Musings on the Assault on Reason, how to counter

Posted by: frogcycle

“The derivation of just power from the consent of the governed depends on the integrity of the reasoning process through which that consent is given. If the reasoning process is corrupted by money and deception, then the consent of the governed is based on false premises, and any power thus derived is inherently counterfeit and unjust. If the consent of the governed is extorted through manipulation of mass fears, or embezzled with claims of divine guidance, democracy is impoverished. If the suspension of reason causes a significant portion of the citizenry to lose confidence in the integrity of the process, democracy can be bankrupted.” – Al Gore, The Assault on Reason p. 73

We are there, folks.

The power held by the current ruling junta is oh-so-very unjust. It used and uses mass fear and claims of divine guidance to extort consent. But more to the point, the actions, or lack thereof, of those who were granted power specifically to oppose that junta have caused a collapse of confidence in the integrity of the process. The citizenry now believe, with no small justification, that their consent was extorted by the second group through mass fear of the first group. The behavior of those granted power by We the People to clean up this mess appears to be focused largely on retaining that power, and if that means making a deal with the devil, they will do so.

I continue to be somewhat willing to accept reality. The evil junta has been allowed to establish itself so deeply that excising it is a far greater challenge than the removal of a handful of its more visible representative who currently occupy positions of power. Just as the cio (Current Illegal Occupant of the White House) has repeatedly stated that taking out bin Laden would not destroy Al Qaeda, the MACHINE running this country would not be significantly set back by sacrificing cios I and II.

That said, it would be most satisfying to see bin Laden taken out, and likewise to see this pair removed from office. The agonizing calculation, though, is what would be the consequences? Just as all sorts of dire predictions can be made about the aftermath of an abrupt withdrawal of American troops from Iraq, one can speculate that an impeachment and likely failure to convict would energize that unfortunately large component of the citizenry whose consent was so easily extorted before to set aside their doubts and grant further unlimited power to the MACHINE. Not to act, though, is to grant immunity, to give tacit approval, basically to just toss the Constitution in the trash, saying “nice try, but its over.” To act, though, may be tilting at windmills.

The question we face is “who are these people, and what motivates them?” I refer to those in power and aspiring to power based on claims of favoring civil liberty and supporting the basic tenets of the Constitution. Are they honorable? Do they mean anything of what they say? Or are their claims of supporting the Constitution and opposing the rule of wealth just another brand of extorting consent? Are they using the Constitution to lull us into granting them power just as the Falwells and Dobsons use the Bible?

What makes Nancy Pelosi tick? Is being the first female Speaker the most exciting thing in her life? Is it more important to her than, say, saving the Union? Does she have a grand plan to salvage our form of government? That sounds eerily like Nixon’s “secret plan” to end the Viet Nam war. He said “just trust me” and many of us did. It is hard to believe now, but that was Johnson’s war – a Democrat – and the populace granted their consent to the Nixon-fronted MACHINE based largely on the knowledge that the consent of the governed had been extorted through manipulation of mass fears – and assassination of three populist leaders in a span of five years. Humphrey was probably one of the good guys, might well have changed the course of history. But he was associated with Johnson, who was clearly one of the bad guys.

How can We the People find people to elect who are not just more corporate shills? How can we KNOW what makes the candidates tick? How can we trust ANY of them to go ahead and tilt at those windmills?

Senator Biden is absolutely correct that the single most critical change necessary to righting our ship of state is public funding of elections. It needs not just to be limits on donations, disclosure requirements, etc. It needs to be a Chinese Wall. Unless the cycle of requiring obscene amounts of money for 30-second advertisements and giving obscene amounts of money for special interests is broken, our supposed form of government is gone. With the current situation, the “consent of the governed” is obtained not through logic and reason, but through mind-manipulation. The election is not a plebiscite, but simply a measure of the relative success of advertising campaigns. It has no more significance to the actual “will of the people” than does the relative market shares of brands of beer or headache remedy.

That cancer must be excised, or none of the more visible issues will ever truly be addressed. Wars will be started because the war machine needs them to maintain its p/l statement. Healthcare reform will not occur, because the healthcare machine is making obscene amounts of money and will continue to buy lackeys to keep it in power. No populist causes – poverty, aids, education, jobs, etc. – will be furthered, because the power lies with the few, not the many, and those few are the ones who actually grant “consent of the people” by delivering votes with money for mind manipulation

This nation is at a crossroads. There may still be a possibility of salvaging our form of government, but it is questionable. Just as climate change may already be past a tipping point, and the loss of the ice caps may be inevitable, our Constitution may already be dead. In the latter half of the eighteenth century, a number of exceptionally wise and insightful people foresaw a bright future for humankind if a new approach to government could be established. They published papers, met in secret, conspired to put an end to tyranny. They knew that if their efforts failed, they would be hanged. And yet they proceeded. They did not have popular support at the outset. Only as the revolutionary War progressed did the atrocities of the British army sway public sentiment to support general Washington’s ragtag army.

Where is George Washington today? Where is Tom Paine? Where is Thomas Jefferson? The atrocities of the current King George are swaying public sentiment, to be sure. But we don’t have a Continental Army with a George Washington at its head struggling through a winter at Valley Forge, earning our loyalty, firing us up to deny the 30-second-commercial purveyors their power.

What we do have is the author of the book I quoted at the top of this discussion. We do have Joe Biden’s assessment of the root cause. We do have John Edward’s championing of healthcare for all. We do have Bill Richardson’s call to get all troops out. We do have Wes Clark’s voice of reason with respect to diplomacy and war. We do have Thom Hartman, Bill Press, Keith Olbermann, Randi Rhodes, collectively contributing reasoned thought analogous to Paine’s Common Sense. These, and others, are our Continental Army.

But we may not survive Valley Forge. The mechanism to enable these people collectively to re-establish the form of government those heroes gave us over two hundred years ago may not exist. They may go quietly into the night as the MACHINE grooms another lackey and inserts him in power with a big grin and “aw shucks” demeanor to lull the populace into signing up for another tour.

If Michael Bloomberg is sincere in his concern for populist issues, and his record as mayor seems to bear that out, then I submit that he would serve the country better by using his wealth not to attempt to buy the presidency, but, rather, to support a peaceful revolution. Buy hour-long prime time slots on broadcast TV and put all those people mentioned above, and many more, on to just do “fireside chats” with the public. No screaming, no talking over each other, no namecalling. No extremist point-counterpoint just to jack up ratings. Join the battle against the Assault on Reason. There have been good, thought-provoking panel discussion programs on television, generally on PBS and at unpopular viewing times. Get them front-and center. Bloomberg himself might even be the right person to serve as host and moderator. The few short interviews I’ve seen have impressed me.

Rather than sponsoring these idiotic so-called “debates” that just feed the sound-bite, horse race, popularity contest mentality, we need to get people talking and thinking about what is right and what is wrong, and mobilizing a campaign to fix it. Selecting the President can come later. Just as Washington was not campaigning for President, or King, when he led the Continental Army, we need to be working with, listening to, talking to thought leaders who can mount a peaceful revolution to take back our government.

A key would be to have people like Bill Kristol on and challenge them to lay out their supposed logic for their bizarre (to me at least) world views – not in sound bites, but in a serious discussion. Ultimately, an informed populace, we can hope, will reject their views, once they are fully understood. Oh how I would love to watch an hour of Al Gore going toe-to-toe with any of those neocons. Not a structured, canned, moderated non-debate. Just a reasoned discussion. Have them looking each other in the eye, not standing at a podium looking at a camera.

Would it not be a sweet irony if extreme wealth trumped wealth?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x474927

The Founding Fathers were more than a little brilliant. They designed a complex system, accounting for the vagaries of human nature, that worked pretty well for a long time. They could not foresee some of the developments of the late 20th century - technology and population growth - that would strain the design, that have strained it near the breaking point.

The elegant design the Founding Fathers developed can still work; it just needs some additional features to deal with the changes to the environment in which it must operate.

Way back in engineering school - when we still used slide rules - I took a course in automatic controls. It taught mathematical means to design systems such as manufacturing processes to maintain desired results within certain limits. A very simple example would be your home thermostat controlling your furnace. A more complicated one would be an airliner's autopilot.

That course provided some fantastic lessons in life - not in the specific math, but in the concepts. I won't go in to all, but one of the really basic ones was the process of determining whether a system is convergent or divergent. A convergent system has the necessary feedback loops designed in to keep nudging it toward the desired results. A divergent system may have plenty of sensors, feedbacks, and inputs, but they are designed improperly. A divergent system flies apart. Every time it drifts from the desired state, the response is to overcompensate, causing it to go too far the other way. Like a driver panicking in a skid, jerking the wheel, going into a fishtail until finally doing a 360 and splattering against something.

What we have in our country with sound bites as sensors and reactionary extremists responding is a divergent system. Our airliner, instead of flying straight and level, is flipping back and forth like an out of control car going guardrail to guardrail.

We desperately need, as Gore so eloquently explains, to restore reasoned discourse. We the People are supposed to be flying this plane. But we've turned it over to a poorly-designed, divergent autopilot and gone back into the cabin to watch American Idol.

I don't know if my Bloomberg panel is a good suggestion - it was a spur of the moment digression after starting out to talk about campaign finance and how THAT is the current "automatic pilot" flying us into a mountainside.

But it is an example of the sort of thing we need. Without question, if democracy is to survive, it absolutely MUST have a "well-informed citizenry," which we simply do not have. And there is a Catch-22. You can't really blame Big Business or greedy political hacks, or even the MSM for responding to the feedback loops in their worlds. They want power and wealth, and they home in on perceived paths to that state (oh, you can say they are not nice people as individuals, but from a systems perspective, being nice is not a reliable design component anyway). Democracy requires a collective system that self-corrects when any of its parts go divergent. Checks and balances are not just a bumper sticker. They are the fundamental, critical design components of this system. And ours are broken. The way they got broken, primarily, is a loss of interest in knowing the facts and making reasoned decisions in the general populace. Al Gore says that is a television-age phenomenon. I certainly agree that there is coincidental timing. But I suspect it is more than that. I suspect that as our population has grown and technology has advanced, a general feeling of insignificance has exacerbated it. Television may be more a symptom - it is easier to stare mindlessly at the tube than tio get yourself all stirred up over something you cannot influence.

I think that in addition to getting various forms of "Roman Forum" discourse going as I suggested in the OP, we also need much more involvement in local politics. People need to feel they CAN make a difference. Voter turnout in national elections is terrible, but turnout in local-only is far worse. We need more activist governors doing things like campaigning for clean air or stem cell research or prescription drugs for elderly on a state level. Frankly, we need to marginalize the Federal Government. Congress has proven it is a divergent system. They cannot pass anything. "Debate" is just a series of guardrail-to-guardrail talking point recitations, followed by a predictable vote on party lines. Part of the system of checks and balances, in addition to the three-coequal-branch structure of the federal government and the two-house congress, is also the preservation of states as governmental entities. "State's Rights" became a catchphrase for racism back in the mid-1800's and also in the 1950's-'60's. And that is unfortunate, because instead of just balancing that with federal intervention on the issues, there has been a tendency to overcompensate. Lincoln is said to have planned on a Reconstruction which might have been philosophically similar to the Marshall Plan. Instead we got carpetbaggers and a century of second-class treatment of an entire region. In this century, we have seen the federal government grow in power, fed by the money machine, marginalizing state-level government. Now "earmarks" are a primary means of getting things done on a local level. Instead of a state funding a program to do something, it gets the company who hopes to benefit to lobby its representatives and senators to send federal funds to pave the road or build the bridge or whatever. In the process, the company probably gets a fat contract with obscene profits, the lobbyists themselves get a fat cut, the politician gets a cut, and the citizenry gets a shoddy bridge. Or maybe a good one. The logic that they could not fund it locally and "need" those federal funds to do it has become a self-fulfilling prophecy. One locality gets federal funds for its bridge, meaning taxpayers from other states build a bridge in Illinois, or Alaska, or wherever, so the Illinoisans or Alaskans feel good about the system - but they are also paying taxes that go to the other people's earmarks!

At the end of the day, what gets built gets built, and it gets paid for. You can either have a system wherein a lot of people skim off money, making everything too expensive and probably shoddy, or you can have a lean, well-managed system wherein stuff gets done efficiently. The so-called reconstruction in Iraq is an extreme example of the "system" our federal government has turned in to. Only the accumulation of wealth and power of the few is connected to the controls. The result is a debacle, and that is where our country is heading.

Most importantly, most critically, we absolutely need to listen to Biden. Break that evil engine that drives nearly everything the Federal Government does. Blow up the entire K Street cabal. Build that Chinese Wall. That system has a stranglehold, and those of us attempting to be informed and involved continue to feel helpless.

bin Laden "taken out"? Is it because you think that despite the fact that he is on dialysis, was in a military hospital in Riwalpundi, Pakistan the night before September eleventh (I don't know when he was released), lived in a cave in a remote area of Afghanistan, evidently provided great assistance to the United States in its drive to oust the Soviets from that country, and logically would not seem to have access to U.S. military secrets concerning the planned military exercises that had been set for September eleventh, in spite of all that I take it that you still believe that he was the man responsible for the attacks rather than being the scapegoat for them. IS that your view?

You're the one who did good under Reagan, and didn't answer my question about immigration/overpopulation.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=1142148#1142790

You post a lot of assumptions there.

OVERpopulation anywhere has negative and social consequences that outweigh the benefits that innure to the tiny percentage of people who benefit therefrom.

I'll not dignify it with an answer

No one is going to chastize you for showing that you are gracious person who is so thoughtful that s/he will answer questions even if they are posed by someone that you feel doesn't even deserve the benefit of your own point of view.

Take the higher ground. You'll feel better for it.

that you couldn't give a rat's ass for my point of view.

I opt out of hijacking the thread to go down the rabbit hole with you.

You raised the issue of Mr. bin Laden, and I merely asked you to clarify your position on why you believe "he should be taken out".

You have the right to your viewpoint, but if you refuse to answer the question, how can I possibly give a rat's behind for it? Could it be that you simply (gratuously) threw out that bit about bin Laden
without thinking about what you said? Is that possible/probable?

"There is no question an honest person won't answer".

Sounds very reasonable to me. Of course, if one doesn't want to, or can't answer a question, it's also reasonable that they would use the excuse that the question doesn't deserve an answer. However, in the case at hand, the question is based information already on the record. So, the proposition that "There is no question that an honest person will evade" stands on its own merits.

Would you like to address the question about bin Laden? Go ahead. Give it your most intellectually honest, let-the-chips-fall-where-they-may answer. Thanks. I'll wait.