Politically Homeless

Once upon a time, before the beard grew grey and the world went so thoroughly stupid, I considered myself securely of the left. Healthcare, education, solidarity; these weren’t luxuries but the bare minimum of a civilized society. The strongest shoulders should bear the heaviest burdens, and the weakest should not be left to rot. I still believe this. Yet I find myself politically homeless, because the supposed guardians of these values have either forgotten them or sold them off for trinkets.

My Political History

My divorce from the left started in 2009 when Harry van Bommel of the Dutch Socialist Party thought it wise to appear at what was billed as a demonstration against the war in Gaza – how time has stood still – but quickly revealed itself as a pro-Hamas jamboree. While the mob chanted for Jewish blood, Van Bommel managed only to join the chorus calling for intifada, as though genocide were just an unfortunate bit of background noise. The Party’s refusal to condemn this disgrace – and worse, its refusal to blush – was enough to send me out the door.

I drifted briefly to the Dutch Pirate Party, whose defence of digital freedom was noble but so narrow that is was destined to remain a political footnote. Marching against The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) on Dam Square was righteous enough, but you cannot govern a nation on copyright policy alone.

TikTok with Worse Lighting

And here we arrive at the present, where politics has been fully digested by the culture of spectacle. We no longer elect leaders; we audition influencers. The chamber of debate has become TikTok with worse lighting and cheaper suits. Outrage trends, slogans travel, and actual governance is dismissed as boring homework. The result is that we are governed by attention-seekers who mistake virality for legitimacy.

Politicians are optimizing for the clip that trends, not the policy that works. The whole system rewards the loudest, not the most capable. The values that I care about in politics are buried under layers of PR consultants, focus-group slogans and “authentic” tweets by department interns. The boring, grown-up work of actual governance – budgets, regulations, compromise, debate – doesn’t trend. But outrage and catchphrases do.

Dutch politics, like many others, has proven the principle: elect a troupe of clowns and you can expect a circus. Yet I refuse to clap at the juggling. I still want a statesman – or even a competent adult – instead of a stage magician of grievances.

Nowhere to Turn

On the left, I see echoes of my old ideals: solidarity, taxation with fairness, public goods. But these are increasingly drowned out by hysterics. Grown adults swoon at Greta Thunberg’s theatrics, as though adolescence conferred moral authority. Gender zealots denounce heretics with the fervour of inquisitors, replacing socialism with a particularly humourless strain of puritanism. Jobs, wages, healthcare; remember those? All sidelined in favour of identity, censorship, and a climate policy unmoored from pragmatism.

The right, meanwhile, has turned itself into a protection racket for the already rich, peddling the cocaine of “free markets” while quietly dealing cronyism under the table. “Trickle down” has turned out to mean exactly what it sounds like: the rich relieve themselves, and we get wet. In power, the populists collapse into incompetence. Out of power, they chant “tradition” like an incantation, usually as cover for rolling back social progress. They bellow about freedom while building surveillance states and dismantling the judiciary. The anti-expert attitude takes nuance and uncertainty out of any discussion, steamrolled by oversimplification and bumper sticker slogans. The right is always ready to point the finger, blaming “Brussels”, immigrants or “global elites” but scapegoating is easy. Running a country and balancing a budget is hard.

So the left preens and the right connives. Both have abandoned the work of actual government in favor of performance art and tribal war. I find myself politically homeless, not because I have lost my compass, but because both sides are busy breaking theirs and pretending not to notice. It will take real statesmanship to restore politics to the serious business of governing. Until then, we remain at the mercy of the clowns, and the circus shows no sign of leaving town.