The need for political correctness is the tolerated, celebrated suppression of honesty. It conflicts with the goal of transparency. Yet today’s world seems to drift toward more political correctness, rhetoric and oratorical populism.
It is as if people have lost faith in their past heroes in the boom years and cry out for new direction only to find a gaggle of game show hosts, used car salesmen and worse, politicians, chasing their dollars, votes and adoration. This is dangerous because humans are generally weak minded and seek to be led. This encourages those who wish to lead, including those who are driven by greed, glory and ambition which may be independent of the causes of the people they seek to lead.
It is in this sweltering climate of famine, inequality and oppression that this species has elected some of our worst madmen to replace our erstwhile oppressors. Those fed us lies of prosperity through the application of credit, rising housing prices, ever falling interest rates and a persistent sense of entitlement. What will the new generation sell us? It almost seems that we cannot survive without some form of oppression.
What could Washington sell Americans still drunk on the inevitability of the success of the American Way? More QE? More credit? Rising house prices? More useful jobs certainly wouldn’t hurt.
What might Beijing sell a billion witnesses to the failure of Western Capitalism, the apparent triumph of the Chinese model, unbridled greed in the coastal cities and an inequality of wealth unmatched in the Western Democracies? Affordable housing? Lower food inflation? Greater equality? Within? Without?
And what could European leaders sell their collection of people’s shoehorned into union by a broken currency union? Closer union? Fracture? Fission?