US polls and the apathy index

In a special issue in the fall of the year 2000, Forbes magazine listed ten popular American expressions. They were: Get a life; Why not?; D...

In a special issue in the fall of the year 2000, Forbes magazine listed ten popular American expressions. They were: Get a life; Why not?; Dream on, or the alternative In your dreams; Get real; If it weren8217;t for bad luck, I8217;d have no luck at all; What8217;s not to like?; Who needs this?, or the more emphatic I don8217;t need this!; You8217;re history, or the more colourful So-oo ten minutes ago; As if!; F8230;.d up.

Almost every phrase seemed to conjure up a certain gesture, a certain attitude. A shrug, a couldn8217;t-care-less tone. Lassitude, casualness, pre-occupation. In democracy, such moods usually translate into politics and it was perhaps no accident that around the same time James M. Lindsay was writing in the influential journal, Foreign Affairs on what he called 8216;The New Apathy8217;. His article dwelt not so much on public apathy or the reasons for it but more on how politicians were dealing with it. The most visible effect he could find was in the blatant unconcern politicians appeared to be displaying towards public opinion. Opinion polls, for instance, had shown that a majority of Americans wanted to pay their country8217;s debt to the United Nations and half wanted to send ground troops to Kosovo, yet the government paid no heed. The reason, Lindsay explained, was that 8220;politicians worry less about what the public thinks about an issue than about how intensely it cares.8221;

Some 61 per cent of Americans for instance, he maintained, supported active American involvement in the world but when asked how much impact other parts of the world had on the US, the answer was 8220;very little8221;. The upshot of Lindsay8217;s argument was that politicians had worked out that they could disregard how people felt about their proposed actions or non-actions because most people, whatever their views, were too apathetic to do anything in support of them. It was only the 8220;noisy few8221; that, because of their intense interest in an issue, were likely to act in furtherance of it that those in power needed to worry about.

It is an interesting hypothesis and explains the seeming immunity of politicians to criticism in recent times. And yet, currently, a sense of change is in the air. It is not just the forthcoming US polls, which though they are being read everywhere as a referendum on Bush8217;s Iraq policy may or may not bring about a long-term material change, but a snowballing of factors. The turnaround by sections of the media which had aggressively supported Bush8217;s pro-invasion stance, the slow unravelling of the exaggerated claims made to justify the invasion by various committees and the mounting deaths and the inevitable questions provoked by the failure of the US to complete its much touted 8220;mission8221; in Iraq have all put pressure on the authorities.Spiderman 2

But the most significant phenomenon has been the marked intensification of public opposition to Bush8217;s policies. Farenheit 9/11, the controversial anti-Bush film made by yesterday8217;s maverick rebel filmmaker, Michael Moore, has been running to packed houses in the time of Spiderman 2. Noam Chomsky, a long-standing critic of US hegemony, is the unassuming hero of a new documentary. Last fortnight half a million Americans marched in New York 8212; the largest protest march seen there in 20 years 8212; against Bush.

The banners were predictably rabid and combative but even the voices of retribution showed evidence of a transformation. At the World Trade Center, hundreds of people rang bells, saying they wanted to heal the pain of 9/11 and drown out the echoes of the administration8217;s bombs. Gary Orioli 8212; a florist who had wanted to 8220;nuke whoever did this8221; post-9/11 had news clippings and stickers broadcasting Bush misdeeds all over his shop alongside ads for protest marches. The New York tabloid, The Village Voice wrote: 8220;Fear and hatred of his Bush8217;s regime have managed to turn even ordinary Americans into full-fledged activists committed to his ouster, while at the same time regalvanising a progressive movement in American politics that had sputtered along for years without clear direction.8221;

Has the 8220;New Apathy8221; given way to the 8220;New Activism8221;? Will the politicians be forced to listen? Will the people finally prevail?

Story continues below this ad

The answers are significant for democracies all over the world.