Vision Circle

Your drift has been caught. A most informative post, riddled with thought provoking questions that all readers should answer. One that stood out to me in the ongoing state of voter apathy among people, is:

"What would we settle for if we couldn't vote?"

I wish those who think their vote doesn't count would take some time to ponder the possible results of the answer....

Thanks for the read and the visit....

peace and blessings...

F!

Posted by: Fresh! at January 5, 2005 09:52 AM

What I've said about China is that it needs to decentralize its power and allow for local, but not regional elections. In that way it can decouple itself from totalitarianism and give the people election circuses if not bread.

I am coming to see 'democracy' as something secondary to liberty, and that liberty (freedom under the law) is something a bit more precious. While we may not be delivering 'democracy' to Iraq, we are certainly laying the groundwork for relative liberty.

um...., er....., ah....., did it occur to you that when one part of you calls an election a "circus", that that specific rhetorical flourish lends itself to the conclusion that all subsequent talk about "democracy" (from a different part of you?)
may be thoroughly tongue-in-cheek?

So let us discuss what it is that the average Joe America is actually involved in when we speak of democracy. Where is the recourse? How responsive is the ship of state? What would we settle for if we couldn't vote? How fungible is the voting class and the class of people that get voted into office? What is the state of the defense of liberty in the law and systems of justice which exist independent of a voting public and/or parliament? How important is a free press, and what influence does the general public have on its inquiries?

We live in a republic constituted so as to ensure that political control defaults to the wealthiest proprietors - while simultaneously lending itself to the perception of popular democratic political participation. That is the same system the U.S. seeks to implement in Iraq, but with a new and different set of proprietors. The jury is out on whether gang-violence world-wide will ultimately prove successful there. With the insurgency numbering in excess of 200,000 - odds against U.S. success there seem to be rising daily.

A free press, freedom of thought, speech and cultural production are essential theoretical requirements of democracy. Like popular elections, however, the uniquely American system of governance has made an effective practical demonstration that granular free expression isn't a meaningful threat to the broadband media hegemon skillfully utilized and controlled by the proprietor class to propagandizes the populace. The U.S. proprietor class has evolved its systems of governance to allow for the local perception of liberty without relinquishing by a single jot or tittle a degree of actual corporate control. What the system has arrived at today, would surely confound and amaze the founding fathers.

In a propagandist commercial republic, individualism is so scarce as to be negligible. However, the delusion of egoism, of will, and of *liberty* is so strong that very few people actually recognize the extent to which their behaviours are automatized and thus, governed. Once you have the overwhelming majority of people profoundly conditioned to SLEEP - OBEY - CONSUME - the question of liberty becomes moot. Such a people is entirely predictable and can be depended upon not to exercise any privileges under the law that might be contrary to the system of governance.

As for this; How thick is ethnicity and what is the modernist aspect of secularism that takes people away from it? Does secularism facilitate liberty/democracy?

I have no idea what a modernist aspect of secularism is or means. Please clarify?

This thought may be somewhat apropos to the question, if I even remotely grok it's intent;

"bad guys come first?

Leo Tolstoy once wrote: "The good cannot seize power, nor retain it; to do this men must love power. And the love of power is inconsistent with goodness; but quite consistent with the very opposite qualities - pride, cunning, cruelty."

Along the same lines, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger remarked: "In contemporary America, power increasingly gravitates to those with an almost obsessive desire to win it."

And former Attorney General Ramsey Clark: "The people we admire most are the wealthy, the Rockefellers and Morgans, the Bill Gateses and the Donald Trumps. Would any moral person accumulate a billion dollars when there are ten million infants dying of starvation every year?"

The point, which is obvious upon reflection, is that people in positions of great wealth and power tend not to be good people. Rather they tend to be greedy, ruthless, power hungry, dishonest, cruel - in short, evil people. Why? There's a simple explanation for this. People who are willing to do whatever it takes to accomplish their goals - to succeed in business, to accumulate property and wealth, to win political office, to triumph over competitors and rivals - have a greater chance of success than people who recognise and respect moral boundaries. Good people recognise such boundaries. Evil people do not.

In power struggles, therefore, evil people tend to come out on top." [Charles Mingus III, Canada]

Posted by: cnulan at January 5, 2005 11:51 AM

And yet people continue to fall in love and have babies. In fact more people fall in love and there are more babies on the planet than ever before. So if power is consolidating, and therefore by your syllogism people must be ever more evil to attain this power, how do you reconcile it? The world isn't full, and humanity isn't complete.

Therefore the good we've seen isn't the best we are capable of, nor is the evil we've seen the worst of us. That essentially leaves us at equilibrium - same as it ever was.

If the space we negotiate in, this 'propagandist commercial republic' is so inimicable to individualism, how is it that we attain happiness? Is our freedom and liberty actually less than we believe, or are we falsely attributing qualities to our society that it doesn't actually have? If, therefore our liberty isn't true liberty and yet we say we feel it, think how useless liberty must actually be, considering that we observe those elsewhere with less than ours.

Posted by: Cobb at January 5, 2005 12:15 PM

That was C.Mingus III's syllogism, btw, and people do the biological even unto the very precipices of hell itself. Come on now, even in war and famine the fikking becomes more profligate, that's wetwired in us. I'm not sure I argued that power is consolidating, simply that it's instrumentality has evolved and that it now manifests itself differently. It can enslave consciousness in ways previously reserved only unto charismatic ecclesiastical authorities.

The world is overflowing with humans, it's the smell...., to borrow a malthusian note from Agent Smith. As a matter of fact, it's our acute thermodynamic disequalibrium that is driving all the onrushing governance repositioning. (note, I did not call it consolidation. I believe we live in more interesting times than that)

If the space we negotiate in, this 'propagandist commercial republic' is so inimicable to individualism, how is it that we attain happiness?

Taking you at your word, this is how you do it.

I may not be equally at liberty to indulge those pastimes and pursuits most conducive to my subjective happiness....., (:

Is our freedom and liberty actually less than we believe, or are we falsely attributing qualities to our society that it doesn't actually have?

Obviously and of course...., it ain't about us - and never has been.

If, therefore our liberty isn't true liberty and yet we say we feel it, think how useless liberty must actually be, considering that we observe those elsewhere with less than ours.

Who is "we" pahdnah? I don't feel it and I don't say it. Tell me precisely what you believe the 200,000 odd insurgents in Iraq are fighting *us* for? Is it because they hate our freedoms? Are they like the desert fathers, fighting for an enlarged share of self-denial? Come on man, the old-saw just-so-stories are getting pretty weak and musty.

What are the Bangalore and Peking boyz striving for? Enlarged CONSUMPTION - SLEEP - OBEDIENCE as the sine qua non of modern secular governance, right? It ain't about the lumpen, it's about the proprietors. Always has been, always will be. Fill more lumpen bellies to overflow, no matter how extreme the thermodynamic disequalibrium and govern them more assuredly. Alternatively, mebbe at the proprietary level, a new found appreciation for non-secular instrumentalities of governance is enjoying a renaissance?

btw - I still need a little help with this notion you threw out earlier but didn't clarify at all;

How thick is ethnicity and what is the modernist aspect of secularism that takes people away from it? Does secularism facilitate liberty/democracy?

I have no idea what a modernist aspect of secularism is or means. Please clarify?

Posted by: cnulan at January 5, 2005 01:53 PM

Re: The thickness of ethnicity.

There are two parts. The difficult part is 'How successful is a society at negotiating power between ethnic groups'? The easier one is does the gevernment discriminate in public accomodations, or cosign discrimination in private?

In America we are very successful in getting folks to disclaim ethnic loyalties. There is relatively little advantage. We are a free and pluralistic society. That is because we believe in modernity, ie that separate peoples don't have separate destinies, rather that any of us can take on the qualities of any other. This fundamental belief underlies our emphasis on education and establishes the principles of meritocracy. There are essentially no patriarchal, religious, or feudal limits on this in America. That's NOT democracy, but it's a very important fact of life in our society.

If you had democracy, but not a belief in modernity, I believe you would have Iraq.

Posted by: Cobb at January 5, 2005 02:59 PM

Thank you for the clarification.

That is because we believe in modernity, ie that separate peoples don't have separate destinies, rather that any of us can take on the qualities of any other.

I'll go with you as far as saying we pay lip service to modernity. We preach modernity in exactly the same way we preach democracy. I believe that that's a fact.

This fundamental belief underlies our emphasis on education and establishes the principles of meritocracy.

Come on mayne. Stop pulling my leg here, you're killing me. Our emphasis on education? John Taylor Gatto say the nayno on that one and I'm inclined to agree.

There are essentially no patriarchal, religious, or feudal limits on this in America.

Overtly there are fewer. However, before agreeing and moving forward, which exclusive country club(s) do you belong to and derive the full benefits of incumbant bidnis connectivity at? (:

There are pervasive barriers of incumbency and exclusivity that have been in full effect and stringently enforced in the U.S. forever and a day - and you know this. My brutha, as retro as it may sound, there are lots of places that our half a billionaire elder and better Dr. William Cosby can't get access to and exposure in.

You and I, we belong to the mercilessly meritocratic brotherhood of the technoratti thugniggaintellectual..., if we each have the year we respectively anticipate - perhaps we can loop back around and revisit this theme from a somewhat more elevated position in january 2006. Personally, I don't eagerly anticipate spending time half a world away this year. I view that as a "must do" rather than as a "nice to have", and if things were truly more meritocratic here at home, I wouldn't have to take any sixteen hour plane rides, but that's just me. I'm contented not to have to take any 16 hour rides to put in work for subminimum wages in the desert...,

Posted by: cnulan at January 5, 2005 04:53 PM

It is the assumption of modernity that drives the consumer economy. If people didn't believe that wearing Axe cologne wouldn't make them a chick magnet, the product wouldn't exist. If PT Barnum didn't believe that there are infinite ways to create and skin a consumer, he wouldn't have a product. You can't sell those things to the Taliban. There's an intellectual assumption deeply embedded in this society.

Aside from what is available to the Hoi Polloi, vis a vis Gatto, I'm not particularly convinced that meritocracy isn't real. We've gotten to the point at which there are hundreds of people as powerful as the original American Industrialists. They can only follow the theory of expansion if they get competent people to run their businesses for them. This is the great consequence of having billions. The money has to work, which means you have to trust professionals to run your empire, and we know that it's not just the Lords and Ladies who run these empires. It's the professional class, and this class of people, CEOs who came for hardscrabble who are testament to the reality of meritocracy.

Now I don't fetishize meritocracy. I know that I know as much as the kid at UC even though I went to Cal State. I realize that there are only a very few universities in this nation which are truly selective. The difference being that the wealthy can pick and choose who they want to make rich, just looking over a short list of institutions available to the public. So meritocracy is pretty loose for entry into the middle class, and slightly tighter as you go up in class. But it is real. Rainmakers at law firms make partner, those who lose cases do not.

Incumbency is real too, but there is a difference between old money, cheap money, aggregated money, working capital and all that. In the end, if it's just sitting around being incumbent, like stagnant water, it gets foul. America works in ways and means that South America does not. You want to talk about oligarchy in markets that never change, start looking to South American congomerates. America is a lot more dynamic, and more kinds of people are in the mix.

So there's an element to the exclusivity which I dismiss. For one thing, everything is for sale, and unless there's an active market and plenty of buyers, the price goes down. If Cosby wants to buy something, then he could buy it. He could buy half of the office buildings in the Mid-Wilshire district of LA if he wanted to. Instead, there's a Korean doctor doing that. But that's not Cosby's thing. Clearly, he could make movies if he wanted to, or television. Maybe he just wants to sit on his pile, who knows? My point is, if money not moving, it's not living. Captive money is not powerful, active money is.

More later...

Posted by: Cobb at January 5, 2005 06:19 PM

Walter Williams setting it straight on whether we're a republic or a democracy.

We often hear the claim that our nation is a democracy. That wasn't the vision of the founders. They saw democracy as another form of tyranny. If we've become a democracy, I guarantee you that the founders would be deeply disappointed by our betrayal of their vision. The founders intended, and laid out the ground rules, for our nation to be a republic.

Posted by: cnulan at January 6, 2005 07:44 PM