time!

Have you ever met a politician? How about a politician in training? Unfortunately I have, in school and at university, and I wish 'inept' was the worst thing I could say about any of them. Bear in mind that to 'start' you have to start young - ie. straight out of school if not sooner, so their reasonings are those of teenagers. On the 'Right' they're brainless man-children too stupid to make money so they go into politics. On the 'Left' they're merciless, egoist status-climbers and any principles they might have had are sacrificed in a matter of years.

With very few exceptions we have always voted for the worst human beings - because politics makes you a politician. And it's the few smart ones you need to be scared most of.

[hellheaven1987]

i wonder if politicians have always been this UTTERLY worthless?

They are not much different than their fellow citizens.

[the_mango55]

I can't speak to other countries, but the GOP has made themselves the party of obstruction. They haven't had any concrete policy goals over the past 8 years besides "don't let Obama get anything done"

This has led to hilarious things like Mitch McConnell filibustering (blocking something from being voted on) his own bill and blaming Obama for the unintended consequences of a law that Obama vetoed (tried to stop).

The consequences of having a party that's united mainly by obstructionism is that when you actually gain power the thing that united you is gone, and now you are left with a party that has no clear goal and is filled with ideologies that don't mesh, making it difficult to actually do anything.

[Cyclops]

In the lead up to WWI politicians in many countries were as "inept" as present day politicians, in pandering to their electorates and financial masters rather than dealing with realities on the ground. There was as much ill will and deliberate self-serving dishonesty in France and Germany in 1911 as in the US and Russia these days.

In the lead up to the US civil war politicians had their craniums so far up their own backsides they kicked off a war that plunged half the country into poverty for at least half a century and the winners failed to protect the freed slaves that justified much of the destruction they inflicted.

Sparta started the Second Peloponnesian War without the means to finish it and had to resort to receiving Persian help, and Athens began by winning so hard they brainfarted their army and fleet to almost complete destruction by the end (just like in the first Peloponnesian war). I mean Athens. Those guys had geniuses coming out of their Stoas. "Hmm we have an unlosable situation, you know what lets send our best forces to Sicily...oh and send the general who lost at Mantinaea, but also divide the command. How smart are we?"

[Condottiere 40K]

The Spartans needed an Engineering Corps, and the Athenians needed checks and balances on their checks and balances.

[hellheaven1987]

Sparta started the Second Peloponnesian War without the means to finish it and had to resort to receiving Persian help, and Athens began by winning so hard they brainfarted their army and fleet to almost complete destruction by the end (just like in the first Peloponnesian war). I mean Athens. Those guys had geniuses coming out of their Stoas. "Hmm we have an unlosable situation, you know what lets send our best forces to Sicily...oh and send the general who lost at Mantinaea, but also divide the command. How smart are we?"

I think we all forget before Sicily Athenian military actually "defeated" the best of Sparta in a land battle, leaded by a populist politician that knew no military. We also forget that the final decision of Sicily campaign was made by Athenian public, not some random Athenian politicians.

[Heathen Hammer]

We are living at interesting times, where we are going to witness the fall of the current political establishment and globalist super-structure behind it. We can't save our governments from collapsing, but we might as well make sure that however that happens, the outcome will be in our nation's favor.

[bigdaddy1204]

If one looks at the Angeloi dynasty that ruled the Byzantine Empire from 1185 to 1204, it is difficult to imagine how their leadership could have been any worse. They literally destroyed their own civilisation through incompetence and stupidity.

[Cyclops]

I think we all forget before Sicily Athenian military actually "defeated" the best of Sparta in a land battle, leaded by a populist politician that knew no military.

Mantinea was a crashing defeat for Athens and Argos, although a good idea hatched by Alcibiades. Or are you referring to Sphacteria? That was a naval blockade finally resolved by skirmishing forces harassing starving isolated Spartans. Yes it did cause a sensation but it wasn't strictly speaking a "land battle". I would not say "Cleon and Demosthenes knew no military", Cleon was one of the aristoi and had a typical upper class Athenian education which included public service and probably military service in the First Peloponnesian war. This was an era when there were almost no military professionals: Sparta's militarised lifestyle was more vocational than professional, and for the rest it was part of their citizen service.

We also forget that the final decision of Sicily campaign was made by Athenian public, not some random Athenian politicians.

The Athenian public were the politicians: it was a radical democracy and they often chose to follow the demagogues over the elitists like Alcibiades and other admirers of Socrates. The leaders chose to pursue more and more radical goals, throwing away immense advantages in insane gambles first in Egypt and then in Sicily. Even Alcibiades schemes were pretty radical (Mantinea and Sicily were both heavy defeats), and he was definitely not a demagogue. Politicians and leaders in Fifth century Athens tried to outbid one another with their wild schemes. Occasionally a wise leader like Pericles held sway, but the wisdom he counselled perished with his last breath.

If one looks at the Angeloi dynasty that ruled the Byzantine Empire from 1185 to 1204, it is difficult to imagine how their leadership could have been any worse. They literally destroyed their own civilisation through incompetence and stupidity.

They had their area of expertise and focussed on that. They did inherit a misaligned system from the Komnenoi who for all their courage on the battlefield made some catastrophic administrative decisions that doomed the empire as surely as the Angeloi did by letting the Crusaders in.

I would say the failure of the state to rally around a strong leader after the death of Basil II meant factions in the capital frittered away the immense standing of the Empire at that time by focussing on court intrigue. Its a bit of a stereotype to accuse "Byzantines" of being shifty scheming and dishonest but in this case I believe it is what caused the decline. The actions of the Anatolian military families (beginning with the Dukas, then the Komnenoi Angeloi etc) in usurping the throne was probably motivated by a genuine concern for the multiple threats to the frontiers that successive elderly empresses and their revolving door husbands seemed completely oblivious to.

Its hard to blame Basil II for the collapse of the empire, he could not have foreseen the threats that evolved after his death, but his successors seemed blind to what was happening under their very noses. Solutions were sought but they tended to be very narrow ("lets focus on reducing expenditure by disbanding the Akritae, and ignore the growth of the Dynatoi and changing foreign threats" "no no no we need to aggressively expel the Turks without first rallying all the elements of the state into a cohesive whole" "wrong, invite in the franks, then build an army and win all the battles while handing the Venetians a trade advantage that will impoverish the state-finance is for NERDS!").

Sad.

[Condottiere 40K]

I ascribe Athenian democracy after Pericles to dick politics.

In that era of warfare, all things being equal, the side that doesn't run tends to win.

[antaeus]

Politics has always been the bastion of alpha personalities and borderline sociopaths who are operating just above their level of competence.

The only difference between now and before is that we now have a greater ability to see what they get up to.