The Cult of Modern Politics

Lately I've been reading a little bit of political science. Not super recent political science - because most of that is noobish, nescient (non-alliterative) nonsense - but perceptive stuff: Joseph Schumpeter, Michael Oakeshott, &c. I also read, a few months ago, a paper by Richard Hofstadter The Paranoid Style In American Politics

http://karws.gso.uri.edu/jfk/conspiracy_theory/the_paranoid_mentality/the_paranoid_style.html

What have I synthesized from the aforementioned readings? That Oakeshott's claim, that over the last few centuries European rationalism, on account of its very flawed tenets concerning the nature of human knowledge-aquisistion and customs, has occasioned a fragmentation in the both the left and the right's view of political events over time - and that this alters the nature of the very process of governing, is absolutely true. I will explain why this is even scarier than Oakeshott lets on:

Since governing cannot be viewed by a rationalist as an organic process that grows, adapts, and mutates over time, it fragments - each of the film's frames is viewed individually, as a photograph. The process of governing becomes a series of reactions to crises, real or imagined. The two-party democratic system (we may here include Canada) has very well adapted itself to this conception. Every election campaign is run with the following formula:

"My opponent, X, has not/is not/will not adequately dealt/deal with crises y,z, &c. I will. Vote for me, or doom impends"

The crises, may of course be real: the present recession, the war in Afganistan, the war in Iraq. The problem, of course, lies in the fact that modern political institutions would be unable to function without these. I doubt very much that there will ever be a pax Democratica; democracy needs war, disease, economic failure, injustice, &c.

Unlike the ancient millenarian cults (Christian, Judaic, or whatever) of the ancient world, the cult of modern politics is not merely psychotic; it is destroying the world in order to create the very fear which enables its survival.