The idea of politics as the art of the possible is a common conception which has valuable insights. ‘We’, whoever we are, can only do so much. We cannot suddenly change the course of a whole country or the world – perhaps if you are president of the USA you can disrupt things significantly but you still cannot persuade capitalist financial markets to fall into line and thus even that level of power does not give you complete freedom to do whatever you want. We are also dealing not just with current policies of governments but with cultural perceptions, some of which are unique to our own part of the world but all influenced by powerful forces including vested interests of media owners.

In this situation there are limits to what we can do but we can still do plenty. Witnessing and symbolic actions can point to a different way forward. Thinking about better possibilities can take many forms though leaflets, articles, blogs, video as well as longer works. Street theatre and innovative forms of communication, including ‘listening projects’ (listening to people’s concerns without a particular goal or project in mind) can help us break out of our silos. And constructive action in building alternatives and alternative ways of doing things can show that a different kind of politics and future is possible, including how decisions are made inclusively.

Idealism and realism should be partners rather than enemies. While we need an ultimate vision of the kind of society we are working for, we also need concrete achievable goals – these may be very small, even insignificant to an outsider – so we know that our work can bear fruit. And we also need to celebrate what successes we do have, and learn from both them and our failures.

But we need to be careful what we wish for. Donald Trump may be working at a very different level to most of us but he has not been careful in what he wishes for, nor thought out the repercussions of his actions. His stated goal, whatever that might mean, is to Make America (the USA) Great Again. But his policies are actually making the USA less powerful, less influential, and potentially poorer in the longer term. Confidence in the USA has dived internationally and even within the USA those concerned with the capitalist economy are negative or uncertain about his policies. Being nasty and mean has repercussions.

Whether the military empire of the USA, with 800 or so military bases internationally (Shannon Airport clearly counts as one), continues in the same way as before remains to be seen. But the president of the USA making threats against neighbouring countries, whether he acts on those threats or no, is a very poor policy in winning friends and influencing people – and ‘soft power’ is ultimately much more important than ‘hard’ power or military might. ‘Might is right’ is the approach to ruin.

At ‘our’ own level of NGOs, peace, voluntary and community action, it is clear that cooperation and building alliances is key. Politics goes through phases and cycles too and the going can be tough currently with right wing and militarist policies being predominant, even with a supposedly social democratic government as in the UK. And in Ireland, North and Republic, we have forces afraid to depart from the status quo except to take things in a more reactionary direction (as with the reprehensible attack on the Triple Lock on the deployment of Irish troops overseas).

Politics is the art of the possible. But it is also our job to expand both our own and other people’s perception of what is possible. Mohandas Gandhi said (and it is available as a mini-poster for home printing on the INNATE website at https://innatenonviolence.org/wp/posters/ – look under ‘Gandhi…’) “We are constantly being astonished these days at the amazing discoveries in the field of violence. But I maintain that far more undreamt of and seemingly impossible discoveries will be made in the field of nonviolence.”

We know a different world is possible from all the examples of love and solidarity that exist, and from whole societies in the past who have done things rather differently. We know that current policies and relationships are unsustainable. We need to build bridges from where we are currently to where we need to be to survive – ecologically and in relation to military power so we neither destroy our ecosystem nor kill ourselves off in warfare. There is much work to be done and our steps, small but resolute, can help to make the essential difference.

There are different takes on the nature of humanity, of homo ‘sapiens’. However the notion of the ‘survival of the fittest’ is largely discredited. ‘Survival’ is more a question of cooperation, innovation and cross-fertilization and we can take that into the political world too.

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