The Politics of Personal Destruction

If you are a young, idealistic person, don’t get involved in organised politics. Contribute to your community, your neighbourhood, your immediate circle of trust and support. This is the best way forward for a better society.

Ten reasons why young idealistic people should forget about organised politics... This might seem overly hypocritical, bitter and twisted, considering the position Mr Latham has been in over the last few years, but he makes some interesting points:

Public apathy has hollowed out our democracy and handed power to a small clique of party machine men. The original ideals of representative democracy—based on mass participation, community involvement and accountability—have been replaced by the work of an elected aristocracy. How has this happened? I think Marshall McLuhan was correct: the medium is the message. When television became the dominant political medium in the 1970s, it emptied out the intellectual content and idealism of the system, narrowing the politicians into seven-second grabs and media imagery. Just look at the artificiality of modern election campaigning, with everything staged and choreographed for TV. Politics has become a temporary and shallow exercise in spin, something akin to the world of commercial advertising.