THE COMPLEX NATURE OF POLITICS
It is deeply regrettable that not much can be said about politics as a positive genius of creative anthropogenesis.
This is apparently so because politics and humanity are intrinsically mutual in ontological possibilities of material projection. Nuances and subtleties in the overlapping space shared between politics and humanity are therefore normative fixtures of latent materialism.
Thus, that miasmic mutual space can only be hygienized via populist acceptance of humanism in political activities.
The nature of politics is such that it leaves humanism behind in the congealed and static immorality of sweeping medievalism.
Politics has also become a criminal activity for many a person in many a situation. Actually politics is fundamentally a criminal activity.
The environment of the psychosocial genetics of politics in human relations is that it seems to expose that basest of human instinct, and here, let us quickly mention greed and deadly Machiavellianism and kleptomania and lies and hatred and politically motivated murder, killings, and assassinations, the most.
In the end politics is that which closely takes after the lockstep ambulatory rhythm of a walking stick with its anthropogenic handler. There could actually be moments of stochastic unpredictability in the material behavior of a walking stick from the exclusive viewpoint of the virtual reality of anthropogenic parallax, a highly provable hypothesis when considered as a strict question of existential immanence.
That is to say, at some points in the joint lives of the walking stick and its anthropogenic handler also appear points of teachable nodality directly or indirectly pointing to an interactive if reciprocatory psychosocialization, a process which we believe is somewhat intrinsic to the existential immanence of mortal finitude, in the joint lives of these two partners.
Technically, if not rather more phenomenologically, are subtle yet overt moments of existential tableaux in the joint lives of these two.
First of all, the walking stick is a dead partner in the complicated immanent dialogue of psychosocialization which the anthropogenic handler ostensibly exclusively remote-controls, yet the anthropogenic element is not dead. Yet the dead wood once came from a living tree. And the anthropogenic element will certainly expire some someday, much like its assuming the totalized apoptotic conditionality of the once-living dead wood, an irony of imaginable proportions so to speak.
It is interesting to acknowledge the antecedent genetic or cellular paterfamilias giving birth to an existential if spatial game-theory guiding the immanent interactions of both elements. It is also interesting to acknowledge both leaving behind their cellular imprints in the genetic proliferation of posterity.
The central point of it all is that somehow, somewhere, we also find both the once-living dead wood and the dead-man-walking anthropogenic handler who is yet to die in the proliferating genetic geography of other related or interactive spatial bodies, namely paterfamilias and posterity.
At the mutual point of immanent tableau however, it is not clear or even ascertainable who in fact remote-controls the dialogue. This may be so because the walking stick assumes a state of intricate personified mentalization at this point. On the one hand the dead walking stick may be doing the remote-controlling. On the other hand the exercise of remote-controlling may be a question of reciprocative interdependence approximating Isaac Newton’s Third Law of Motion.
Whatever the line of interpretation one adopts to fit this immanent profile of phenomelogical dialogue, one thing that is certain in our minds is that Ghana’s duopolistic culture perches on this static and uncompromisingly congealed tableau of crushing developmental challenges and intellectually uncreative dogmas!
FINAL THOUGHTS ON THE COMPLEX NATURE OF POLITICS
Politics behaves similarly. In other words politics does not die. In this sense politics has always been there, namely contemporaneously with human evolution, and will certainly outlive the conceit of mortal finitude.
One sticking point about the complex nature of politics, though, is the difficult tradeoffs of compromises and sporadic disowning or renouncing of time-tested and workable personal and collective ethos that usually accompany the exercise, privileges and prerogatives of progressive nationalism.
If giving up this progressive personal and collective ethos succeeds in underwriting the comparative advantage of the nation, a concession which in turn also positively or richly accrues to Ghana’s political economy, then so be it.
But if not, the country records serious deficits in its balance sheet of development priorities. Let us be clear here, though: This is not an alternative allusion to or call for any deadly strain of political adhocracy.
Far from it. Otherwise, therein lay the myriad of conundrums confronting the postcolonial African nation-state. That is not to say all is lost yet.
It is rather to say Ghana’s political animals can look up to the rich teachable legacy of the great Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, Africa’s most profound, imaginative, and visionary political hygienist, for intellectual inspiration.
We will move to agree wholeheartedly with Prof. Edmund N. Delle, the National Chairman of the CPP, and his advisory statement to the effect that:
“In everything we do as politicians, let us always put the interest of the country first and above our political parties’ interest.”
This clearly enunciated statement is a hallmark of political genius.
THE IMPENDING DANGER OF AKUFO-ADDO AND HIS POLITICAL AMBITIONS TO GHANA’S SOCIOPOLITICAL STABILITY
It is not even clear if the leadership of the NPP intend to establish a paramilitary unit alongside the nation’s military and army, in which case it will not be too farfetched to entertain another possibility of a clandestine collaboration between the leadership of this speculative paramilitary organization and hypothetical members of the army or military who may be sympathetic to the NPP.
The notion of double agent is real in the political economy of intelligence mechanics.
We should never forget this. The Denzel Washington character in the movie “American Gangster” loudly speaks to this fact as well.
The high-profile instance of Nigeria’s facing similar intelligence and security challenges and conundrums is no mere accident, and also of Nigeria’s visible example offering a teachable blueprint is even clearer.
It is generally believed that certain persons in the federal government of Nigeria, who are generally sympathetic to Boko Haram’s uncompromising pursuit of Islamic hegemony in some parts of the country and close to the seats of the presidency and of the military superstructure (top brass), have been steadily stealing privileged intelligence information compiled by the military and other security arms of the federal government, high-level intelligence information to neutralize and dismantle the terrorist group, and handing this information to the leadership of Boko Haram piecemeal.
But then also, alas, there exists this complicated political history of international relations where the British, together with the State of Israel and America, successfully impressed upon Idi Amin to set up a secret military unit within the Ugandan national army, the same intra-military unit the abovementioned countries used to overthrow Milton Obote, via the externally managed leadership of Idi Amin.
This is why we believe the BNI investigation should move beyond the prompt deportation of the three South African mercenaries.
This has contributed in no mean way to the enhancement of Boko Haram’s unconventional warfare or asymmetric engagement. This explains in part why defeating or neutralizing Boko Haram has been such a prohibitive costly affair and extremely difficult undertaking.
Ghana needs to be on perpetual guard against creeping vigilante paramilitarization and gangsterization of partisan politics. The antiquated model of Ancient Greece’s politics of elitist tribal ghettoization should not be replicated and tolerated in our modern politics, to say the least.
That unenlightened era, a traditional anachronism if you like, of ghettoized tribal political antiquation is long gone.
We need to encourage ourselves to live within the elastic limits of the modernizing critiques of tolerance, inclusive politics, respect for the rule of law, gender equality, equitable distribution of national wealth, political de-ethnicization, equality before the law, political representation, while at the same time leaving the politics of insults and hatred and acrimony, schadenfreude politics, and duopolistic ethnocentrism behind in the zoological cage of medievalism.
OTHER RELEVANT QUESTIONS
And here we go again:
Godwin Boboobi, a member of the communication team of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), who recently interpretively tagged National Democratic Party’s Nana Konadu Agyemang Rawlings’ criticism of the Mahama administration as her “exhibiting some menopausal symptoms” is not only rhetorically improper, uncalled-for, primitively anachronistic, insensitive, and childishly stupid, but also that in this day and age such remarks are uncompromisingly and morally sexist.
It is not a crime to be menopausal in that the experience of menopause and its unsettling symptoms are undeniable facts of biologic realism. If Boboobi somehow thinks menopause is exclusively a women’s thing, then he had better wait and experience it, firsthand, as he inches asymptotically toward Madam Rawlings’ age, if he is in fact lucky enough to have a student of biology, the science of biological aging (e.g. senescence), and endocrinology educate him on this subject matter. Is this not what the proverbial trite remark “experience is the best teacher” say in essence?
Inclusive politics is such a complex philosophy for male chauvinists like Boboobi to grasp. Also true is the fact that such privileged men do not appear to understand the complex politics of biology, endocrinology, and senescence (gerontology and geriatrics). These male chauvinists only think—as a matter of convenient posturing—that aging is a captivating province of youthful exuberance and that their continuing privileged political statuses do not and cannot confer mortal finitude on them.
On the other hand, and ironically, when the cold hands of mortality stared Akufo-Addo in his Machiavellian face he quickly owned up to it, saying: “Where I am and how old I am at least, this is not the time I will start stealing anybody’s wealth.” Stealing has nothing whatsoever to do with age. Perhaps stealing has more to do with the circumstances of one’s environment, one’s psychological and material predispositions. Neither does stealing have anything to do with menopause.
As a matter of fact, some of our male politicians who are raping the country with reckless abandon may not menopausal or old. And then there are these other unresolved critical questions of duopolistic euphebiphobia and adultism in fully assessing the political equation of democratic expression.
Where are all these questions leading us anyway?
Neither can the political enemies and detractors of the sacked NDC’s voluptuous and bootylicious kleptomaniacal daydreamer, Victoria Hammah, prove with any degree of scientific or mathematical certainty that, much like her female counterpart Dzifa Attivor, an ex-Minister of Transport who resigned over the bus re-branding controversy, her rhetorical dream of making a million dollars in politics before resigning from politics was induced by the symptomatic experience of menopause.
In Ghanaian politics women are punished for dreaming but hardened and recidivistic male political criminals caught red-handed in the act of stealing are retained and celebrated.
Abudu Nelson Baani, an NDC Member of Parliament who called for legislating the stoning of adulterous women in Ghana, no doubt shares the primitive misogynistic psychology of Boboobi. It appears, then, that for all we care to know both Baani and Bobbobi may have forced themselves into a transient intellectual fix by reading philosophical anarchist William Godwin’s book, “Enquiry Concerning Political Justice.”
The primitive politics of misogyny should have no place in modern politics. The morale of our discursive contentions here is that it is possible to disagree with one’s opponents without resorting to sexist or misogynistic insults.
We shall definitely return with the concluding part (Part 3)…Stay tuned!
REFERENCES
Ghanaweb. “Reduce Political Tension: CPP To NDC, NPP.” March 31, 2016.
Ghanaweb. ‘I’m Too Old To Steal—Akufo-Addo.” September 4, 2015.
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