Should I vote for Boris?

Lol

No, lie.

It’s never too late to rule your own destiny.

I don’t like the idea of giving-up self-control to bureaucrats.

I think Boris has proven that he is at least a wholehearted Englishman. He is doing his best to live up to his idol Winston Churchill whose 2014 or so biography he wrote in battling against totalitarian Germans. I am impressed with how far he has come as such a pure … hobbit of sorts.

Listening to him talk, I feel him to be far more honest and genuine than almost any other PM I can remember.

So then what do you do? How do you effect change if you don’t get involved or vote? The moment I started thinking and talking about politics, I got involved, as doing otherwise would be a waste of my time and effort used, if I stopped at just thinking and talking about it… and that was an indicator, to me, that I wanted to get involved.

I’ve been a bureaucrat in my day job, so nothing new for me, but I also think that Maia should stand in the next Local/General elections. :smiley:

Not sure about that last bit!

I do Philosophy. What’s the point of leading and politics, if you don’t know the way?

You say that now… but you never know :slight_smile:

:smiley: True, but isn’t that what Advisers are for? but they don’t always give valued/good-judgmented advise, so perhaps they, in turn, are being misinformed? so a question of hiring better-advised Advisers?

Do you advise the Advisers?

I thought that was your job.

“Listening to him talk, I feel him to be far more honest and genuine than almost any other PM I can remember.”

I think he has a clear set of priorities and it never occurs to him to lose sight of them. British standards simply compel him to disinterestedly look down on Jucker and such mainland folk in as far as they would have any pretences to govern English affairs. It is absurd, he gets that and he is moreover not bothered by it because he feels neither surprise nor sympathy. A very normal, sane man in fact, which is apparently something the English still produce.

You do? that’s kind :smiley: …we all play our part and do what we can… for the outcome we are after, but some demographics think they know better, so better to place energies elsewhere where advice is listened to and acted on… that’s my preference anyway… the result of which, is effecting change, and in politics… no good deed goes unpunished, which simply means in Political terms that you’ll be expected to do more/get more involved, the more you do and are successful at doing it.

Creatives and Politics is not a heady mix, but we all work to make it work, but it’s not been quick-enough for my tastes, but we none-the-less persevere if we believe in something and are passionate-enough about that cause. My family are from a political background, so I knew it would only be a matter of time…

Like all politicians, he is a liar. But his lies are honest lies, in the sense that no one actually believes them, and both they, and he, know it. Corbyn and his ilk tell lies that they still expect people to believe, and that is their ultimate arrogance. That why I think I trust Boris, because I don’t, if that makes sense.

Thats right. He is a bad liar. Thats what I trust about Trump too.

Is that what it’s come to?

The act of no longer bothering to put on an act to get you to believe in them is at least in itself believable?

The integrity of not expecting you to believe they have integrity?

What is this postmodern nightmare?

Surely it’s better if politicians like Corbyn are at least still trying? How can it be arrogant to actually give a shit and hope the electorate lets you try your best even though it will inevitably fall short of ideal.

Politicians not even trying anymore is just the same as “here’s some lip service, we’re gonna carry on doing whatever the hell we want anyway, your vote means nothing”.
Surely that is the highest arrogance!
This is what you’ll get from Boris, and if that’s what people want then I guess we might as well just bend over and let them fuck us with the sole consolation of being able to have a laugh at them while they do it.

By the way, Brexit will never happen. It’s literally meaningless political filler at great tax payer cost, to avoid having to address actual problems. And anyone who has bought into it, as if it meant anything, clearly does believe these “honest lies” after all. I wish I could be an anti-democrat, based on how ridiculous electorate opinions are and how ridiculous it makes politicians act to win them over, but then I would be in favour of giving up my own 0.000003% of the vote for 0% as well.

In a world of lies, we have to fall back on intuition. Boris comes across as a person with the best of intentions, but Corbyn just sounds like a humourless ideologue.

I suspect you’re right that true Brexit will never happen, but not for the reasons you say. Rather, because the powers that be will never let it happen.

Indeed, it is impossible to make rational decisions when all the information you’re basing your reasoning on is a lie.
Intuition however is problematic in that you’re prone to cognitive biases, wishful thinking and being manipulated by people who know how to play on intuitions.
It’s more than nothing at all, sure, and it’s supposed to be better for decision making with too many variables to rationally consider, but with some people’s intuitions favouring one way and other people’s intuitions favouring the other when it comes to politics, it’s as though there’s no objective basis to figure out any correct choice - except perhaps having faith in the “wisdom of the crowd”. But politicians are constantly feeding your own confirmation biases, so it’s less down to your intuition and more down to their ability to manipulate your individual partiality. You might argue that good manipulators are important for political discussions, but however good you might be at winning people over, it matters what you win. Boris is a Tory, and as such even if his charm over a gullible electorate extends to others who are experts in playing the same game, what he is going to win is going to be good for capitalists and bad for wage labourers.

As you say, Corbyn does present himself as rather humourless, but if I want a job doing I’m going to hire the serious candidate instead of the buffoon. Moreso than that, I’d rather vote for the one who represents me and the majority of the population, which in both cases is Corbyn. All politicians are ideologues: they’re supposed to represent a political party and their collective ideology - Boris is no different, no matter how entertaining he might be on your TV. Comedies are not politics, nor vice versa - I find this slow transformation of politics into a reality TV show disturbing. Another reason not to condone the same descent that the US is suffering from and go with the more boring option who’s still actually trying. That’s a fourth reason compared to zero for Boris.

People find it effortless to fall back to trusting their first impressions and personal partialities, but I don’t work that way - I attempt to distrust myself as much as possible to make sure I’m taking as many viewpoints into account as I can think of to see what emerges as independently from my own biases as possible. My own intuition is just another factor amongst many with no more or less weighting than anyone else’s intuitions - or at least I do this all to the best of my ability, and even then I hold my conclusions accountable to new information that might change them, which I’m constantly seeking. Even in the lie-riddled arena of politics there are objective truths on which to base your decision, and that’s all I’m doing in favouring Corbyn. This “honest lies” tack is not compelling.

It’s also an objective fact that the UK media is overwhelmingly right wing in their political endorsements, with only really the Mirror and the Guardian leaning left, and even then only really neo-Labour left. It’s an objective fact that they’ve collectively been running a several year long campaign to misrepresent and ridicule Corbyn and steadily erode the overwhelming support he began with, if you still remember. Facts like these are what the rational voter ought to be paying attention to. It’s also a fact that Boris has a history of failures, some of which are listed here.

I’m not suggesting that Brexit will never happen because it was meant to be political filler, I’m just saying that it’s convenient political filler given that it will never happen. The direction of causation matters here. The referendum was on 23rd June 2016. Have any of the Tories got anywhere in the past 1244 days? How many promises have they made in that time? Or is it good that they broke so many promises and got nowhere because the promises were honest lies?

Admit it lefties, liberals and progressives have their own rendition of this. At least in regard to the stuff Marx suggested here…

“In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter Into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness.”

In other words, the argument goes, in both England and America there are those who acquire the preponderance of political power in sync with their accumulation of vast wealth. Think the Bilderberg Group.

Then the politicians do whatever they can to obscure this. Crony capitalism some call it.

I strongly disagree that Corbyn represents the majority of the population. He actually represents the middle-class, London elite, who look down on the working class so much that they are claiming they were too stupid to know what they were voting for.

You’re probably right that most newspapers are pro-Tory. But most people get their news from the TV, and the BBC and C4, at the very least, are blatantly pro-Labour and anti-Brexit.