In your last ‘Socialist Party’ circulaire your complained that in the divisional formula dutch society used to spend money – A collapsing Greek economy riddled with tax fraud, and corrupt banks got saved while old people are sidelined. As you so eloquently put it:
Terecht zeggen deze ouderen dat de overheid wel klaarstaat voor de banken en Griekenland, maar dat ze de gepensioneerden in de steek laat. Minister Donner wil nu dat pensioenfondsen de pensioenen verlagen omdat zijn oneerlijke boekhoudkundige regels daarom vragen. Maar het verhaal klopt niet. Het verlagen van pensioenen is oneerlijk en onnodig. “Er wordt bij de ouderen zoveel weg gehaald, dat ze geen kant meer uit kunnen,” zegt gepensioneerde Hendrik Hoogendoorn terecht in de film.
Let me tell you – you can’t do shit about it. The current political caste has power. In having power it uses power at it sees fit. The old people you allude to are in effect inconsequential powerless ‘losers’. They have no actual power. The average dutch voter is no interested in them. These old power allowed themselves to be sidelined in the dutch political system. They stood by in total apathy for decades. They did nothing. Decades of intellectual lazyness is now coming come to roost. A generation of people that were to much busy with other stuff to give a damn about ‘boring politics’ will now irreversibly be unable to stem the tide of marginalization. There is now no feedback mechanism in place to cut some more off, and then some more, and then some more. If those in charge do, there will be zero consequence. Average voters won’t care. All old people will be able to do is whine, appear unappealing and unconvincing on camera, and slowly wither away and die.
I am sorry to give you the facts this bluntly emille. The era of ‘might makes right‘ has returned. Any illusion of solidarity born in the brief period of widespread pity we all may have briefly felt with one another after the intense misery of World War Two, is now long forgotten. The Netherlands is back to the default position of “I want my big screen TV and I don’t give a flying fuck for who gets to die for it“.
Old people – and disabled people – and marginalized people – and psychiatric patients – and immigrants – and ex convicts – and homosexuals – and people of a dozen other minorities that aren’t sufficiently mainstream to be regarded as human by the average dutch douchebag, should get organized – and then get mean. You know there are ways to make the system pay. Legal ways no less – ways to grind the system to a standstill, without breaking laws. (Or without the law being effectively able to find a guilty party).
The time has come to take off the velvet glove Emille. If you do not appeal to the increasingly desperate electorate I am willing to wager you some burning police vehicles that in a few years you’ll have a radical far left political party nibbling away votes on the left side of the Socialist Party. Those in charge have absolutely no incentive to stop. The average Dutch voter is either to bothered to give a damn, or in total overload – there is no longer ‘a public relations middle ground’ to win. You have no choice but to start fighting meaner.
Put your money where your sweet honey coated mouth is Emille.