A Common Complaint

Hmm. Lots to discuss here. Especially as I seem to be the guy who knows everything about multithreaded processing on early x86 chips.

Let’s start with the obvious. In modern (post-great depression) history, I think the Democratic Party has had three distinct phases. The first and longest was the New Deal/Civil Rights era. This started with the election of FDR in 1932, and continued on through about 1968. In this era, the Democratic party really was the party for the common guy. Not even the poor, but the middle class, primarily the factory workers. This was when Labor became a big supporter of the Democratic party. This was the era that gave us Social Security, Welfare, Medicare/Medicaid, banking reform, civil rights, etc. Then, starting in about 1968, the age of identity politics in the Democrats happened. By 1980, identity politics was king. And, I note, that labor was no longer a real supporter of the Democrats (like they used to be). Yes, Labor Unions still supported the Democrats overwhealmingly, but this no longer translated to Labor Union *members* supporting the Democratic party. The laborers switched sides in huge numbers to support Reagan, and increasingly supported the Republicans.

Identity politics, however, was a loser position. So by 1992, you had the rise of the “New Democrats”, the DLC- also known as the corporatists. With the election of Clinton in ’92, the Corporatists were in charge of the party. And again, it was out with the old and in with the new. To secure it’s position, the identity politicians were attacked mercilessly. Have you heard from Jesse Jackson recently?

Here’s the fundamental problem being debated. Ignore the internet for a moment. To win campaigns, you need to get your message out there. Which means you need money. This is why money is so important to campaigns. No money, no advertising. No advertising, no votes. No votes, no win. So the *explicit* purpose of the DLC and the New Democrats is to make the Democrats more friendly to the big money donors. Which means, in effect, becoming the party of big corporations. Or more specifically, the people who run the big corporations, the neoaristocracy.

Unfortunately, it’s turning out that this is at least as much a loser position as identity politics is. The problem is that the corporations only need one party. And the Democratic party can not shake it’s legacy of supporting non-billionaires, and so isn’t really trusted by the neoaristocracy. Nor is it much needed, now that the Republicans are in charge. The Republican disenfranchisement of the Democrats isn’t just about raw, naked power and screaming hubris (although it is about those things)- it’s also about draining corporate support from the Democrats. Why support the Democrats at all, when the Democrats have no influence to sell? The longer you keep supporting Democrats, the more expensive it’ll be when you finally switch. Besides, you never know when a Democrat might have an attack of conscience and vote for the good of the nation and the non-rich over what you want.

The solution, as told to us by the likes of Biden and Liebermen and Bayh, is to become even more corporatist. This has striking similiarity to the logic of the extremist, who interprets every setback as evidence that they simply weren’t extreme enough.

The solution, I think, for the Democratic party, is to go the other direction. To pick back up the mantle of the New Deal. But to do that, we need to lose the corporatists. Preferably we need to take them out ourselves.

Now, on to other subjects. As to why the blogsphere isn’t polite: hey, welcome to the human race. This is what humans sound like talking to each other honestly. I’ve been involved with various on-line communities for years, starting with the old BBS culture back in the early-mid eighties. Actually, comparitively, the blog sphere is remarkably polite and on-topic. And this isn’t the first time I’ve heard complaints about the level of discourse online either- it’s not even the five hundred and first time. But I’ll try to provide more insight than the flip “hey, if you can’t stand the heat, stay out of the line of fire” which is my normal response.

The first, and fundamental problem, is that a large number of people aren’t used to being confronted. In many circles, simply going “you’re wrong” is a social blunder of such stunning magnitude that it can only be assumed to be an attack. Add in many people’s inability to differentiate their ideas from themselves, and the lack of body/facial language over the internet, and you get a lot of hard feelings and overreaction. Note that this happens across the board- not just in political discussions, but in discussions about everything. One of the worst cases I ever saw was on a list devoted to the works of a particular science fiction author.

Like I said, welcome to the human race. Although I will note that the right-wing political blogsphere tends more towards testosterone-laden pissing contests, and the left-wing tends more towards passive-aggressive political correctness, both sides demonstrate the full range of misbehavior.

Now, on to wicked problems. Bluntly, science and engineering (which includes programming) deal with “wicked” problems all the time. The problem comes in with politics when simply because 99.9% of the data support position A, and 0.1% of the data support position B, the proponents of position B can still claim the matter is “undecided”, and that therefor they should be considered as right as the supporters of position A. This is exactly what is going on with the evolution vr.s creationism debate.

Another thing to remember is that the perception of the Democratic party, while partly earned, is primarily the result of the information given out by the broadcast media. Which, not to put too fine a point on it, is one step shy of being nothing but Republican propoganda (less than that in the case of Fox News). People overwhealmingly support liberal positions- supporting social security, supporting single payer health care, supporting good (taxpayer funded) public schools, etc. You ask people if they support specific liberal/progressive platforms (without identifying them as such), you generally get 50-70% support. But you ask people if they’re liberal, and fewer than 1 in 5 will claim to be so. Why? Because of the incesent drum beat from the media that liberal=evil. Liberals in league with Osama Bin Laden plot to destory America- film at 11! Guess what. Fifty plus years of that drum beat has an effect.

No, I’m going to go a step further. The media- and Armed Liberal- fuel the rising tide of anti-intellectualism in this country. Which is a far greater threat than any terrorist organization, and on par with threat posed by the Soviet Union at it’s zenith. What the Democratic party needs to do is get rid of the educated people? Or at least make them embarassed to be educated? I’ve got bad news for you people: this country was founded by liberal, highly educated, elite. Take a look at the founding fathers. Intellectual giants, every single last one of them. And they’re not intellectual giants because they founded this country, they founded this country (and in the way they did) because they were intellectual giants. And it goes back farther than that- our founding fathers were the inheritors and implementors of the Enlightenment.

Which is the difference, between the progressives and the conservatives. You want the gold standard of educated eastern elite, I give you William F. Buckley. But this just highlights the difference between the two parties. One on hand, you have a party that’s OK with education, so long as you are part of the elite. Ignorance is also OK, in fact it’s assumed to be the default case for the “common man” (read peasant). On the other hand you have the party which wants to raise everyone up (to the extent that’s possible) into the educated “elite”. It’s the fundamental difference and the original meaning of the world. If you’re ignorant and uneducated, the conservatives, defending the status quo, go “that’s OK. That’s just the way it’s supposed to be.” And the liberals go “that’s not acceptable- what do we need to change to fix this?”

Unfortunately, ignorance isn’t a luxury we can afford anymore. Science and technology are handing us lots of opportunities- for good and for ill. We don’t need peasants anymore. We need citizens- intelligent, literate, scientific, educated, citizens. A nation of peasants and neoaristocrats risks not only global irrelevence, but also extinction.

So damned right, I’ve got a problem with ignorance. The other side of the spectrum isn’t the Road Runner- it’s Porky Pig.