The Chamber is on recess, so you and I can talk about a business cabinet. Recently, the word was spoken on Saturday morning during Kees Boonman’s radio commentary. He compared the chaos in the British House of Commons with the excitement in the House of Representatives. In both parliaments they are only concerned with themselves, Kees said. They see that themselves, according to presenter Mieke van der Weij. No, they don’t see that, otherwise the problems would have been solved long ago, Kees said. And then the word business cabinet came up.
A business cabinet, therefore, preferably with men who make decisions. How about Ben van Beurden from Shell? He will retire immediately. Or Frans van Houten, beware of Philips. Dick Benschop at Foreign Affairs? Mentioning company directors who are going to make decisions is a fun party game for the fall break. But there is the less cheerful suggestion that in the parle-parle-parliament they are just chatting away, while the real problems remain.
In short, the business cabinet is not such a very democratic idea, which appears in all kinds of variants. Karel van het Reve once wrote that you have to write an idiotic article every week de Volkskrant is reading. Recently I was thinking about him. A certain Jurriën Hamer, philosopher, had explained in a hefty opinion piece that if we just put our pride aside now, the problems would disappear like snow in the sun. Because if we are honest, there is no difference of opinion about what is wrong: inequality is not allowed, the meat processing industry cannot and global warming must stop.
But our pride gets in the way of admitting our own contribution to all sorts of misery, and that’s why we don’t get on. In one effort Jurriën Hamer swept the voters of CDA and VVD together with Wilders and Forum, after all, all in the denial phase. The bottom line was that with a little self-awareness, the earthly paradise would be within reach. It was an instructive article. The philosopher had not mastered the principle of all politics, which is to struggle over differences of opinion without smashing each other’s heads. His assumption was that every decent person should think the same about what is wrong in the world. But if we agree on the problems and the solutions, why not leave it to philosophers? Plato thought so, also a philosopher, and not exactly a democrat.
It was indeed an instructive article. After reading it I also understand better why the presumptuous we-form is so often written in the newspaper. Colleague Max Pam recently complained about so many we-documents, and I too am annoyed by all those articles that push themselves to speak on my behalf. It is the we-form of the pulpit, of the magisterium that tells the parishioners what we all think of it again this Sunday. The we-form is the opposite of the liberal idea to let a thousand flowers bloom. After all, it is a totalitarian we, because according to Jurriën Hamer, deviation leads to rejection.
Democratic politics means that every equal is provisional. That’s why professors usually don’t do very well in politics any more than businessmen. My friend Leo Lucassen thinks that reciting sober facts is the same as being right in politics. But politics has less to do with facts than with the art of judgment. There may soon be another cabinet that weighs the facts differently.
Precisely because you can argue about the facts, we have a free press. I shudder at the suggestion to ban the broadcaster Ongehoord Nederland. I’ve never seen a snippet of it and would like to keep it that way. Without a doubt, there have been cringe-inducing programs. But the main indictment is that Ongehoord Nederland is reporting that is contrary to the facts. When it comes to facts, it never hurts to repeat what the great sociologist ANJ den Hollander wrote: a fact is like a bag that only stands up when you put something in it. Secretary of State Gunay Uslu should reconsider that. If governments get involved in facts, the Chinese People’s Congress is not far away. My grandfather used to say: there is a button on the TV, and that is the right solution for Ongehoord Nederland.
Democratic politics is above all the realization that your problem is not the problem. Someone who clings to the girl with the pearl earring because global warming was not solved yesterday makes an infantile impression. Politics is tough and democratic politics at all. Before the Afsluitdijk closed, there was a dispute for sixty years, as you can read in the beautiful book by Eva Vriend, Once upon a time the sea raged here (2020). Lately, one politician after the other has collapsed with a burnout. That has to do with the insane demands that are made of politics and that politicians then make of themselves. The aim is nothing less than to solve the problems. The question is no longer whether something is possible, it simply has to be done. No wonder that everything is going wrong, from youth care to the Gazprom ban, and from asylum shelters to nitrogen deposition. Calm down a bit, would be my advice for after the recess.