"yeah, gimme a fabrication with a side of spin, oh, and hold the truth"
“The truth? You want the truth? You can’t handle the truth!”
That timeless quote is the theory behind dictatorship and the battle cry of enlightened despots everywhere. It doesn’t hold the common man in high regard, since it posits that only a minority of the population has the capacity for governance.
The real challenge to this belief in a caste system came in Europe during the Enlightenment and then developed and evolved into a host of political philosophies that, though they differed in their solutions and specificities, all argued that greater power be given to “the people.” This ambiguously defined group seemed to posses all the good qualities of man. They were hard-working and intelligent, resolute, but prudent. Indeed, ‘the people’ seemed to be the perfect person. And the monarchy or tyranny was the corrupter of society, the source of inequality and suffering.
Marx wished the elimination of classes to create a working class utopia. The revolutionaries wanted liberty, equality, fraternity, and bread. Both ultimately failed in their venture and their ideals were corrupted and twisted into dictatorial regimes. Yet America succeeded. And it was perhaps because, despite our dearly beloved values of liberty and equality of opportunity, our founders had the intelligence and foresight to moderate the extremist trends of the Enlightenment and create a representative democracy.
Our founders didn’t want a democracy, for if they did they would have given it to us. They gave us a republic, concentrating power in the hands of wealthy elite. It was an oligarchy in many ways, but the first presidents of America and their counterparts in the Congress were patriots, and upheld the values of liberty and equality and worked to the betterment of the state. By no means was it perfect, it was simply the most democratic government of its time. The capitalist system was perhaps the real source of democracy, because it allowed freedom of movement in economic position. But a new American aristocracy, built of inherited wealth, quickly grew. And it is also to be remembered that about ¼ of the population of southern states did not have this capitalist freedom, or any freedom for that matter.
It was not until 1824 that ‘the common man’ was really campaigned to in America. Even then no radical changes came to America’s political order. A large public party in which cheese is served is a lovely gesture (especially for those of us who like cheese), but did not immediately imbue the ‘common man’ with political power. It was simply another strategy used in competition between the moneyed elite.
Meanwhile, the Congress and government in general eventually began to resemble 17th or 18th century Italian politics. The capitalist system allowed fresh blood to enter into governance, but transformismo made certain that radical changes were prevented.
I’ve just realized that I got off on a tangent. I was supposed to talk about truth, not the best form of government. Sorry about that. Right, well, the point I was going to make was that people don’t want the truth. The average person any given person (there is no average person) is not strongly motivated by a desire “to seek out the truth no matter how grim!”. They have their own goals and interests and their politics will be determined by two things.
The first is their current state. If they have been directly affected by the government, then that can strongly motivate them (unfortunately for incumbents, a person will rarely celebrate the government just because they got a job, but is more likely blame an administration if they are laid off).
The second, and infinitely more important are the varying views and positions that the politicians present to them. In ‘the good ‘ol days’ (an imaginary time usually resembling the fifties only without polio) politicians campaigned by presenting different views on an issue and attacking their opponents credibility in weird and wondrous ways. Modern politicians have a new approach. Instead of offering different opinions, they’ve started offering different facts. They are so good at it, in fact, that in the political realm there is no real difference between fact and opinion.
Any voter who now wants to make an informed decision must consider this: facts that cannot be physically touched can no longer be trusted. A different approach to choosing a candidate must be invented where facts do not factor into the equation. What are they now, but a ‘set of lies agreed upon.’
That timeless quote is the theory behind dictatorship and the battle cry of enlightened despots everywhere. It doesn’t hold the common man in high regard, since it posits that only a minority of the population has the capacity for governance.
The real challenge to this belief in a caste system came in Europe during the Enlightenment and then developed and evolved into a host of political philosophies that, though they differed in their solutions and specificities, all argued that greater power be given to “the people.” This ambiguously defined group seemed to posses all the good qualities of man. They were hard-working and intelligent, resolute, but prudent. Indeed, ‘the people’ seemed to be the perfect person. And the monarchy or tyranny was the corrupter of society, the source of inequality and suffering.
Marx wished the elimination of classes to create a working class utopia. The revolutionaries wanted liberty, equality, fraternity, and bread. Both ultimately failed in their venture and their ideals were corrupted and twisted into dictatorial regimes. Yet America succeeded. And it was perhaps because, despite our dearly beloved values of liberty and equality of opportunity, our founders had the intelligence and foresight to moderate the extremist trends of the Enlightenment and create a representative democracy.
Our founders didn’t want a democracy, for if they did they would have given it to us. They gave us a republic, concentrating power in the hands of wealthy elite. It was an oligarchy in many ways, but the first presidents of America and their counterparts in the Congress were patriots, and upheld the values of liberty and equality and worked to the betterment of the state. By no means was it perfect, it was simply the most democratic government of its time. The capitalist system was perhaps the real source of democracy, because it allowed freedom of movement in economic position. But a new American aristocracy, built of inherited wealth, quickly grew. And it is also to be remembered that about ¼ of the population of southern states did not have this capitalist freedom, or any freedom for that matter.
It was not until 1824 that ‘the common man’ was really campaigned to in America. Even then no radical changes came to America’s political order. A large public party in which cheese is served is a lovely gesture (especially for those of us who like cheese), but did not immediately imbue the ‘common man’ with political power. It was simply another strategy used in competition between the moneyed elite.
Meanwhile, the Congress and government in general eventually began to resemble 17th or 18th century Italian politics. The capitalist system allowed fresh blood to enter into governance, but transformismo made certain that radical changes were prevented.
I’ve just realized that I got off on a tangent. I was supposed to talk about truth, not the best form of government. Sorry about that. Right, well, the point I was going to make was that people don’t want the truth. The average person any given person (there is no average person) is not strongly motivated by a desire “to seek out the truth no matter how grim!”. They have their own goals and interests and their politics will be determined by two things.
The first is their current state. If they have been directly affected by the government, then that can strongly motivate them (unfortunately for incumbents, a person will rarely celebrate the government just because they got a job, but is more likely blame an administration if they are laid off).
The second, and infinitely more important are the varying views and positions that the politicians present to them. In ‘the good ‘ol days’ (an imaginary time usually resembling the fifties only without polio) politicians campaigned by presenting different views on an issue and attacking their opponents credibility in weird and wondrous ways. Modern politicians have a new approach. Instead of offering different opinions, they’ve started offering different facts. They are so good at it, in fact, that in the political realm there is no real difference between fact and opinion.
Any voter who now wants to make an informed decision must consider this: facts that cannot be physically touched can no longer be trusted. A different approach to choosing a candidate must be invented where facts do not factor into the equation. What are they now, but a ‘set of lies agreed upon.’
posted by Placeholder at 5:06 PM
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