Politics hates a vacuum. If it isn't filled with hope, someone will fill it with fear.
Interpretation
Politics requires a guiding influence, either positive or negative, and in its absence, it tends to gravitate towards fear.
This quote by Naomi Klein highlights the necessity of hope in the political sphere. It suggests that when there is a lack of optimism or positive vision, individuals or movements may exploit that vacuum to instill fear and manipulate the populace for their own ends. Hope serves as a protective force against despair and fear-mongering, underscoring the importance of active engagement in creating a hopeful political discourse.
In practice
During a political debate, one might use this quote to emphasize the importance of hope in governance.
Because it is such a huge crisis, because it puts us on a firm science-based deadline, it's a once-in-a-century opportunity to build a better society and address raging inequality, create huge numbers of jobs, rebuild our public infrastructure. But, we can't do it unless we break every single rule in the free-market playbook. Which is why the worst people in the world all deny climate change.
Terrorism doesn't just blow up buildings; it blasts every other issue off the political map. The spectre of terrorism - real and exaggerated - has become a shield of impunity, protecting governments around the world from scrutiny for their human rights abuses.
Everybody that's trying to get anything progressive done in this country knows that the biggest barrier is getting money out of politics.
I think I would say that there is absolutely no way to reconcile an austerity agenda with climate action. Our political class needs to understand that the fight against austerity and the fight for climate action are the same fight.
I think the fossil fuel industry is genuinely freaked out by the combination of the price collapse, the divestment movement, and that fact that renewable energy is getting so cheap so fast.
As I was writing 'The Shock Doctrine', I was covering the Iraq War and profiteering from the war, and I started to see these patterns repeat in the aftermath of natural disasters, like the Asian tsunami and then Hurricane Katrina.
You know, one of the things my husband says when people say 'Well, what did you bring to Washington,' he said, 'Well, I brought arithmetic.'
We hadn't heard anything about registering to vote because when you see this flat land in here, when the people would get out of the fields, if they had a radio, they'd be too tired to play it. So we didn't know what was going on in the rest of the state, even, much less in other places.
While democracy must have its organizations and controls, its vital breath is individual liberty.
I say statecraft is soulcraft. Just as all education is moral education because learning conditions conduct, most legislation is moral legislations because it conditions the action and the thought of the nation in broad and important spheres in life.
We've been saying Putin is a dictator for years who doesn't care about the law.
It is always a disappointment to turn from forthright consideration of some subject - whether from the Left or the Right, a poet or a plumber - to the Beltway version, in which the only aspects of the issue that matter are the effects it will have on the fortunes of the two parties and the various men in power.
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