What we in the West are observing, some with equanimity others with revulsion, is the failure of the Western form of governance that we have so long held up to the rest of the world as the pinnacle of human achievement in national and international governance.

The elevation of our model of democracy, which our modern-day schoolmen like Francis Fukayama have defined as “the end of history” in its inability to be further improved, has convinced us that we have not only the right, but the obligation, to spread it to the other 88% of humanity, often by force. Those who have been the subject of the application of that force cannot but help observe the logical contradiction involved.

As the supposedly fundamental basis of that system is government of the people, by the people and for the people, as expressed so eloquently by Abraham Lincoln in his famed Gettysburg Address, our system must be measured by its actual achievement of that admirable goal. Given our belief in the perfection achieved by ourselves in the West, we have narrowed the governance options available to others to a need to copy as closely as possible our “democracies”. We measure the governance of the more than 170-odd countries against the theoretical perfection of our system and find them wanting.

The problem with this approach is that underlying it is a set of arrogant assumptions about the circumstances, people, history, culture and needs of that bulk of humanity being no different to ours and thus that our rules will better fit the needs of all. This arrogance has grown out of the superiority of the West in the last 500 years in the arts of war. We have developed a whole class of people and institutions, whose sole purpose has been to attempt to reconcile our supposed love of democracy with our use of force, to subjugate sundry peoples around the world in pursuit of the far less idealistic goal of authoritarian rule over lesser mortals.

That fundamental contradiction, between equality at home and assumption of superiority over the vast bulk of external humanity, has been a defining feature of the West. The emergence in the West of an internal political, financial, business and intellectual elite over that 500 years, who have turned their efforts to eliminating the guiding concept of equality in practice at home while maintaining its image, has been a largely successful effort.

There have been many issues that have arisen in recent times where this propensity has been clearly demonstrated. Governments in the West have pursued economic, political, geopolitical, social and cultural policies with which often the vast bulk of the populations vigorously disagree. As John Maynard Keynes so perceptively observed, “Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back."

The public in these countries are becoming increasingly disconnected from their governments as they perceive they have no influence on the decisions being made. Surveys across the Western world demonstrate this disconnection very clearly. The most glaring and obvious current example of this phenomenon is the utter inability of the political leadership in the West to reflect the views of their populations about the genocide occurring in Gaza. Every independent human rights group, including the major Israeli one, the UN General Assembly, the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court, the International Association of Genocide scholars and public opinion in all Western countries have concluded that what Israel is doing in Gaza and the West Bank is genocidal.

Yet the political leadership of the West has not only failed to condemn the actions of the rogue state of Israel, but in many instances is assisting that state in carrying out its illegal and immoral actions against the Palestinian people. Some are making what they think are gestures that will satisfy the outrage of their peoples by joining the already 155 countries of the UN in recognising a Palestinian state. But that is where most of them cease any actions required of them by international law. They continue to tell the rest of the world that they are compliant with “the international rules-based order” whilst openly flouting their obligations under the only globally recognised rules – international law as established by the UN and its agencies. Further, in current discussions between the US, Britain, France and Germany, they have simply thrown out the right of the Palestinian people to vote in the government of any new Palestinian state, by saying that Hamas will not play a role in that state regardless of any possible desire of the Palestinians themselves.

The dissatisfaction of the West’s various populations has been openly expressed for nearly two years. Massive demonstrations around almost every one of these countries, the setting up of international flotillas of boats by civil society groups determined to relieve the deliberately imposed famine and starvation imposed by Israel and the wave of strikes and civil disobedience spreading across them are clear indications of that. There is a widening gap opening between the people of these so-called democracies and their elected leaderships, who seem bent on deliberately ignoring the democratic wishes of their populations. These leaders appear to lack the moral conscience that their populations wish them to express and act upon. The fish really is rotting from the head!

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.