IS IT THEIR FAULT ??
For some of us it is evident that the Greek people did a mistake when they chose the current government. There has been a lot of analysis on that, not only by the politicians of the opposition but also by academics, think tanks and foreign institutions. When you talk to most Greek in the street nowadays, you get the same response “what can I do, people vote stupidly”.
Recently I complained to an academic friend of mine in the UK about the infamous Brexit. I got the same answer “You know, people vote in a stupid way”. A few months ago I was talking to a Sorbonne professor about the probability of Marine Le Pen wining the French election. You can guess what she told me “You know, people don’t think what they vote for “.
Democracy is based on the assumption that everybody has the same amount of information and the same capacity to process it, in order to reach an informed decision about his future. We all agree (it is hard facts that point to that) that neither the information is distributed equally nor the processing capacity is the same. So those who didn’t have the chance to get the “processing” capacity (either by nature or due to financial inequalities) and those of us who are not “lucky” enough to have access to the information, are doomed to make bad choices. This is the easy way out for everybody. The ones that made the bad choices can always blame it to the system and “us”, the bright ones who know better, can blame it on the plebe that can’t think right.
When my 5 year old daughter once wanted to try touching the burning oven, I tried to explain to her the concept of temperature, but in vain. She was too young for that. Who was to blame for that miscommunication? When you travel in a poor country and talk to somebody who can’t understand English, who is to be blamed? If you try to talk sense to your dog, in order not to eat anything he finds in the street, who’s fault is that he doesn’t appreciate the lecture?
If we assume that the supporters of Mr Donald Trump made a conscious and informed choice, then the argument of the “others” about a misled vote is invalid. There was a conscious, informed and educated choice that brought this nice gentleman in power and so be it. But if we accept the argument of those who didn’t vote for him, that his voters didn’t understand what they were doing, then my question is simple. Who should we blame?
If we are the intelligent, educated, clever, understanding ones and the “others” can’t think the right way, then whose fault is it? Don’t we, the intelligentsia, have an obligation against all those “stupid”, incapacitated fellow citizens of ours, to help them understand what they should do? If they are incapable of making the right decision, whose fault is it? If they don’t have all the information, who is to blame? If they were never educated enough to be able to see what we see, who is responsible? At the end of the day, if your neighbor is blind and can’t see that a park is nicer than a cement building when he votes at the city council, who should try to explain to him, in a way he can understand, the reality.
My conclusion is, that for all those mistakes that the masses make, it is the fault of the opinion leaders if they have failed to guide them to the right path. So either we accept that their judgement is equally good to ours and therefore their choice is fine, or we accept that they need help with the way they think, in which case we are responsible for providing this help and fully accountable if we fail to do so.