Monday, September 07, 2015

The Refugee Crisis and the greater malaise of the West

Yes please, I will take in a refugee and house them in my home. But also Lets be clear that it’s a collective responsibility to look after the vulnerable fellow humans in extreme condition. That collective responsibility has been delegated to the governments as the body that represents our collective wishes. The failure of the government to show resolve and strength demonstrates lack of leadership and efficacy. 

Just how dire is Western leadership?
The greatest service to refugees of all possible sources came from Victor Orban. His action on forcing refugees to camps, stopping them from travelling and erecting border fence along with comments like “Hungarians have the right to live without Muslims” galvanized public support for refugees at a time when one of the main rhetoric of Western governments is “immigration control”.  Civic activism and magnanimity forced Western governments to do something.

Leadership has degenerated into public management. Government has digressed to be only concerned with bureaucracy due to a lack of visionary leadership. Almost everything in social life is produced by rare but consequential shocks and changes; all the while almost everything studied focuses on the “Normal” in tune with the populous temperament that tell close to nothing. Democratic populism ignores the changing world, cannot handle the, yet makes us confident that we have tamed uncertainty.  The nature of social phenomena can only be understood in severe circumstance, not under the regular rosy glow of daily life. Can you assess the danger a criminal poses by examining only what he does on an ordinary day? Can we understand health without considering wild diseases and epidemics? Indeed the normal is often irrelevant.

Focusing on the “normal” means the government is represented on most issues by the vocal part of the society that includes the immigration debate. The anti immigration lobby happens to be xenophobic which makes government policies sinister and particularly unfair on the immigrants. 

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