It’s difficult to believe that pure money motive, or lust for power & being feared drives someone to join realpolitik, mind you, & not referring to the drives (or circumstances) which make a politician successful, but those which make a man or a woman choose politics as a career, & later, take such career decisions as seeking a party ticket to contest, or changing their party, or forming a new party.
However, when we look at samples, rather than census, we often come to despair. Take, for instance the political themed movies. You surely get the hint at the latest you watched, the sagas of waste.
These are case analysis by the layman (non-political-scientist).
As a recurring theme, we see, that the most idealist vanish from the scene fastest. Either suffer career suicides, or if in the land on gun rule, actually cease to exist.
Those who act only for themselves, (& “themselves” in a very narrow sense), win. Thrive.
Why is that? Maybe the more abstract the ideas, weaker the conviction?
Or more precisely, the closer one’s political will to one’s on self-interest, the more energy & desperation employed.
Self-preservation is the essence of politics.
Survival of the selfish
To tame the “Rulers”
If today, you were to join politics, for a very substantial reason, what would that reason be?
Let’s try to understand the psychology of the guys, who, today, join the politics of our nation, to participate in GOVERNING US. Whatever we are today, as a society or culture, we are, definitely, RULED by those who we CHOOSE.
We do elect persons to make our parliament. We expect them to behave in a certain way (decidedly corrupt. We completely accept that there is non-propriety, in everyone & every viable association within the legislature, & the executive).
However, politicians are NOT predictable.
Even if we expect the politician to be selfish,
still, shall we not expect him/her to concern themselves with our interest?
After all, the position has been given to him/ her by us,a very large no. of us.
Do we demand too much?
& suppose that an individual does take up politics with the vision to immune oneself from any punitive action, opening up avenues to endless wealth, accumulated through forgery, treachery, & theft of every kind.
Yet, we find that they stumble, blunder, are impulsive, cry foul, & simply cry, & behave in every way that every other individual does.
If we assume that half the people who are in the legislature are opportunists who got lucky, then at least half of them are just like you & me.
Either they had started at the age of 22 with boiling blood & super-ambitions - for their dying craftsmanship of weavery , or saving their tribal grounds from encroachment or against unfairness against medical PG students…;
or at middle age, had bitterly realized that they had to join what they most hated, to make any real difference.
The first half can only be restrained, & hopefully brought to trial only if the latter half wake up, & realize how far they are, from what they set out to achieve. They need to realize the power of their dreams. Maybe they also need to realize the value of their peers’ dreams, so irrelevant to them…