Democracy

Life is often a beauty contest. Perhaps this accounts for the snail-pace of human progress.

Our eyes are programmed for choosing sexual mates. Our brains, however, will decide ultimately what happens to the human species. A just, functional and happy human species will depend upon those who have the intelligence, compassion and inventiveness to apply science and ethics to daily life.

Democracy is a lofty concept. Mob rule is not. When democratic institutions are used by angry mobs to vent their rage, they cease to function for the good of all the people they represent. There is an ugly mood in the U.S. at present: A group tantrum by those who have become lured into superficial materialism by Wall Street and mortgage bankers. The American middle class threw away their own national dignity abroad, their own equity, their own privacy and their own power as laborers in the Bush era. What did they get? They got LCD TVs, polluting Hummers and barn-like mini-mansions, made of junk materials.

So, as these willing victims of the 'greed-is-good' con game rage at having to pay the piper, they look to vent their regressive anger upon the progressive politicians who are trying to help them clean up their mess. They kick their feet and scream as government tries to relieve them of the burden of unaffordable health care. They throw their support behind scheming opportunists, who represent the same creeps who stole their money in the first place. They look for new scapegoats and the same old ones, like gay people, African-Americans, immigrants and others.

So, politics begin to resemble high school prom-queen and prom-king competitions. Sarah Palin, a woman who has glaringly obvious deficits as an intelligent leader, gets into the political sphere because she looks pretty and has done all the conventional 'right' things as a wife and mom. Scott Brown, the U.S. Senate candidate in Massachusetts, gets into the political sphere because he was a jock, a nude poster-boy and drives a pick-up truck. Those whose lives peaked and plateaued in high school rally to the flags of these pubescent icons.

Meanwhile, democracy and the people's real needs are discarded. They are successfully sabotaged once again by the evil forces behind the doctrine of personal greed and materialism, who gladly fund and promote this process of regression. The bankers slink away to their gated mansions with a cynical laugh at their willing dupes, the Tea-Party-style fanatics.

Today is Martin Luther King Day. Martin Luther King, who was the most inspiring man in my adolescent life, was not a pretty man. He was no prom-king candidate. He did not advocate rage or tantrums. He did not advocate selfishness or materialism. He did not support free-market capitalism. He did not whine and rant about what he wasn't getting. Martin Luther King spoke to the hearts of those who yearned for progress, social equality and economic justice for all through civil, progressive government. And, he was killed for it by the same characters who are currently funding efforts to subvert peace, the Obama administration, human rights for all and universal health care.

Make your choice. Will you indulge your own negativity? Will you go on justifying your own materialistic selfishness? Will you continue to begrudge paying taxes for social welfare programs in America while not even blinking when your taxes needlessly kill civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq? Who will you support in the voting booth?

Opportunism

Since I didn't go to Oxford or Harvard, I'll begin by quoting Wikipedia:

Opportunism is a term used in politics and political science. It forms an important rationale as well for transaction cost economics. It is interpreted n different ways, but usually refers to one or more of the following:

....a political style of aiming to increase one's political influence at almost any price, or a political style which involves seizing every and any opportunity to extend one's political influence, whenever such opportunities arise.

....the practice of abandoning in reality some important political principles that were previously held, in the process of trying to increase one's political power and influence.

....a trend of thought, or a political tendency, seeking to make political capital out of situations with the main aim being that of gaining more influence or support, instead of truly winning people over to a principled position or improving their political understanding.

Most politicians are "opportunists" to some extent at least (they aim to utilize political opportunities to their advantage), but the controversies surrounding the concept concern the exact relationship between "seizing a political opportunity" and the political principles being espoused

Milton Friedman, the Father of Contemporary Narcissistic Greed, in my opinion, is quoted as saying, "One man's opportunism is another man's statesmanship."

The problem is this: Media and politics have merged in our electronic age. Media has made politics a spectator sport. This is, of course, intentional. The powers who hold the media wish to hold the world's vision and shape it to their liking. The Fourth Estate, a free and somewhat anarchic press (newspapers), has disintegrated under electronic capitalism. The anarchy exists on the Web, but it is only anarchy within the boundaries of commercial capitalism. It is bourgeois anarchy. One must have a computer and a certain amount of capital, as well as technical education, to get one's message actually seen on the Web. In order to influence society in any way in the world of virtual information, one must subscribe to Google Ads or other mechanisms of capitalism. And this trend is becoming more and more entrenched.

So, as media and politics do their dance, politics effect media as well. And, as media is effected, or infected, with political opportunism, the whole public discourse becomes opportunistic. As the whole public discourse becomes opportunistic (think: bipartisan, extremist, materialistic, etc.), people themselves become opportunistic. Human beings tend to mimic their leaders. Now, more than ever, human beings study their leaders by being bombarded with constant information about them. Perhaps this explains why Sarah Palin has become a perfect storm of a relatively ignorant beauty queen, elevated to national political figure.

I wish I could say the leaders have taken this to heart and put their houses in order under the weight of their responsibility to the public they represent and influence. They have not.

The Oprah-ization of the population is one result. To have the light of the Oprah spotlight shine on your life is salvation in the modern culture in the US and, increasingly, in the rest of the world, as it becomes infected by American media. The Oprah spotlight now comes in many forms: American Idol, Survivor and dozens of other reality TV shows. The book-publishing industry has been particularly infected with Oprah-ism, since it was soon discovered that her magic wand can make or break an author's sales record. An author's sales record is what determines the quality of what is published more than ever in increasingly attention-deficient times.

So, what happens when a world becomes overpopulated by one predatory species, infected by opportunism? I think we are beginning to see exactly what happens in our environment and social structures. Sharp divisions between the wealthy and vast majority of struggling-to-be-wealthy. With these divisions, environmental fall-out is inevitable. China and India, among the latter class, refuse to consider curbing their carbon emissions, for one example.

As for 'American culture', what else could evolve in a country which tries to idealistically apply the illogically mutated principles of slave-owners from two centuries ago to a present world that has absolutely no scientific relationship to that past? If America turned to its present with hard and discerning eyes, it would walk away from its self-righteous meddling in the affairs of other nations with shame and embarrassment. Perhaps it would then tend to its own health and survival.