[This is about the UK electorate but could be applied equally well here. I hasten to add that we here at Currents, well-read as we are, are certainly not the People to whom the author refers.]]

www.dailytelegraph.com/opinion

The People are ignorant, stupid and usually wrong

By James Bartholomew

I ADMIT I am getting totally sick of it. We are only 10 days into the election and I cannot bear to put up with ludicrous, craven flattery any more.

Occasionally I venture on to a Radio 5 chat show and I find it is endemic. Other guests say creepy things like "People are not so stupid as to be taken in by Labour spin-doctoring" or "People want to hear about the real issues" and "People want the best for their communities, not just for themselves". On they go about how wise the People are and what penetrating insight they possess.

Politicians are forever fawning over them. It makes one cringe how they should abase themselves before beings far more ignorant than they themselves. It is flattery as servile as any gushed by courtiers in front of absolute monarchs. Louis XIV collected around himself a court that was so eager to exaggerate his virtues that they called this spendthrift military adventurer "the Sun King" and likened him to Apollo.

If only someone had taken him aside and said: "Look Louis, I think you may have gone a bit far this time. You are wasting money big-time and your vanity is getting to be a problem." But no, they encouraged him to build the massive Apollo fountain at Versailles as a testament to his affinity with the Olympian deity.

James I and Charles I were indulged in the belief that they were kings because God had appointed them. The vain illusion was not exactly healthy for Charles; the pretence that the People are clever is no good for them, either.

What really irritates is the super-Panglossian view of British history that ascribes every election result since the war to the supreme wisdom of the People. It is suggested that the election of the Attlee government in 1945 was a brilliantly forward-looking move. The later election of Margaret Thatcher is supposed to be another example of the people's wisdom ("Something had to be done and the People realised"). The rejection of Neil Kinnock in 1992 is meant to have been a remarkably clever call by the electorate, since he was not quite modern enough. And the landslide for Tony Blair is deemed the crowning and brilliantly correct judgment of the People. It is all tosh.

The 1945 result was the greatest single mistake made by Britain in the 20th century, condemning us to 50 years of under-achievement because of the economic burden and incompetence that was part and parcel of the welfare state.

The People would have been wise to choose Mrs Thatcher, but of course they did not. If the Left-wing vote had not been split between the Liberals and Labour, she would have lost. Her election was a fortunate accident of political history that the British people were by no means clever or wise enough to deserve.

Likewise they did not vote to keep out Kinnock in 1992. Again, John Major got the nod only because of the split Left-wing vote, and anyway, according to Mori, Mr Kinnock personally was better liked then than Mr Blair is now. As for the election of Mr Blair, insofar as the People really did want him - he had no majority among the electorate - they made precisely the kind of simple-minded mistake for which they should be notorious.

The People are gullible. They fall hook, line and sinker for the most meretricious of arguments. They were told by Mr Blair before the last election that he had no intention of increasing taxes and that he would transform public services. He proceeded to put through the biggest peacetime rise in taxes in our history, while leading the NHS, state education and crime-fighting to even worse states than they were before.

But what makes the gormlessness of the People truly awesome is that, having been so completely failed by Mr Blair, half of them think that Labour should be re-elected. "The people are not taken in by spin doctoring," people say. Oh yes, they are! They fall for it every time. Mr Blair is shown on television singing hymns with children. Commentators across Fleet Street call it nauseating, but it works. We know it works because Mr Blair has got the focus groups and they are obviously telling him it works. He keeps pulling these stunts and the People lap it up.

Most members of the public have no genuine understanding of the issues. Ask the man in the street if he agrees that the Tory policy on funded pensions would mean higher incomes for old people in the long term and he won't have a clue what you are talking about. The People have been badly educated in a failing state system, they are ignorant and they watch tripe television.

That is why they are such easy meat for the cynics in the Labour Party, who rightly reckon that, however incompetent and corrupt they might be, they can get away with it. All they have to do is list all the things they have done - however bureaucratic and useless - and all things they hope to do.

This act of "We have tried hard but we are not complacent and we will do more" works every time. That, and plenty of photo-calls with children and nurses, accompanied by alternate looks of troubled sincerity and gleaming cheerfulness.

When Caligula got to the northern shores of Gaul and ordered his troops to collect seashells, calling them "the spoils of his conquered ocean", nobody dared go up to him and said: "Sorry, Cal, old chap, but you have gone stark, staring bonkers. Why don't you bunk off to Capri and have a really long holiday."

But this time - since there is no risk that I will immediately be executed - I dare say it: the People never had much sense and what little they had seems to be slipping away. The People are generally stupid and wrong. Despite all this, I suppose I am still a democrat. But it is hard. It is very hard.

-- Anonymous, May 16, 2001

Answers

..."in the modern Vulcan language, the word for 'idiot' is derived directly from an older compound word that means 'one who fails to participate in civil affairs.' Ninety-eight percent of all Vulcans have held some sort of public office by the time they are two hundred.

--From Spock's World

A novel by Diane Duane

Pocket Books, a division of Simon & Schuster Inc.

ISBN: 0-671-66773-4

-- Anonymous, May 17, 2001