Politics and cynicism - The worst response to failed system

An overdue discussion about politics, politicians and how they are depicted by the conventional media and ever-evolving social media has opened.

Minister for Communications Pat Rabbitte has been in the vanguard arguing that a lot of commentary is too cynical, too selective, too hateful, too personalised and far too subjective. Mr Rabbitte has argued, and not without some justification, that the line between objective and fair engagement and personalised vitriol has become too blurred and is far too quickly crossed.

This discussion runs parallel to the debate about how private individuals can be protected from the excesses of anonymous and poisonous individuals using social media to bully piteously and how national governments can oversee what is essentially a global business.

It is difficult to admire but easier to understand why anger has become such a force, almost an overriding influence, in commentary. Neither is it hard to understand that anger achieves little other than to undermine politics, politicians and through them our democracy, which, despite everything and every assault that dilutes it, is still priceless.

This is not to defend the venal, often craven and shabby behaviour, at one time or another, of every single political party and nearly every politician in the State but to suggest that the cynicism this behaviour provokes is the least effective response to a failing, under-performing political system. Cynicism is, after all, the absence of hope, the anticipation of deceit, the expectation of failure and self-fulfilling negative predictions questioning motivations and possibilities. This is the very opposite of what politics should be, could be, might be — the art of the possible.

A cynical, angry response is too easy for our politicians to ignore but a persistent, informed and confident engagement about delivery on commitments, social justice, ambition and the kind of standards we want to be defined by would challenge our political system far, far more than any number of the Ballymagash tirades that pass for commentary.

It is probably true too that we cannot accuse our politicians of cynicism if we do not play our part by engaging in an informed and determined way on a range of issues rather than becoming very active on a single issue when faced with one personal crisis or another.

It is true too that there has been a very long-standing cynicism around politics. Indeed, apart from the occasional moment of flag-waving optimism, it is almost the defining characteristic of the relationship between the rulers and the ruled, the ruled and the rulers too. This disconnect has been entirely justified and in recent years exacerbated. The society we live in and the great challenges it, and especially its most vulnerable citizens, face on a daily basis silence all counter arguments.

Of course politicians, often fettered more by ambition than commitment to their constituents or ideals, must take the great share of the blame for this but we, who elect the same type of person time after time to represent us in Leinster House, make our contribution to the catastrophe too, so much so that cynicism is a two-way street in Irish public life. Will we ever have reason or the courage to rise above it? Or are we prepared to keep paying the obvious, crushing cost it imposes?