Politics and Hypocrisy

Politics and Hypocrisy

Ali Asghar Kazemi
December 2007
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Politics by nature is an untidy business to put it in a polite term. Some would prefer to label it as dirty tricks for manipulating people. Machiavelli was the first to admit with no shame that politics and ethics are two different realms not to be confounded. Many thinkers and philosophers warned against tying this animal with the rope of ethics.

Secular politicians in the West and elsewhere in the world don’t mind to openly concur with Machiavellian approach to politics. Our problem here is with pretentious amateur political leaders whom under the guise of religious precepts set out to manipulate facts in pursuit of power.

To put this in other term, governance is presumably built upon logical premises and function on rational process. Religion on the other hand, is based upon the principles of faith without reason. When government representing the political institutions and religion representing the value system of beliefs come together in pursuit of power, an inevitable clash occurs, unless they hide behind the curtain of hypocrisy.

By this introduction I venture to argue that politicians who pretend to act and behave otherwise by concealing their faces behind religious mores or ethics are either fouls or hypocrites. Because politics essentially has nothing to do with morality and its main function is indeed pursuit of power.

Now let’s descend on the earth and see how the argument works in real world. We don’t have to go too far and look for examples in remote societies having nothing to do with our daily life. If we observe around us our own politicians who like to be considered men of God and symbols of faith and ethics, we find them rabid hypocrites without shame. They act neither by reason nor by moral principles but merely by their brute instinct.

Under the guise of sublime will of God, human salvation, national independence, justice, welfare and people’s sovereignty, their primordial goal is survival and power with all its attributes. Essential for them is the result of the ballot boxes which allow them to remain in power at all costs. To that end, it is permissible to conceal the truth, cover up facts and even manipulate ballot boxes.

In international scene they act as if they were bold and hardy, but they are merely cowardly mediocre persons who risk the life of a nation for their immature and foolish vision. To them anything is allowable if it promotes the cause and objectives they believe to be good for their grip of power.

Our politicians, whether right, left or in the middle, are simply uneducated disciples of Machiavelli whose only attributes in political realm are lie, demagoguery and deception. They have all the vices of secular politicians whom they denounce but none of their virtues.

We shall continue this discussion in our future commentaries./