Serving the people, then; not serving themselves OF the people
I've been thinking, today. In particular, about the assassination attempt on #robertfico:
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attempted_assassination_of_Robert_Fico | Wikipedia on the assassination attempt of #robertfico
I think I saw a story in one of the newspapers the other day which described the bemusement of the neighbours of the man who attempted the #assassination: thankfully, of course, he didn't succeed. It also seems clear, by most accounts, that the man in question — a poet and writer — had conflicting worldviews that led him from political pillar to post. Maybe an outcome of a world increasingly beyond comprehension, also.
It goes without saying, but often needs to be repeated when often it never is. All life is treasurable: it just is. There is also no such thing as irrational — just that which we still do not properly understand. (Since I came across, more profoundly, this very same idea during my #internationalcriminaljustice MA at #liverpooljohnmooresuniversity in 2017, I've never been been able to easily accept that when a judiciary least understands the reasons for a crime, most likely it is to throw away the key ... for it's our sacred role surely in such contexts to make the allegedly irrational as comprehended as possible quite before we act, rather than choose to throw our well-paid hands up in the air and just steam ahead with punishment.)
So.
Here, IMHO, we have two challenges: one is the hierarchy of language. The other is the need for democracy's representatives to formally, deeply, comprehend that with their own opinions their job is to mediate the interests of the state as the citizens feel it should be. Not use the state as an extension of their personal prejudices. Serving the people, then; not serving themselves of the people.
It's a really careful and challenging balancing-act, this: this thing which #peterlevine calls #gooddemocracy:
• https://peterlevine.ws/?p=6359
In respect of the need for someone like #fico to respect his milieu, and citizen sensibilities, in a union which is #europe, not just #slovakia, he and people like him should be far more sensitive to the purposefully longitudinal impact of #putin's #russia on the #european project than they would appear to be:
• https://www.sverige2.earth/research | #nofutureukraines / #buildingtheFEARlessCITIZEN | hosted at https://www.sverige2.earth
No person is an island, and #fico knew full well what he was proposing when he said no munitions would go from #slovakia to #ukraine. He wasn't talking about weapons, either: he was talking about weaponising his brand of political activity.
The “mild-mannered” man who tried to kill #fico — and in so doing was seen as suddenly becoming a radical — wasn't, then, again IMHO, the person who first shifted the goalposts so aggressively. What he attempted was totally wrong and counterproductive, yes: but the killing-field was shaped recently, wantonly, knowingly, by #fico himself. In perhaps as equally an apparently, stealthily mild-mannered way.
There's another thing here, too, before I end this morning's post: the hierarchy of language I already alluded to above. Isn't it time we stopped using the term "assassination" altogether, when referring exclusively to the murder of a political leader or related? In times of kings & queens and the regal oppression of serfdoms it seemed appropriate — or at least relevant — to distinguish between the #murderer of a commoner and the #assassin of someone at the top of the tree. But isn't part of the problem we have nowadays precisely the fact that we do still make this distinction, even as some of us — maybe the majority — yearn actively for a return to true #democracy?
That is, exactly #peterlevine's kind ... exactly this.
Further reading:
• https://gb2earth.com/primacy | why we need a different #it-#tech that is #humanintuition-friendly
• https://gb2earth.com/war/introduction | a #tech-enabled #humanintuition on the #battlefieldofeverywhere
• https://gb2earth.com/love | using our experiences of #extreme #uncertainty in one field to inform our #intuitive capabilities in #geopolitics