Checks, Balances, and Other Wishful Thinking
I’ve noticed something has shifted in me.
I used to believe in liberalism. In freedom, human rights, democratic institutions, and the idea that people could disagree and still find common ground. I believed in dialogue, checks and balances, and the rule of law. I thought that if we kept demanding accountability, eventually the system would correct itself.
I suppose I was a little too optimistic about the system’s willingness to do so.
The past two years have made that harder to believe. Watching Indonesian politics, the consolidation of power, the persistence of political dynasties, and the apparent difficulty of holding powerful people accountable has changed how I see things. We have elections, parliamentary debates, and all the appropriate democratic vocabulary. Yet somehow, the existence of democratic procedures is repeatedly presented as proof that democracy is working.
I’m beginning to think that having the right institutions on paper is a rather low bar.
What frustrates me most is the apparent disconnect between what the government promises and what people actually experience. We watch public officials make statements, defend their decisions, and assure us that things are under control. Then another controversy emerges, another question goes unanswered, and another round of public criticism begins. The expectation is that we should trust the process, even when the process itself deserves scrutiny.
Take karhutla, for example. Forest and land fires are not simply an environmental issue. They raise questions about prevention, land management, enforcement, institutional coordination, and who ultimately bears the cost when things go wrong. The consequences are not abstract. They affect people’s health, livelihoods, homes, and the environment they depend on.
And yet, when recurring problems expose weaknesses in governance, we somehow find ourselves having the same conversations again. There are explanations, statements, and promises. What I want to see is accountability that goes beyond explaining why something happened after the damage has already been done.
Perhaps my expectations were unreasonable. I used to think that governing meant anticipating problems, making competent decisions, and taking responsibility when things went wrong. Apparently, I was expecting too much from a job that comes with considerable public resources and authority.
The problem is not that governments make mistakes. Every government does. It is what happens afterwards: whether anyone takes responsibility, whether the same failures are addressed, and whether public criticism leads to anything beyond another round of statements.
I don’t think asking these questions should be considered radical. But increasingly, I find myself wondering how much faith we should put in institutions when accountability seems so difficult to secure.
Žižek’s writing on ideology offers an interesting way to think about this. We can recognize that something is wrong and still participate in the system that reproduces it. We criticize, express outrage, share our opinions, and carry on. Even public anger can become part of the routine. A scandal trends, everyone has something to say, and eventually the news cycle moves on.
The machinery keeps running, and we become very good at describing its problems.
I’m not immune to this, either. It is much easier to be politically aware than to know what to do with that awareness. But I am increasingly uncomfortable with how quickly incompetence, corruption, and the abuse of power can become ordinary. When every new controversy is met with some variation of “that’s just how politics works,” I wonder… are we describing reality or helping normalize it?
Machiavelli understood that political power cannot be judged simply by how virtuous it appears. In The Prince, he examines the relationship between appearances, political authority, and the maintenance of power. I don’t take that as a reason to abandon morality. I take it as a reminder to look beyond what those in power say about themselves.
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Virtue is easy to perform when it costs you nothing.
This is also why I find it increasingly difficult to accept the idea that good intentions, polite dialogue, and gradual reform will eventually solve everything. I’m not against dialogue. I’m against treating dialogue as an achievement in itself when the people affected are still waiting for results. Sometimes, the problem isn’t a lack of public discussion. It’s a lack of consequences.
I want justice. I want structural change. Sometimes, I want revolution. Not because I believe tearing everything down will automatically make things better, but because I’m no longer convinced that reform is enough when those who benefit from the status quo also have considerable influence over how much reform is allowed to happen.
At some point, we have to ask whether we’re fixing the problem or simply making it more presentable. This shift has also made me confront something (i found) less flattering about myself: I have considerably less mercy than I used to.
I’m tired of the expectation that we must always be patient, understanding, and willing to give people another chance, especially when accountability is involved. Understanding someone’s circumstances doesn’t erase the consequences of their actions. Recognizing someone’s humanity doesn’t mean protecting them from justice.
Sometimes, I want people to get exactly what they deserve. I want those who abuse power to lose the comfort of believing that consequences are for other people. And if I’m being honest, sometimes I want more than accountability. I want them to feel the weight of what they’ve done. Not a particularly noble sentiment, but an honest one.
The problem is that vengeance can become its own kind of politics. Punishment can become more important than justice, and the suffering of our opponents can become satisfying in itself. Once we decide that certain people are undeserving of empathy, almost anything can start to feel justified.
I don’t want to become someone who believes cruelty is acceptable as long as it’s directed at the right people. The world already has enough of that. But I also don’t want to keep confusing empathy with an obligation to make everyone comfortable. Why is the person demanding justice so often expected to demonstrate restraint, while the person responsible gets endless opportunities to explain themselves?
This is the part I haven’t figured out. I want to be angry enough to refuse complacency, but not so consumed by anger that I lose sight of what I’m fighting for. I want to stop romanticizing forgiveness without becoming incapable of compassion. I want to recognize people’s humanity without pretending that all actions are equally forgivable.
Maybe I’m not abandoning my old values so much as becoming less sentimental about them. I still believe in freedom, dignity, and accountability. What I’m losing faith in is the assumption that institutions will reliably uphold those values simply because they claim to represent them.
I’m also wary of revolutionary certainty. Replacing the people at the top doesn’t necessarily change the relationship between power and everyone else. History has given us enough examples of revolutions that changed the names, faces, and slogans without delivering the transformation people expected.
I’m not interested in trading one set of untouchable people for another. Still, I don’t want to mistake cynicism for intelligence. Believing that nothing can change might protect me from disappointment, but it also makes resistance pointless. And that would be rather convenient for everyone who benefits from the way things are.
So, yes, something has shifted in me. I’m less trusting, less idealistic, and less willing to give people the benefit of the doubt simply because I want to believe in their goodness. I’m more interested in what people do than what they claim to believe, and in whether accountability actually follows failure.
Whether that makes me wiser or just more difficult to live with remains to be seen.
I don’t have a neat ideological label for where I stand now. I still care about the things I used to care about, but I no longer believe that caring about them requires me to be endlessly patient with the people who undermine them. Perhaps the real challenge is figuring out what to do without the idealism I used to have. How to demand change without becoming intoxicated by destruction. How to want justice without making vengeance my only measure of satisfaction. How to remain empathetic without turning empathy into another excuse for tolerating the intolerable.
I think that’s the hardest part.
Not learning how to be angry. I’m doing quite well at that.
Learning what to do with the anger without letting it do whatever it wants with me.
