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Re: Curmudgeons Unite!

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jon zingale

Re: Curmudgeons Unite!

Glen,

I suppose it isn't really fapping if one shows good brinkmanship :) The troubles our political institutions met during the 2016 election, via weaponized social media technologies, no doubt point to a serious vulnerability in our democratic process, and no doubt one that is being studied by more resourceful and intelligent people than I. IMO, the field was prepared long before the seeds of chaos and distrust were sown.

Over the entirety of my life, and with the complicit consent of our (mostly boomer) citizens, a devious narrative took hold that the American people were not intelligent enough or capable enough to reason about the events of their world, much less govern themselves. This perspective is too often parroted as an axiom in political conversations, where one might say, "Yeah, but do you really think that Joe Smoe on the street can...". This cultural self-shaming strikes me as having a three-fold purpose:

1. to lull the participants of a democratic republic into sitting back, taking a load off, and letting someone else drive for a while. The responsibility of governing oneself is hard work and you deserve a break today.

2. to invoke nation-wide Stockholm syndrome where individuals come to believe that since some abstract daddy or expert is better equipped to think about politics, it's better to leave the thinking to those abstractions (Chomsky's commissar argument).

3. to cultivate better consumers.

Unfortunately, a democracy cannot function this way but it seemed to be Ok for a short time. The career guys functionally operated as daddy and we could cheer them on from the comfort of our television sets. In effect, politics became a spectator sport.

As far as I can tell, this wave of disenfranchisement found purchase in a crucial transition period from Carter's administration into Regan's. Hippie-cum-yuppies, in the face of the enduring hardships of the era: cold war, peak-oil, failure in Vietnam, the rise of international terrorism, crisis of confidence, etc... did what any raised on superhero and GI Joe comic-book loving American would do, they took the blue pill. Regan offered America a return to the good times, cultures of protest withered away, and soma was had by all.

Abroad, neoliberalism (à la Regan, Thatcher, and Ayn Rand-loving Alan Greenspan) became the dominating strategy for the west over developing nations. Leadership wrt democratic ideals and stewardship of our own republic was ceded to objectivists believing in the cake of their own success bias. Meanwhile, at home, the public was weened from nutrient-rich information sources[!] and transitioned toward propaganda-driven rhetorical forms, emulating the successes of advertising culture, and through this shift, our sound-byte culture was quickened.

What makes the actions to delegitimize our trusted institutions so insidious is that the critique isn't wrong. For a brief period in the '90s and leading up to the WTO/IMF protests in Seattle, political unrest was beginning to wake from its nearly two-decade-long slumber. Discontents (realizing the vanishing prospects for their own creation of wealth, imminent environmental collapse, and the wholesale exploitation of developing nations) formed grassroots movements to confront the irresponsibility of Regan-era good time thinking. Well, at least until the unfortunate events of 9-11 epiphenomenologically nipped all movement in the bud, and ushered in an era of terror, and like a good family, the public banned together to support the suspension of even the most basic of civil liberties.

When you say, "As I understand it, the attack was a successful use of active measures. The objective was to find *extant* rifts in US society and exploit them. This resulted in a sophisticated data science-driven attack on platforms via technology like Facebook", I sympathize and can only feel grave disappointment that this is the legacy we inherited. Fixing things, as far as I can tell, will require investment in the capability of the American people and the disruption of a program to produce good consumers. Short of that, I don't know what the next steps will need to be, but I suspect those steps will involve a good therapist.

Jon

[!] Paralleled almost symbolically by world-wide and aggressive campaigns to

market substitute breastmilk.

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Merle Lefkoff-2

Re: Curmudgeons Unite!

Thanks for the video John. The last authentic voice in the Presidency. I'm proud to have called him my boss for a year and a mentor for many more. I too am gravely disappointed.

On Sun, Aug 30, 2020 at 2:15 PM Jon Zingale <[hidden email]> wrote:

Glen,

I suppose it isn't really fapping if one shows good brinkmanship :) The troubles our political institutions met during the 2016 election, via weaponized social media technologies, no doubt point to a serious vulnerability in our democratic process, and no doubt one that is being studied by more resourceful and intelligent people than I. IMO, the field was prepared long before the seeds of chaos and distrust were sown.

Over the entirety of my life, and with the complicit consent of our (mostly boomer) citizens, a devious narrative took hold that the American people were not intelligent enough or capable enough to reason about the events of their world, much less govern themselves. This perspective is too often parroted as an axiom in political conversations, where one might say, "Yeah, but do you really think that Joe Smoe on the street can...". This cultural self-shaming strikes me as having a three-fold purpose:

1. to lull the participants of a democratic republic into sitting back, taking a load off, and letting someone else drive for a while. The responsibility of governing oneself is hard work and you deserve a break today.

2. to invoke nation-wide Stockholm syndrome where individuals come to believe that since some abstract daddy or expert is better equipped to think about politics, it's better to leave the thinking to those abstractions (Chomsky's commissar argument).

3. to cultivate better consumers.

Unfortunately, a democracy cannot function this way but it seemed to be Ok for a short time. The career guys functionally operated as daddy and we could cheer them on from the comfort of our television sets. In effect, politics became a spectator sport.

As far as I can tell, this wave of disenfranchisement found purchase in a crucial transition period from Carter's administration into Regan's. Hippie-cum-yuppies, in the face of the enduring hardships of the era: cold war, peak-oil, failure in Vietnam, the rise of international terrorism, crisis of confidence, etc... did what any raised on superhero and GI Joe comic-book loving American would do, they took the blue pill. Regan offered America a return to the good times, cultures of protest withered away, and soma was had by all.

Abroad, neoliberalism (à la Regan, Thatcher, and Ayn Rand-loving Alan Greenspan) became the dominating strategy for the west over developing nations. Leadership wrt democratic ideals and stewardship of our own republic was ceded to objectivists believing in the cake of their own success bias. Meanwhile, at home, the public was weened from nutrient-rich information sources[!] and transitioned toward propaganda-driven rhetorical forms, emulating the successes of advertising culture, and through this shift, our sound-byte culture was quickened.

What makes the actions to delegitimize our trusted institutions so insidious is that the critique isn't wrong. For a brief period in the '90s and leading up to the WTO/IMF protests in Seattle, political unrest was beginning to wake from its nearly two-decade-long slumber. Discontents (realizing the vanishing prospects for their own creation of wealth, imminent environmental collapse, and the wholesale exploitation of developing nations) formed grassroots movements to confront the irresponsibility of Regan-era good time thinking. Well, at least until the unfortunate events of 9-11 epiphenomenologically nipped all movement in the bud, and ushered in an era of terror, and like a good family, the public banned together to support the suspension of even the most basic of civil liberties.

When you say, "As I understand it, the attack was a successful use of active measures. The objective was to find *extant* rifts in US society and exploit them. This resulted in a sophisticated data science-driven attack on platforms via technology like Facebook", I sympathize and can only feel grave disappointment that this is the legacy we inherited. Fixing things, as far as I can tell, will require investment in the capability of the American people and the disruption of a program to produce good consumers. Short of that, I don't know what the next steps will need to be, but I suspect those steps will involve a good therapist.

Jon

[!] Paralleled almost symbolically by world-wide and aggressive campaigns to
market substitute breastmilk.
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Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
Center for Emergent Diplomacy
emergentdiplomacy.org

Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

mobile: (303) 859-5609
skype: merle.lelfkoff2

twitter: @Merle_Lefkoff

gepr

Re: Curmudgeons Unite!

In reply to this post by jon zingale

While I appreciate your narrative, it's not clear to me how that story hardens the digital voting app against the successful exploitation we're seeing in our representation. While the therapist comment seems to be cheeky, there's a good argument to be made that universal healthcare or a basic income or even establishing election day as a national holiday would instantaneously make all American's *better* consumers. Poverty is exhausting. Freeing people up to think a little harder about *who* they're voting for would help a lot. It's fairly easy for us wealthy people to look down on the sick and tired for their ignorance and stupidity. It takes significant effort to restructure the world so that they're less sick and less tired.

Re: Roger's lament of why we can't all work on higher order pursuits, I take Sturgeon's Law seriously, it's easier to foster the 10% of everything that isn't crap if all 100% of us have our basic needs met. Sure, there's some truth to Republican fears that if you give lazy people an inch, they'll take a mile. But by *not* giving the ~30% of the US population near-poverty enough time and energy to *think*, we miss out on whatever it might be any crypto-Musks would think about or work on.

If a digital voting app can help solve such problems, I'd like to know how. If it can't, much like the neuralink, it will simply be another tool by which the rich exploit the poor, by which those of us *with* free time/energy exploit those of us without free time/energy.

On August 30, 2020 1:14:35 PM PDT, Jon Zingale <[hidden email]> wrote:
>Fixing things,
>as far as I can tell, will require investment in the capability of the
>American people and the disruption of a program to produce good
>consumers.
>Short of that, I don't know what the next steps will need to be, but I
>suspect those steps will involve a good therapist.

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uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen