This is a tricky topic - it's so big and subjective, but I think it's important.
There's the textbook version of our political system, that every voter is a rational island making decisions and voting - that fails greatly to describe how things really work.
For one of the classic books on the idea which will convince you of this, read Walter Lipmann's "Public Opinion", far ahead of its time.
Here are some of the key elements I see in our political system:
- Fear. Included in this is the feeling Americans have, at least subconsciously, that most of the world lives in poverty and squalor, and even the other industrialized nations are below our standard of living, and people are not wanting the US to make any changes which would put the US into the same situation. This creates an underlying pressure to all political views that it's ok for the US to play by different rules - lest it sink to the rest of the world's standard of living. People don't even realize they think this way usually, IMO.
Unfortunately, this sets the stage for irrational, selfish policies which alienate the world and fail to take into account later generations, and an insatiable appetite for 'security'.
- Ideologies. There's an old joke about people who say everyone else has an accent but them. Similarly, Americans think that there is no 'American ideology' but that of love of freedom and justice. They are unaware of the fact that they are some of the more ideological people in the world.
For example, a significant amount of 'free market' ideology the American people have now which they think of merely as their own view has actually been fed to them through a very intentional effort over decades, which has created major shift in the public attitude on those issues - beginning in part with an important memo, a battle plan for the right wing, which began the modern 'vast right-wing conspiracy' as we know it today, which probably fewer than 10% of this forum has heard of, written by Lewis Powell two months before Nixon appointed him to the Supreme Court. The memo set out the plan for a long-term coordination of 'educating' the public to pro-corporate views, using the vast resources of business, the media, and the courts.
For more info on the Powell memo, read this and this; then the actual memo.
You can read more on the right-wing media in the exposes of a former insider, and you can debunk once and for all the liberal media myth at this link.
Reading the foreign press, seeing the US listed as the #1 threat to world peace by even allies, are clues usually ignored by the American people that there are other views.
The power of ideology has begun to be documented by science recently, actually afffecting how the brain functions.
People hear a name like 'Michael Moore' and their brain actually turns off reason and turns on the emotional area that generates rage against him. That's not the 'rational voter'.
- Money. Say you are an ultra wealthy person, and you are not satisfied with merely having a thousand times more than the typical American - you would like even more, to the point that the average American has to give up half the wealth they'd have for you to have more, and yet this pesky thing called democracy means they can vote in leaders who prevent you from those government policies. How do you get people to vote against their own interest?
It's amazing what some money can do. Young writers can writer for nearly free for publications they believe in - but the right-wing publicans are better funded, better paying, and there's a large network for its members to get referrals to better-paying opportunities as careers, while the liberals are making much less. It's your choice, but the contrast has an impact on how much right-wing content is available.
Similarly, how many people can work for free or little at liberal think tanks? Money pays for the biggest think tanks in the world, the right-wing ones.
But even more importantly, to have more political power than others, you make the system require money, pay to play, giving you the control, over the average American.
"Politicians have to do good for their donors, and look good to the voters" is one of the most useful sayings for American politics. You're either the guy paying the bill and getting the goodies, or you're the guy getting screwed but told how nice it feels, on the receiving end of the policies for those who pay the bills.
The facts don't lie. CEO pay up ten times after inflation while 80% of Americans have had no raise after inflation for 25 years, the top 5% going from 50% to 75% of the wealth...
We're on the verge of the US having only one political party, with two factions the way Coke 'competes' with Diet Coke - all the profits go to the same bucket.
- Media consolidation. Happening more from a lack of societal concern and regulation than conspiracy, nonetheless the media - the only real check on the powerful for the public to know what's happening - are consolidating inro corporate behemoths who aren't about to report on the corporate problems and stir up any resistance. It was considered a crisis when the classic "The Media Monopoly" reported that 50 corporations controlled nearly all of the American media; now the number is five.
It's been said that every successful political movement in history has had to create its own media. That seems true today as well, with liberal publications, documentaries, etc.
- Ignorance. People are busy; people have more entertainment available now than in the history of mankind, by far.
Here's my diet of information, if I had the time - who can?
+ read one or more newspapers
+ read magazines, including Harper's, The Atlantic Monthly, Jim Hightower's Lowdown, The Progressive, The Nation
+ Radio: Air America type hosts such as Thom Hartmann (9-12), Ed Schultz (2-5), and local hosts such as Bernie Ward (10PM - 1AM), and Ray Taliafaro (1AM - 5AM)
+ Books: I have dozens of important books waiting to be read
+ Web: Salon.com, Huffingtonpost.com, Democratic Underground, commondreams.org, and several others
+ TV: Frontline, NOW, 60 Minutes, Bill Maher, Jon Stewart, The Colbert Report...
+ Documentaries
+ Local democratic and moveon.org and Congressional Town Hall meetings
+ Oh ya, and writing a 90 minute post on a message board like this.
The public is largely unaware of the political issues.
They are simply marketed to and told to pay their taxes; their anger over the misused taxes is used against them, aimed at the wrong places, such as liberals.
(The right wing trains the public to equate a dollar in tax used for waste such as a corporate subsidy with a dollar used for the good of the nation).
- Empire. For better or worse, the United States has its needs, and these are often needing to be disguised to the well-meaning public as ruthless policies are enacted.
- Organization. The wealthy, the corporate interests, are far better organized than the public, which is largely uncoordinated - manipulated through division with 'wedge issues'.
I think these are some of the major factors in our political system today. They aren't really in the textbooks or on the evening news, but they are important.
I think it's important the public get more informed and organize, just as the progressive movement was needed at the turn of the 20th century, and FDR was needed.
How do we do this? Fund the 'good guys' (buy at Costco, not Wal-Mart); help build the liberal media by buying the products; spread the word with less informed friends...
Join liberal groups (Moveon), buy good books (and give them as gifts)... participate in your community's communications (meetings, papers, call-in shows)...
Little things, but important for the majority to reclaim its democratic power and keep society balanced before the US fails as a liberal democracy and becomes feudalistic.
One of my favorites: women, only sleep with liberals.🙂
Some specific things you can push for:
+ Ask your leaders to fight the domination of the political system by special interest money, any way they can.
+ Push for the return of the fairness doctrine and accountability of the broadcast media to provide public interest programming.
+ Fight for public broadcasting.
+Boycott sponsors of irresponsible programming and tell them you did.
There's the textbook version of our political system, that every voter is a rational island making decisions and voting - that fails greatly to describe how things really work.
For one of the classic books on the idea which will convince you of this, read Walter Lipmann's "Public Opinion", far ahead of its time.
Here are some of the key elements I see in our political system:
- Fear. Included in this is the feeling Americans have, at least subconsciously, that most of the world lives in poverty and squalor, and even the other industrialized nations are below our standard of living, and people are not wanting the US to make any changes which would put the US into the same situation. This creates an underlying pressure to all political views that it's ok for the US to play by different rules - lest it sink to the rest of the world's standard of living. People don't even realize they think this way usually, IMO.
Unfortunately, this sets the stage for irrational, selfish policies which alienate the world and fail to take into account later generations, and an insatiable appetite for 'security'.
- Ideologies. There's an old joke about people who say everyone else has an accent but them. Similarly, Americans think that there is no 'American ideology' but that of love of freedom and justice. They are unaware of the fact that they are some of the more ideological people in the world.
For example, a significant amount of 'free market' ideology the American people have now which they think of merely as their own view has actually been fed to them through a very intentional effort over decades, which has created major shift in the public attitude on those issues - beginning in part with an important memo, a battle plan for the right wing, which began the modern 'vast right-wing conspiracy' as we know it today, which probably fewer than 10% of this forum has heard of, written by Lewis Powell two months before Nixon appointed him to the Supreme Court. The memo set out the plan for a long-term coordination of 'educating' the public to pro-corporate views, using the vast resources of business, the media, and the courts.
For more info on the Powell memo, read this and this; then the actual memo.
You can read more on the right-wing media in the exposes of a former insider, and you can debunk once and for all the liberal media myth at this link.
Reading the foreign press, seeing the US listed as the #1 threat to world peace by even allies, are clues usually ignored by the American people that there are other views.
The power of ideology has begun to be documented by science recently, actually afffecting how the brain functions.
People hear a name like 'Michael Moore' and their brain actually turns off reason and turns on the emotional area that generates rage against him. That's not the 'rational voter'.
- Money. Say you are an ultra wealthy person, and you are not satisfied with merely having a thousand times more than the typical American - you would like even more, to the point that the average American has to give up half the wealth they'd have for you to have more, and yet this pesky thing called democracy means they can vote in leaders who prevent you from those government policies. How do you get people to vote against their own interest?
It's amazing what some money can do. Young writers can writer for nearly free for publications they believe in - but the right-wing publicans are better funded, better paying, and there's a large network for its members to get referrals to better-paying opportunities as careers, while the liberals are making much less. It's your choice, but the contrast has an impact on how much right-wing content is available.
Similarly, how many people can work for free or little at liberal think tanks? Money pays for the biggest think tanks in the world, the right-wing ones.
But even more importantly, to have more political power than others, you make the system require money, pay to play, giving you the control, over the average American.
"Politicians have to do good for their donors, and look good to the voters" is one of the most useful sayings for American politics. You're either the guy paying the bill and getting the goodies, or you're the guy getting screwed but told how nice it feels, on the receiving end of the policies for those who pay the bills.
The facts don't lie. CEO pay up ten times after inflation while 80% of Americans have had no raise after inflation for 25 years, the top 5% going from 50% to 75% of the wealth...
We're on the verge of the US having only one political party, with two factions the way Coke 'competes' with Diet Coke - all the profits go to the same bucket.
- Media consolidation. Happening more from a lack of societal concern and regulation than conspiracy, nonetheless the media - the only real check on the powerful for the public to know what's happening - are consolidating inro corporate behemoths who aren't about to report on the corporate problems and stir up any resistance. It was considered a crisis when the classic "The Media Monopoly" reported that 50 corporations controlled nearly all of the American media; now the number is five.
It's been said that every successful political movement in history has had to create its own media. That seems true today as well, with liberal publications, documentaries, etc.
- Ignorance. People are busy; people have more entertainment available now than in the history of mankind, by far.
Here's my diet of information, if I had the time - who can?
+ read one or more newspapers
+ read magazines, including Harper's, The Atlantic Monthly, Jim Hightower's Lowdown, The Progressive, The Nation
+ Radio: Air America type hosts such as Thom Hartmann (9-12), Ed Schultz (2-5), and local hosts such as Bernie Ward (10PM - 1AM), and Ray Taliafaro (1AM - 5AM)
+ Books: I have dozens of important books waiting to be read
+ Web: Salon.com, Huffingtonpost.com, Democratic Underground, commondreams.org, and several others
+ TV: Frontline, NOW, 60 Minutes, Bill Maher, Jon Stewart, The Colbert Report...
+ Documentaries
+ Local democratic and moveon.org and Congressional Town Hall meetings
+ Oh ya, and writing a 90 minute post on a message board like this.
The public is largely unaware of the political issues.
They are simply marketed to and told to pay their taxes; their anger over the misused taxes is used against them, aimed at the wrong places, such as liberals.
(The right wing trains the public to equate a dollar in tax used for waste such as a corporate subsidy with a dollar used for the good of the nation).
- Empire. For better or worse, the United States has its needs, and these are often needing to be disguised to the well-meaning public as ruthless policies are enacted.
- Organization. The wealthy, the corporate interests, are far better organized than the public, which is largely uncoordinated - manipulated through division with 'wedge issues'.
I think these are some of the major factors in our political system today. They aren't really in the textbooks or on the evening news, but they are important.
I think it's important the public get more informed and organize, just as the progressive movement was needed at the turn of the 20th century, and FDR was needed.
How do we do this? Fund the 'good guys' (buy at Costco, not Wal-Mart); help build the liberal media by buying the products; spread the word with less informed friends...
Join liberal groups (Moveon), buy good books (and give them as gifts)... participate in your community's communications (meetings, papers, call-in shows)...
Little things, but important for the majority to reclaim its democratic power and keep society balanced before the US fails as a liberal democracy and becomes feudalistic.
One of my favorites: women, only sleep with liberals.🙂
Some specific things you can push for:
+ Ask your leaders to fight the domination of the political system by special interest money, any way they can.
+ Push for the return of the fairness doctrine and accountability of the broadcast media to provide public interest programming.
+ Fight for public broadcasting.
+Boycott sponsors of irresponsible programming and tell them you did.
