The politician in the digital age: between insult and disqualification

                  

Doug Ford drops his new single "Bunch of Yahoos (Queen's Park)"

 The politician in the digital age: between insult and disqualification

x Marcos Roitman Rosenmann: Scandals, embezzlement, abuse of power, tortuous use of justice, bribery, gender violence, and contempt for fellow citizens

The forms on which the field of politics was built is reoriented towards the market of the digital world. The so-called society of the spectacle spreads and adheres to new forms of communication. Twitter, Instagram, Facebook are the means to transmit messages, most of the time insults and threats. Adjectives fall short. In the political arena, their representatives are digitized. They communicate via digital platforms, being prisoners of the networks. More than voters, they have real-time followers who are waiting for their influencer's comments.

Presidents of government, deputies, senators, mayors, do not rest. Day or night, the time is not relevant, they send their Twitter, commenting on the human and the divine. No limits or rules, anything goes. From building fake news to defamation. One and the other exalt themselves in scuffles without borders. Accustomed to these digital behaviors, debates in institutions follow the same path. They yell, gesticulate, boo, clap, kick, interrupt, cut sleeves, provoke to the point of exhaustion.

Parliaments, venues reserved for the production of laws, mutate in circus settings. A cabin where the adversary is disqualified and caricatured. Whatever the political party, its representatives, when they speak, move away from the legislative task. The presence of the media in the hemicycle turns the deputies into actors. The live transmission adds the finishing touch to the inspection work of the Chamber. Your Lordships are aware of the importance of your profile. They know that their followers rate them based on the level of insults. In such a way that they do not seek to explain, understand or justify the decisions that affect citizens. The plenaries have been called rough sessions. They focus their attention on taking out dirty laundry. They know that the press will pick up on those moments and journalists, of any color, take great pains to highlight the gaffe, the most vile insult or the best constructed hoax.

 

Examples abound. The images are transmitted live and later rescued in social gatherings, news, and so on. The result ends up being a rejection and a disaffection towards politics. The sign of tiredness and boredom of the citizens takes the form of a phrase that is repeated: they are all the same. And what was a noble activity becomes a dung heap where politicians coexist. It is sad to observe parliamentary sessions with deputies and senators reading the press, playing games on their tablets or paying attention to their mobile phones.

It is not about romanticizing parliament or degrading its parliamentarians. Not all politicians are the same. Ideological differences, morals, the principles on which public office is exercised is a point of reference. But the pedagogical role, forging political citizenship, has been lost. Their Lordships are more attentive to comments on networks than to provide the militancy with arguments for debate. The responsibility, the ethical sense, the dignity, are blurred before the forced vote, the lack of personal autonomy, and the null relationship between the program and its government action.

                                                                              “What freedom are we to find when our restless minds are enslaved under the chains of human trafficking? What is this language we speak of when we talk about the law, since the human right clause is ignored and flawed? Whom is it protecting because here we are protesting? Human (CHILDREN) trafficking, I say, has made enough money for the day.” ― Mitta Xinindlu

                                                                              We know that much of the parliamentary activity is not known. From working in committees to presenting motions, non-bills, supervising budgets, and so on. But all this is ignored until it disappears. The only thing that is observed is the mediocrity that sinks politics and discredits those who exercise it. It seems that they have been determined to make political activity a job only suitable for unscrupulous people, whose objective is to enjoy power and its honey. They give interviews to the pink press, show their homes, their culinary tastes, pose in their best clothes or brag about their resumes and being ministers in their early thirties. They are the symbol of success and empowerment.

However, for those who see in political action a social commitment to their time and society, it is a handicap, as well as arousing rejection. Then the crisis of militancy and the bad press are not explained. The result is demobilization, disaffection that ends up legitimizing anti-democratic discourses, where enlightened, businessmen, military and religious fundamentalists prevail, adding more and more followers who take advantage of the party's infrastructure to rise to power under the need to clean up the country of politicians.

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Scandals, embezzlement, abuse of power, tortuous use of justice, undue enrichment, bribery, gender violence and an amplified contempt for their fellow citizens in the era of digital capitalism, shakes politicians. Personal criticism and disqualification, replaces the slow debate and ideas. Recovering the educational and pedagogical value is the responsibility of those who act in the political sphere. Exemplary, non-monastic lives. Commanding by obeying seems to be the democratic option to recover the dignity of the political task, will it be possible?

The Day