Layers of political reality

The political landscape is, for the most part, a meticulously crafted stage with rich and deep cinematic effects, creating a perceived alternate reality. In this landscape, political actors converse, interact, decide, and think as if they are genuine individuals. However, they are merely performers enacting a predetermined script devised by a group of invisible and unelected individuals, such as powerful lobbyists, influential corporate leaders, or high-ranking bureaucrats. These individuals, often operating behind the scenes and wield significant influence and control over political decisions and actions.

Historically, this is a critical part of authoritarian political machinery, such as the CCP in China, which controls the narrative and propaganda networks behind the scenes, projecting a parallel world, serving the sole interests of the CCP and eliminating all other sources of truth. The West, on the other hand, has offered an alternative of transparent, competent, and robust democracies, where the people elect governments for the common good, with access to crucial facts that enable them to scrutinise the government and vote critically accordingly. 

However, increasingly, the political reality of the West is replicating that of authoritarian regimes, becoming like a movie structured into three layers – the symbolic, the symbiotic, and the real, akin to three key aspects of moviemaking: acting, directing, and producing.

The first layer of moviemaking is acting. Actors are carefully selected, trained and guided to perform in line with the script. They represent what they are not, with the suppression of their values and beliefs, being there only for the thrill of their fictional role and their function to present a scripted version of the “reality.”

The second layer is a space for directors to guide, manage and control the whole performance from behind the scenes. They ensure that the actors adhere to the script and that the performance appears plausible, appropriate, and captivating to the audience.

The third layer of movie production is script writing, which is approved and supported by the producers. It involves managing budgets, hiring the director, and making decisions as the most vital, domineering, and constructing part.

We all understand that a film is not reality but fiction. It is a lie that we willingly accept, suspending our disbelief as we watch. Usually, we do not watch movies for their truthfulness but for their ability to present compelling lies convincingly.

Politics is the same – it is a lie constructed in such a way that we accept it as a fair and democratic way to work for the public good. However, just as a film creates the illusion of a sequence of still images moving rapidly, allowing us to perceive these visuals as passing and continuous events, politics presents a serious sequence of events unfolding democratically, constitutionally, and rationally. This “illusion of reality” in politics is the result of careful scripting, directing, and producing, creating a narrative that may not always align with the actual events.

The first layer is symbolic and sentimental, where politics is almost fully visible in the forms of political actions, movements, elections, slogans, speeches, parliamentary debates, decisions, and promises. This layer is subtly manufactured to create a sense of seriousness, vividness, and plausibility so that seeing begets believing.

This analogy can demonstrate these intricate layers of political reality with the example of COVID-19. The COVID-19 pandemic, in this context, is likened to a “movie-like political stunt operation” due to the coordinated and scripted nature of the global response. The cinematic effect was globally performed: nurses and doctors danced, politicians spoke from the same script, threatening citizens to abide by extremely restrictive measures, and the media parroted the same message, establishing a global culture of conformity and obedience.

What we see in the first layer is just the tip of the iceberg, with other parts withdrawn into darkness, such as how elections are organised, how donors, influencers and handlers negotiate with candidates, how votes are counted, how parties formulate their priorities, or under what conditions a coalition is formed.

The second level is symbiotic and technocratic, where the invisible part of political reality is silently and discreetly directed. It encompasses all political dynamics, including intra- and cross-party alliances, the forging of enmities, the distribution of political power, the selection of political leadership, and behind-the-scenes discussions and decision-making processes that define party identity, policies, and visions. This aspect is a crucial part of creating the political reality where many debates, negotiations, infighting, and backstabbing occur without the public being fully aware unless or until they are occasionally exposed through whistleblowers, media exposure, or leaks. These instances of exposure reveal, to a certain degree, how the political machine operates secretly under the guise of “political transparency.”

During the COVID-19 pandemic, political discussions and conflicts between politicians from federal and state levels in Australia and elsewhere, as well as bureaucrats acting as so-called medical advisors, were repeatedly displayed to increase the plausibility of this global performance. At the same time, the directors of this entire pilot have remained mainly invisible amid growing concerns about the vaccine’s potential damage, which have been discussed more frequently globally. However, the origin of COVID-19 remains unknown.

The last layer of political reality is the actual core behind all political appearances, party divisions, and democratic processes. This level is mysterious, impenetrable, inaccessible and unquestionable. It is where real political power lies and from which actual power cascades down through the other two layers. It is shrouded in secrecy, absolute control, and an uncompromising determination to execute long-term decisions that decide the destiny of nations, peoples, governments, and eras.

Inaccessibility to the core of this political reality is most disturbing. It may even reach a point where many feel betrayed, manipulated, and controlled, as is the case with COVID-19, for which no government, political party, or politician has ever taken responsibility and allowed for a full investigation. It feels like a humiliation ceremony where they repeatedly face insurmountable walls of power in absolute secrecy, which is impervious to any meaningful political accountability.

On the other hand, this reality shows that however hard one tries to change the world, the process always unfolds elsewhere, and the outcome is controlled by the invisible, the faceless, and the “absolute.” It is not a matter of a lack of political will, strategy, or resources in the first place; rather, it is the futility of trying to change things thoroughly because the innermost core does not allow it to happen. Nor does it allow itself to be affected, exposed, or removed from power.

It is where a lot of political criticism, despair, and realism take place, causing some people either to lose faith in policies or strengthen their resolve to change things for the better. In a highly negative sense, this is where political nihilism is activated. In such a framework, nihilism is not the absence of truth about political reality but its near unknowability; it is not about difficulties in attaining the common good through politics but its near impossibility; and it is not about searching for a better form of political reality but its near impermissibility.

It is the reason why many revolutions and movements in modern history have achieved some success at the first and second levels; however, they have never fully penetrated, impacted or overthrown the third level. Moreover, the success of any social and political movement depends on understanding how this political theatricality is produced and how it affects everything, from top to bottom and from inside out, as was seen during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, understanding is not enough; it must be accompanied by decisive action to dismantle all these layers. It thereby returns political power to the hands of people who must be the real actors, directors, and scriptwriters of political reality in a democratic society, as it is their vital moral duty.