James Corbett on political childhood
James Corbett references Larkin Rose's The Most Dangerous Superstition to frame government authority as a Santa Claus myth where everyone knows the concept is constructed yet participates as if real. This performative belief mirrors General MacArthur's observation that Japan was a nation of children during the post-WWII occupation, defined by naive trust in bosses or leaders. While Western populations have historically trusted the system despite individual politician failures, we are now approaching political adulthood instead of remaining political children.
Transcrição (en)
I cite Larkin Rose on this, who wrote The Most Dangerous Superstition. And he said our superstitious belief in the legitimacy of government authority is itself. It's like it's like Santa Claus. We can believe in it and everyone acts as if it's true. And that creates performatively a type of thing that manifests in reality as this Christmas gift giving ritual. And oh, Santa left you this gift. And everyone knows that it's kind of a lie, but everyone participates in it. So it becomes some sort of truth in the same way. We all go to the voting box and put our little ballot in and we've done our there we go, guys. Now things will change and nothing changes. What is going on here? It is because we are suffering from what I think was General MacArthur during the occupation of Japan post World War II observed that Japan is a nation of children. And by that, he meant that, you know, these are naive, trusting people who believe in what their government or authority or their company boss tells them to believe. And I think, generally speaking, in the West, we are political children who have for a very long time trusted and believed in the system overall. Maybe not in this particular person. Yes, this is a bad politician, but that's a good politician. I'm going to vote for him and he's going to come and change things. I think we are on the cusp of actually reaching political adulthood.
