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Some comments on democracy

Craig234

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The history of the human race is largely one of hierarchical societies. From the most primitive groups of tribes with a leader and most hunting and gathering to support the tribe through every variation of that - kings, sultans, pharaohs, emperors, presidents, prime ministers, dictators, Supreme Leaders, Party Chairmen, billionaires, tycoons, and whatever other form it took - you see human history shaped by the agendas of hierarchical structures.

So instead of 'world peace' and mankind cooperating for mutual benefit, instead of the chaos of anarchy, instead of the other options for human society, you see a history of hierarchical organizations pursuing the interests of their leaders, building and warring, with the masses of people working for that leader and purpose.

In our human history, arguably the most powerful single idea that has affected this structure of society is the one of democracy, of the people having more power. It's always been a pressure, a trend, slowly over millennia. Even absolute monarchs from Roman emperors to European kings had limits on their power over people - and were sometimes even killed by them. But democracy is the idea that created a system for more power for the masses, rather than just the threat of rebellion.

The reason human history is dominated by hierarchical societies is that they are an extremely powerful way to organize society. Humans naturally form into suck societies, as we see in businesses and nearly any other organization - and even democracies are almost always a form of a hierarchical society, but simply one where the people have more power over the leaders. But having chosen leaders, it's back to the leaders setting the agenda, taxing and spending and warring.

The ideal of democracy is represented by free individuals each having a say in choosing leaders, and in doing so choosing policies. While no system is utopia, is made of benevolent people only trying to do the right thing, democracy has remarkable benefits in shifting policies from what they are under rulers who are not subject to elections.

But a very important fact is that a democratic system does not remove the same pressures that exist in any system: the pressures of inequality to have a few get more power over the many. The system of democracy - one vote per person - is designed to counter that, but the pressure remains to undermine, to overcome, democracy in every other way. And, critically, it largely succeeds.

In the ideal, the billionaire would have one vote like everyone else, his or her money useless in politics. They could go to the voting booth, tell the poll worker they are a billionaire, and be told 'that's nice. Here's your ballot'.

In practice, that is not the case. Billionaires enjoy very unequal power in many ways, and they tend to want to do so in politics as much as possible. And the obvious way to do so is to make their advantage over others matter: make money matter in politics.

California politician Jesse Unruh said, "Money is the mother's milk of politics". Not a saying that fits the ideal of democracy. But it very well fits the pressures for a hierarchical system.

In especially bad democracy, you can start to compare the vote to the pretend steering wheel given to a child, so they can be pacified by being kept busy feeling like they are getting to steer, while they actual driver determines where the car goes. The voter is encouraged to 'feel powerful' by voting, while their vote has little effect and the people with power decide the policies.

Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis recognized this permanent hierarchical pressure when he said, you can have great concentration of wealth, or you can have democracy, but you cannot have both.

The purpose of democracy is to defeat the hierarchical tyranny of greatly concentrated wealth, when the people have to serve the interests of the rules who has the wealth; the purpose of great fortunes is to enjoy that very hierarchical tyranny, which requires defeating democracy if it rears its ugly head.

Let's look at some ways great fortunes wage war on democracy.
 
There's an old metaphor about how fish don't notice water because it surrounds them so much. An example of how that applies to people is that we barely notice the very powerful system mostly invented only over the last century of 'mass communication', opinion manipulation, advertising.

There is a documentary that discusses the water of mass communication, its history over the last century, titles "Century of the Self". As one reviewer writes, describing how "instead of political leadership, we now have politics led by focus groups":

Century of the Self shows how advertising once aimed to influence rational choice. This gave way in the early 20th century to advertising aimed to connect feelings with a product. Amazingly enough, at the root of this change was Sigmund Freud’s nephew, Edward Bernays. Bernays, an American propagandist in WWI, applied his wartime experience and his uncle’s theories of the unconscious to peacetime commerce. He invented the field of public relations, popularized press releases and product tie-ins, and changed public opinion about matters ranging from women smoking to the use of paper cups — all to increase sales. Viewing politics as just another product to sell, Bernays also helped Calvin Coolidge stage one of the first overt media acts for a president, and helped engineer the 1954 coup in Guatemala on behalf of his client the United Fruit Company, by painting their democratically elected leader as communist.

I've seen many examples of how advertising science has been applied - for example, how the diamond industry created great desire for its stones, for example, turning Japan, who had no tradition of diamond rings in weddings, into adopting that practice.

There are different types of competition for political contests. One is violence. Another is rationality - the model of 'informed voters' evaluating the choices presented fairly and equally and choosing. But the system we have is the 'competition' of the mass communicating industry, which is neither violent nor rational and fair; because it requires large sums as an entry ticket to be in the game, it's a very rigged game from the start with few or sole competitors.

That alone is an important way of achieving an increased power for money. Anyone can run, but you need tens of millions of dollars to win. Anyone has free speech, but you can stand on a corner while Sean Hannity reaches millions on tv. These are 'illusions of equality'.

Since the 1970's largely, propagandizing the American public for gaining political power has become a billions of dollars industry. "Political consultants", "Marketing firms", "Think tanks" who are hired propagandist guns such as Heritage, AEI, Hoover, Cato have become the armies in the war fought by one side against the people, fueled by the weapon only one side has, money.

Many people don't see it, because they are looking for the obvious - the clumsy propaganda like "Pravda" clearly lying to them, instead of the much better quality propaganda they don't recognize, and fall for.

Even the basic technique of repetition - that a lie told loudly many times defeats the truth whispered little - is suited to the advantages of money, simply making the sponsored message much, much louder, and believed.

There is an 'opinion maintenance' industry operating 24x7, designed to keep people loyal to the 'team' they've been recruited to by this money, demonizing the 'other side'. The people who are persuaded, identify themselves as members of that team, with constant reinforcing to do so, which is very powerful.

Scientific studies have shown that once people have adopted political views that way, they literally stop hearing truths they don't agree with: the rational part of the brain that is skeptical and analyses information does not process information the partisan views disagree with. The response instead is emotional and automatic.

This massive communication system is one way money is made powerful. On to the next.
 
It's not well-known that members of Congress spend half of their time fundraising, "dialing for dollars". Because the system has been made so money-driven, they are required - to win and by their parties - to spend that half of their time raising money. Of course this has a very corrupting effect on politics, and serving those donors essentially entirely replaces any other priority in deciding the policies they support. The idea of their 'debating issues' to 'try to decide what's right' essentially vanishes, replaced by 'do what the donors are paying you to do'. The idea of 'do what you want, what is right' is a luxury they can no more afford than a hired spokesperson for a company can give their 'real personal opinion' in a company press release. Instead, their time is spent trying to 'sell' their voters on the position they support on behalf of their donors.

For a long time, I've described this with an anonymous quote: "Politicians have to LOOK good to voters, and DO good for donors." That's the system: raise the donations, do what the donors want, and try to convince voters to vote for you while those voters have essentially no say on the policies donors want.

Another way money is made powerful is the "lobbying" system. This is essentially legalized bribery. It is using money to hire former politicians and staff as "lobbyists", which allows giving them money as salary, hired to influence and distribute money - 'donations' - bribes - to current politicians. It's also little-known that more than half of former members and staff in Congress go into the lobbying industry when they leave government.

After top lobbyists Jack Abramoff was convicted, he exposed much about the system, explaining that once he told a Congressional office he was interested in hiring them when they left, they essentially worked for him while in office.

Those are three of the ways the rich interests gain more power than intended in a democracy by making their money play a large role: funding the mass communication system to influence public opinion; make politicians need their large donations to win; fund the lobbying system that is legalized bribery so politicians and staff serve you, not voters.

What this adds up to is 'democracy in name only'. This is not new. Rome had a tradition of democracy. When rulers decided to become emperors, they preserved all the trappings of democracy, and praised democracy constantly. They kept the "SPQR" on everything, which was a phrase of democracy, meaning 'the Senate and the People'. They proclaimed themselves humble public servants.

Much the same way, democracy is highly praised now - while much as the emperors did, it is undermined and defeated, a con job. It's used to deflect blame and anger - 'you can't complain, you have the vote, so you chose this'.

Traditional hierarchical societies had clear tensions; revolutions happened. Democracies try to have the same benefits for the powerful, while taking away that tension, telling people they're in charge, like the child with the pretend steering wheel. If the child has no pretend wheel, they have nothing better to do that complain if unhappy.
 
This is how we've arrived at this state, of pretend democracy, with the massive modern system of opinion influencing mass media essentially controlling public opinion - it can't even really be called 'debate' - and legalized bribery while proclaiming we have democracy. Where people can see something isn't right, but like the frustrated child steering, don't know how to articulate it of what can be done.

This corrupt system is resilient. In theory, it could be changed by the people's choice; in practice, they choose it, however masked as phony change, over real change over and over, as they did with Bernie Sanders, or lesser change such as Gary Hart or Howard Dean of John Edwards, instead choosing the less real 'change' of Bush, trump, or even 'Hope and Change' Obama.

There is a war, as their always is, for power, but only one side has an army and weapons, and their ammunition is money.

And the result is that after FDR brought the country less inequality, since Reagan inequality has skyrocketed back up, to record levels. During that period, policy changes have moved $50 trillion from the American people to the rich, resulting in the average salary being $42,000 less than it would have been under the policies before Reagan.

That is a hell of a lot of ammunition for the political war, and just as in other wars, such as WWII when the US production advantages led to victory, the rich are winning this political war.

The only way I see to move the country more toward actual democracy - to get reforms passed - is likely to shift that wealth back from the rich to the people, and to have the people organize and use that wealth in the war.

Historically, fewer than 2% of people ever give political donations, and most who do give little, leaving only one side with the weapons in the war.

For democracy to work, the role of money needs to be reduced, and for those reforms to happen, we likely need to reduce the money the rich have to prevent them.

This makes 'tax the rich' about the most patriotic slogan.
 
Unfortunately, these issues lead to where democracy can be turned against itself, where the people vote but vote for the powerful, not their own interests. People only have so much information, and that information largely comes from the 'mass communication' industry I mentioned.

There's an old anecdote about voters. When Reagan ran for governor against a popular incumbent, each speech he'd rant against the young Vietnam protesters. His campaign staff asked why, when polls showed voters didn't care about that. He told them, "they will".

Reagan's background was as a corporate spokesperson, and he understood that the election wasn't about the policies, it was about which policies the voters would choose to care about, and if he could get voters to care about the issues he wanted them to, he'd win even if they disagreed with him on other important issues. And the mass communication machine affects which issues they care about.

This is a basic example of how the manipulation works. When you see constant attacks on a figure, like Obama's famous 'tan suit' attacks, and think they sound trivial, what's going on is just trying to make people feel emotionally negative toward the target over and over and over, recognizing those emotions add up to 'I don't like them, I want them gone', and that many people vote more that way than rationally.
 
All human societies are hierarchical because human beings are naturally hierarchical. "Democracy" is a way of concealing hierarchy and allowing an oligarchic regime to rule unaccountably.
 
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