I understand you have a country to run, and I understand the Netherlands are succumbing to a global crisis, largely caused by systemic reasons not directly attributable to policies or wrongs enacted by anyone locally. We have now inherited a systemic crisis, largely because of the thoughtlessness, the corruption, the short-term mindset or sheer incompetence by policymakers and managers and leaders abroad.
I understand that you as a politician must take a responsibility congruent with your knowledge and expertise, and congruent with your values to deal with the realities of our day and age. I understand that you see little else than a need for collective austerity.
What troubles me is that you clearly do not seem to see the consequences of your actions. You will no doubt acknowledge the fact that people hurt because of your policies, and you accept this. I look at the icy eyes of the Dutch political caste as they make these hard choices, and I see in these eyes a determined mindset of “we have to do this”. In other words – “we have to be this calculatingly ruthless because the consequences if we don’t would be worse”.
I accuse you of not seeing in full the consequences. I now face in my life people who were fairly happy a short time ago, now unambiguously close to suicide, as a direct result of the nefarious trickledown effect of Dutch governmental policies. You now take responsibilities and exert power in a way that causes damage to the very bedrock morale of people in this country as to cause them to irreversible suffer hairline fractures. Or worse – I see people giving up.
This is nothing new. Societal decay and collapse causes people to succumb to irreversible despair. People do fail, on a statistical level, and “can’t handle it any more”. When the Soviet Union started its grinding collapse (and it does feel very similar what we are now experiencing in Europe) people found themselves unable to resolve the transition and could do little else than succumb to a permanent deadness. This has massive consequences for Russia, as it has for many similar countries. Right now in Greece we see the suicide rate shoot up. I am fairly sure there are people in your party that will mock this simple fact and add the comment “good riddance”, along the lines of good Social Darwinists, but you can’t expect to run a country in this manner.
This is callousness. ruthlessness. Any decrease of safety, collective affluence, societal care… any increase of harshness, bureaucratic disinterest, collective apathy, self-interest .. is irreversible. It damages the fabric of society at a fundamental level. Those that don’t cope succumb to irreversible neurological damage. Or they self-medicate. I can guarantee you an epidemic of alcoholism and other substance abuse. I know that the use of anti-depressants is mostly a fake solution that deadens souls inside and ruins lives (as well as livers and kidneys) and it is a very costly solution. But expect people to run for these solutions, and expect the painful consequences in desperate, irrational acts, suicides, violent crimes, extreme costs to the health of the nation, or people completely dropping away from the labor markets altogether.
Current policies in the Netherlands have become unacceptable. They are rife with disparity and inequality. People in the Netherlands are starting to hate one another. This is a society that is starting to show fractural lines in ways I would only have believes possible in bad Dystopian fiction just a few years ago. I myself feel viciously held in contempt by so many people in this country that I sometimes feel as if I am suffocating. Trust me, the feeling has become completely mutual. This has become a country divided by mutual resentment.
This isn’t the Netherlands any more.
When mothers are on the verge of giving up – well beyond the point of tears – well in the point of desperation – and find themselves unable to care for their children, then you have a problem as a leadership. I see many examples. You are, in the most empathic of terms, fucking up the job entrusted in you. The people in the Netherlands support the current political caste out of sheer dread and fear, but don’t trust you. It’s just that they fear the alternative more.
This isn’t the same world as it was ten years ago. The electorate has vastly new technological means at its disposal, and I will guarantee you these tools will be used. You need to start doing a better job, or the current political system will end up removed and replaced. Yes I am talking popular dissent and revolution, and far sooner than many of you consider possible.
The process of revolution is always painful and bloody. It is an awful thing to have to endure. But with the various catalysts available in new media and technologies it can happen a lot quicker than you deem possible. Once you leave the Dutch people no way out (and you’ll see this same sentiment all throughout Europe) you will see this translated in a statistical groundswell of protest, and beyond protest, in to violent revolt.
In fact just writing about this I feel I can breathe again. Finally I so understand these people in eastern bloc countries, and these people in the middle east who after years of feeling at the mercy of a disinterested system suddenly decided they had enough. Once the political system causes people to feel like this – “hope that a revolution may make things better” – you got a serious problem. And I am saddened to say that is precisely what I feel.
Many people had enough. Stop doing what you are doing and make our lives better instead of making us feel hopeless.
Khannea Suntzu