What Motivates Most Politicians?
What motivates most politicians? Why do they care about some issues, and not others? Sometimes politicians will ignore serious issues and focus on more trivial incidents, but why is this?
Scoring Political Points
Most politicians are only interested in certain issues if they can score political points. For example, caring about issues that affect minorities, climate change, covid, and any issue that allows for the possibility to signal their virtue, therefore score political points.
It’s all about appearing good to the elite class, therefore it helps themselves further their career, and perhaps to gain a sense of sophistication and moral superiority.
Issues they don’t want to focus on?
Anything that could harm their political point scoring. So, views or comments that are politically incorrect could lead to damaging accusations by woke activist types. Most politicians are terrified of being branded with certain labels. This is why most will pander to all the minority groups that they can.
They will also avoid any issues which show that major mistakes were made in dealing of the issue. Again, this is about their careers and image.
The Political Landscape
The shifting of the political landscape determines what views and what groups the politicians should be pandering to in order to score those greatly desired political points. If the political landscape is over to the right, then politicians will pander to the majority. If it has shifted too far to the right, then minorities can suffer from persecution, discrimination, and even eradication.
If it shifts too far to the left, then minorities will get pandered too at the expense of the majority. The majority could be discriminated against. People will become afraid of criticizing or even telling the truth about issues connected to minority groups. This is exactly what has happened in the UK and other western countries.
When this goes too far, parties that cater to the majority naturally become more popular. This is why political parties that are more on the right are gaining popularity in Europe. It’s actually things trying to balance themselves out. However, because the left have become so dominant, they have managed to demonise political views that are considered conservative and more on the right of the political spectrum. I would say even politically central views are demonised due to the strong shift to the left.
Ignoring Mistakes
Politicians will often ignore certain issues if those issues suggest that mistakes were made by themselves or their political allies. Admitting mistakes is to jeopardize their careers. To admit a mistake is to admit incompetence at best, and corruption at worst, and they will never do that.
Final Comments
Most modern politicians seem to have very little passion for anything other than benefiting themselves, their image and protecting their egos. You see this with politicians that shift their views when they change political parties.
These are sometimes referred to as political opportunists. I believe these types of politicians have increased in recent times. Western countries have never been more concerned with image. Narcissism is running rampant, while moral traits such as honesty and nobility are often overlooked.
