“Spoils” and Trump's worst sin, spitting on the defeated.

Amid this Twilight Zone episode we’re living through, what’s my personal grievance? I had hoped by now to swing my attention fully back to writing science fiction, rather than living it.

Oh, there were chillingly accurate SF’nal forecasts. Not Orwell (not yet.) But I’ve mentioned Robert Heinlein’s prophesy of America enduring “crazy years” and a fundamentalist tyrant “Nehemiah Scudder.” Even more depressingly apropos is Ray Bradbury’s “The Sound of Thunder.” Watch a short film version here. ‪

Some have sent emails commenting on how my “Holnists” in The Postman resonate with the burgeoning alt-right. Others ask: is this the end of Pax Americana, when a foreign power controls one - and possibly all three branches - of U.S. government?  Further - some ask – what about my conjecture that centuries only start exhibiting their main ‘theme’ a decade and a half in? Oh, please, let 2016 not represent this century’s theme.  

But my “classic” getting the most attention - “Honoring the Losing Majority” - asked a simple question: 
     
When a competitor or candidate wins on a technicality. Does he owe any consideration to the majority who voted against him? 

== What gracious (and smart) winners do. ==

That 2004 essay reads bizarrely apropos for today, including ruminations on the Electoral College. Swap a few words - “Trump” and “Bannon” for “Rove” and “Bush” - and the syndrome looks chillingly familiar.

But let’s start by reprising what I suggested that a mature and honorable person might do, if he or she won office, over the objections of a majority – or even a large minority. Imagine such a President Elect making the following pledge:

"I promise to ask my honorable opponent to pick a panel of Americans who will have control over my appointment calendar one afternoon per month. And I expect my opponent to serve on that panel. On that afternoon, I shall meet with -- and listen to -- any individuals or delegations that panel may choose. Millions of Americans will then know that I do not live in a tower of ideological isolation. I will answer questions and hear dissenting points of view."

Such a pledge should hold, even if you win by a landslide! It would cost a candidate or president little to give this much to the losing 40%. (Or today’s nearly 60%) There’s no obligation to act on what the delegations say, only to be accessible, listening occasionally to more than one ideology. More than one brain trust of cloned advisors.

Indeed, the legitimacy of any administration will be enhanced if we see the president receive articulate, passionate emissaries, representing diverse opinions and walks of life. So. If that is clearly what a mature and honorable leader would do, what are the prospects of this coming true?

== Pretty much zero ==

Clearly, Donald Trump’s answer is a loud and angry “no!” To the victor go the spoils of conquest: spolia opima — an ancient doctrine of ruthlessly finishing off your opponents, seizing all their goods and treating them as enemies to be crushed, lest they ever rise again.

The so-called Spoils System outraged Americans in the post Civil War era, till at last reformers instituted a protected Civil Service, safe from wild swings in the political caste. Then followed a century of consensus — that domestic peace and simple fairness call for the losing side to see its interests at least mentioned in the halls of power. Even if you won in a landslide, as Lyndon Johnson did, in 1964, and Ronald Reagan in 1984, you’re not supposed to rub the noses of 40% of American voters in their loss.

Hence, under Roosevelt, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, Clinton and Obama, the Secretaries of Commerce were businessmen and women. Entrepreneurial programs were staffed with entrepreneurial people and the Small Business Administration by small businessfolk. Agriculture Department heads have generally spent a lifetime helping farmers. The Council of Economic Advisers had samplings of all doctrines. Under Eisenhower and (yes) Nixon, the Labor Secretary was a union member — even if accused by the left of being a tepid compromiser. The head of the Environmental Protection Agency (founded by Nixon) was someone who cared about the environment, and science agencies were headed by reputable scientists.

This reversed a bit under Reagan, especially re: the EPA. But it was both Bushes who began savaging the principle, for example appointing to run the IRS and SEC folks specifically charged with undermining the auditing of banks, Wall Street firms and the rich. Saudi influence was masked by State Department and intelligence officials, and so on. This would have been bad enough, if George W. Bush, hadn’t won office, in 2000, under questionable circumstances, clearly opposed by a majority of those who voted.  I wrote “Honoring the Losing Majority” at that point, in protest to immature and dishonorable behavior.

Still, Bush at least spoke a few words about consensus and accommodation, appointing cabinet officials who gave some appearance of professionalism, before proceeding to violate the principle. His enemies-lists were discreet and he did not dare to threaten (as DT has) the Civil Service, universities and the Officer Corps. (Eventualities that have stunned even the Drudge Report.) While he lied incessantly, for the most part, W did not screech and howl.

== The cult of personal pique ==

That principle - of showing at least some respect for the losing minority - should be part of any decent society. And not just in the Executive Branch.  Among the many “reform suggestions” I’ve proposed – fruitlessly - over the years, was for the majority in Congress to give the minority party a fair number of their own, discretionary subpoenas and the ability to call some days of hearings. (You in today's majority will want this power someday, when you drop into the minority again.) But one thing at a time.

How urgent is the principle today, when technicalities (like the distribution of electoral votes, foreign meddling and a high likelihood of “rigging”) have just disenfranchised not a minority, or a small majority, as in Gore-Bush 2000, but a very large majority of voters? Would not an adult - even a partisan one - want to offer olive branches, like my once-a-month meeting agenda, or possibly even granting the loser some say in cabinet picks? 

Not, apparently, Donald Trump, whose thin-skinned vengeance fetishism has combined with almost slavish currying of favor by the ruling axis of power on the right. From the Koch/Murdoch/Adelson/Goldman oligarchy to the Russo-Saudi oilocracy, Trump’s cabinet choices show none of the populist autonomy that his braggadocio seemed to portend. Except for appointing the former head of World Wrestling — something that was pure, refreshing and his old self. The Kochs and Putin had no role in that one, I betcha. Nor did they command the most delicious of last week's theatricals -- the utter public humiliation, over frogs legs, of Mitt Romney. 

If Democrats understood judo, they’d go limp, right now, and let Trump’s opposition come from the Bushite faction. The man is volcanically reactive! So long as the loudest enmity comes from his left, he will reflexively scuttle right.

But we aren’t here today to dissect this fellow’s personal or psychological motives.  The topic is “Honoring the Losing Majority.” And it is a sad commentary on our times that few have even raised the subject.  

Go give the original essay a look. Swap a few names and words.  Then ask yourself: “Are liberals so much better?" Sure, they have on their side all the scientists and folks who actually know stuff.  And soon - if Trump proceeds on-trajectory - nearly all members of the intelligence and law communities, as well as most of the United States military Officer Corps.  Yet, have you seen any fresh ideas from the Democratic establishment?

The dullard-insipidly unimaginative campaign run by Hillary Clinton’s people - along with the generally clueless reactions by most liberal pundits - reveals just how desperately the Union needs to rediscover agility, just as it had to do in the 1860s, when faced by an all-too similar confederacy, aiming to re-institute feudalism.

As happened in 1861 and 1862 -- and in 1941 -- expect disasters before, as past Americans did, we figure this out. And stand up.

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Lagniappe:

“You know, comrades," says Stalin, "that I think in regard to this: I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily important is this — who will count the votes, and how."

(Note: while there is no proof Stalin said this, it is entirely consistent with his tenure - under Lenin - as Communist Party First Secretary.)

Suggestion #20: Seek ways to end Culture War

Let’s finish this series of “Unusual Suggestions for America and the Obama Administration.”  with the one that is simplest and most basic. Something that seems so easy and wise, you really have got to wonder why it hasn’t already been done.  Or at least tried.

Let me lay it on the line. We have one priority, above all others, because solving it will unleash our native aptitude at fixing every other problem. That priority is to cure the sickness that is eating away at the guts and marrow of the greatest nation in history.  The nation that Jean Francois Revel called the “best hope” for the “best kind of human revolution.”  The kind of revolution that leads us to far higher horizons and to becoming better people, all around the world.

That priority is to put a stop to the treason that is called “culture war” and get us back to talking to one another again, as grownups.

President Obama can only play an important role in this endeavor.  Most of the heavy lifting must be done by us, in shaking off simplistic dogmas, in re learning the arts of negotiation. In rediscovering that skill and ingenuity and goodness are more important than celebrity or cash. Insisting that both we and our neighbors cut out the sick habit of outrageous indignation, an addiction that makes fools of us and strawmen of our opponents.

Nevertheless, President Obama will be the most important single individual.  And so, I want to conclude with a sincere suggestion to him.  It isn’t anything huge, just a gesture. Something simple, easy and cheap, but offering profound resonance, perhaps setting a tone that would ring across the land.  I have proposed this idea before: Honoring the Losing Majority. Here it is one more time.

---Honoring (and winning over) the losing side ---

What does “majority rule” mean? Suppose your candidate wins by close to a 60/40 vote margin. You can call that a solid victory, in modern political terms. But it still means that four in ten voting citizens did not want your guy in office. To that forty percent, the word "mandate" translates as -- drop dead!

Might there be some way to acknowledge the losing minority? One that both lessens their sense of humiliation, and making them more willing to accept that the winners really do mean well?  Imagine our new President making the following pledge:

"I now ask my honorable opponent in the recent election -- Senator McCain -- to help pick a panel of Americans who are well-outside my normal political or social circle.  In this case, I’d like him to help fill it especially with many varied types of “conservatives.”

“This panel will have one power.  Except during periods of crisis, they will get control over my appointment calendar one afternoon per month. On that afternoon, I’ll meet with -- and listen to -- individuals or delegations beyond my regular horizon.  In this small way, I hope Americans of all persuasions will feel just a little more sure that I do not live in a tower of ideological isolation, but that I stand ready to hear diverse -- even dissenting -- points of view."

Such a pledge would cost Barack Obama little to make or to fulfill. There is no obligation to act on what the delegations say, only to be accessible, listening occasionally to more than one ideology. More than one brain trust of cloned advisors. Indeed, the legitimacy of an administration will be enhanced if we see the president receive articulate, passionate emissaries, representing diverse opinions and walks of life.

(In fact, what better way to contrast his administration vs the Bush-Cheney era?)

  --- A return to our traditions ---

During the first era of our republic, private citizens used to knock on the door of the White House and ask to see their nation's leader. As recently as the time of Harry Truman, there was a slim chance of seeing the president somewhere in public, buying socks for real, not as a publicity stunt. Not thronged by photographers and Secret Service agents. There is genuine peril in losing this connection between power and everyday life.

If today's president cannot safely venture among us, representatives of sundry outlooks should have a route to him or her. With this precedent set, not just public figures, but individuals from the ranks of the poor and dispossessed might win a chance to plead their case before the highest official in the land.

Moreover, this would give those tens of millions who lost the election something. A token perhaps.  But far more than they expect. A gesture of respect. A vow to listen.

--------

And that concludes this series. (See the beginning of Unusual Suggestions to the Obama Administration)

I will post the entire series at: http://www.davidbrin.com/labor.html

I am proud to live in an era and a nation where a fellow like me -- notoriously outspoken and contrarian -- has the means and opportunity to voice proposals that range from mundane to ingenious to outright crackpot.  We all have to offer what we can, in order to keep momentum going, in this, the greatest of all human renaissance eras.

Final note:.... I have vowed to deeply REDUCE blogging, limiting myself to maybe two postings per month.  (Except for quickie news flashes.)  In fact, those who really care or admire me at all will help me keep to this promise!

Of course, this fond hope is based on a fervent wish and prayer that this nation, civilization, species has a good year ahead, a steady climb toward wisdom...

...as I hope and pray for you, in the year and years ahead.

======

Electoral College redux....

An interesting issue is raised by David Broder of the Washington Post, in a recent editorial titled: "Electoral College foes devise plan for popular vote."

"The question of how we elect a president is up for debate again, with advocates of a majoritarian philosophy having invented a new device for moving to a direct popular vote for the chief executive. 

. . Rather than going through the labors of amending the Constitution to replace the Electoral College system with a national tally for president, which has failed every time it has been attempted, they have come up with a plan for bypassing the required two-thirds vote in the House and Senate and the ratification by three-fourths of the states.

. . Instead, the advocates propose that states with sufficient electoral votes -- 270 of the 538 -- to comprise an electoral majority enter into an interstate compact, pledging to give their votes to the candidate receiving the largest number of popular votes. That action could allow the legislatures of as few as 11 states to change the whole system of electing a president."

Sponsored by former independent presidential nominee John Anderson and former Senator Birch Bayh, it has been endorsed by Hendrik Hertzberg of The New Yorker and, earlier this month, by the editorial page of The New York Times, which called the Electoral College ''an antidemocratic relic."

Broder opposes this endeavor, for reasons that I do not dispute.

Yes, had this system been in place, the national tragicomic farce that began unrolling in 2000 would not have happened. We would have been spared the spectacle of a divisively partisan president claiming "mandate" when his opponent actually got more votes.

Still, I am unimpressed with the argument that a plurality winner who has surpassed his rival by only a few hundred votes - or a few thousand - is thus profoundly and qualitatively endowed with special mandatory grace, especially when "plurality" still means that more people voted against him than voted for him.

It is worth remembering that "majority rule" is not the core element of democracy. Rather it is democracy’s most crass and simpleminded aspect, emphasizing the raw power of larger numbers to impose their will upon smaller numbers. An improvement over rule by bullying minorities of gentry and oligarchs, but not a perfect one.

Indeed, majority rule was held in low esteem - considered a necessary evil - by everyone from Pericles to the American Founders, who went out of their way to emphasize other, more important democratic traits, like balance of power, reciprocal accountability, openness, individual rights and the need for relentless and ongoing negotiation. -- especially with aggrieved minorities. The Electoral College was itself set up in order to add complexity and to modify the crude passions of majority rule.

See: The Myth of Majority Rule.

The Anderson-Bayh proposal coarsely attempts to impose the will of just a dozen states upon the whole nation - not in picking a president, per se (since the plurality-winner is at least as righteous a pick as anybody else), but by imposing a principle of pure majoritarianism... nay pluralitarianism... upon the nation without sufficient discussion or deliberation.

In order to see how foolish this is, try on this thought experiment.

Imagine that a truly powerful run by a couple of third-party candidates were to divide the electorate into tiny fragments, as happened in 1912 and even more so in 1860. Should the winner of as few as 26% of the popular votes automatically become president, without even a chance for the nation to take a breath and think things over? In theory, that candidate might be the hated bottom-choice of the divided 74%. Yet, under pluralitarianism, she or he would become chief executive.

Other countries solve this problem by holding run-offs among the top two vote-getters, something that seemed impossibly onerous and time-consuming in George Washington’s time. But why not today? Or let’s get even more modern. Ideally, in an age of computers, we should be smart enough to use preferential ballots, as they do in Australia, a sophisticated and just system under which Americans would get to rank-order their choices and be guaranteed never, ever to get a president who is hated by a majority. (More on this elsewhere.)

Ah, but as has been widely pointed out, these solutions require Constitutional tinkering that is nearly impossible to achieve, when powerful forces benefit from the status quo. Are we thus doomed forever to worry about rule by some dismal crackpot, put into office by some minority electoral quirk?

What is weird is that the Founders actually thought about this problem. We generally think of the Electoral College as a reflex and automatic vote-allocation system that works according to strict allocation by winner-takes-all in every state. But, in fact, the electors themselves are not required, by the Constitution, to act as complete robots. The word "college" implies some level of collegial deliberation is possible, and might even have been expected, by the Framers. Indeed, within living memory, a few electors have broken from strict partisan discipline and cast their votes in unexpected ways.

Consider the 2000 election, in which the Bush-Cheney team entered office by the margin of just ONE electoral vote, over-riding the pluralitarian will of the people. The mind is tempted to ponder some parallel world in which just one of the Bush-Cheney electors might have taken a notion to help heal a divided nation with a gesture, offering something to the disgruntled majority of Americans who had clearly voted against George W. Bush...

... that imaginative and public-spirited elector might have done this by casting a deciding VICE presidential vote for Joe Lieberman. With a stroke, this delegate to a sovereign constitutional institution might have forced a different, possibly more accommodating tone upon an administration that has made "culture war" its guiding principle. Is that parallel America happier than this one, less divided, less bitter? Would that one elector’s gesture have made any real difference? No one can say. But one thing is for certain. The Electoral College would have never again been viewed the same way.

I have taken too long on this. But let me conclude by saying that Anderson-Bayh almost certainly mean well. They just haven’t thought things out. There are some other possible ways to tweak and improve the Electoral College system, WITHOUT either tinkering with the Constitution or imposing an end-run trick, that out gerrymanders the gerrymanderers.

I discuss this one such proposal at:
http://www.davidbrin.com/electoral.html

The kernel idea: we tend to assume that all states are required to divvy their electors according to a rule of "winner-takes-all." But familiar process this is, in fact, just another example of state-based gerrymandering. Two states use a different approach, more closely representing the will of their voters.

Is it possible that a simple lawsuit, demanding "one-person-one-vote"- if cogently presented, might persuade even this Supreme Court to banish winner-takes-all across the board? In a stroke, this would force the distribution of Electoral College votes to more closely reflect the popular vote. Imperfectly, but a step in the right direction. That is, if this Supreme Court actually values "one person, one vote."

For a more general look at gerrymandering, see:
http://www.davidbrin.com/gerrymandering1.html )

Alas, in the near term, none of these matters will make much difference. We are in a situation that few of us would have imagined, only a decade ago. In a 21st Century that was supposed to be sophisticated and subtle, with educated citizens engaged in even-tempered, complicated, problem-solving discourse, we find ourselves instead waging Culture War across ideological battle lines that would have looked simpleminded even to Huey Long.

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For more on politics, see: Politics for the 21st Century

David Brin

http://www.davidbrin.com

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The Myth of Majority Rule: Part III

The Myth of Majority Rule: Part III  (or return to Part 1)

We've taken a two part detour into "propaganda" -- specifically, the kind of pro-enlightenment propaganda that helped to make most of us the people that we are. A system of relentlessly repeated messages that have helped our Enlightenment/modernist civilization to push upstream against the hard current of human nature -- an everpresent tide that keeps trying to drive us into the more typical social patterns that dominated nearly every other culture.

Especially rule by bullying, self-interested and coercive elites. And the incantatory lackeys - the wizards and priests and spin-doctors who used tools of romantic persuasion to rationalize aristo bullying as a good thing.

Which brings us back to today's politics. What I plan to do now is to intersperse recent comments with some material that I wrote about the issue of "minority veto"... back in different times. Specifically, I am disturbed by the recent spat over the US Senate filibuster rules. We have just seen one party - the party that used filibusters far more often, in the past, suddenly using their (highly debatable) recent razor-thin electoral victory as justification for promoting a new agenda, claiming that all they want is to simply allow "majority rule" to manifest in an efficient manner, giving the President's judicial nominees the "courtesy" of a simple up down vote. *

But can 50.1 percent legitimately over-rule the wishes of 49.9 percent who disagree? Pushing a radical agenda that at least 49% of the electorate actively despises?

Actually, majority rule has long been already tempered in much of American political life. Until recently, Congress seldom passed a law supported by just 51% of the people, while vigorously opposed by nearly half. We've already discussed how minority objections are traditionally palliated by negotiation, mollification, and tradeoffs. The power of opposing groups can be measured by multiplying their numbers by their fervor, so that small but intense lobbies may effectively veto measures desired only tepidly by much greater majorities.

(I wrote that paragraph, and the next one, before 2001. It now seems like another century. In any event, you can see how the filibuster was originally intended to fit this purpose... and how it would also have been abused, when the cloture rule was 66% instead of a mere 60%.)

This dance of factions can be frustrating, as when popular measures such as gun control are stymied by vigorous advocacy groups like the NRA. But on the whole, it is a better, more mature way of doing things than pure majority rule, or tyranny by 51%. Minority veto slows progress, but it also forces legislators to keep seeking that elusive, worthy goal -- consensus.

I could go on about how this applies to the whole notion of civil disobedience, which can be viewed as the legitimate resort of minorities whose passion matches their sense of disenfranchisement. Innovators like Thoreau, Ghandi and Martin Luther King emphasized that breaking the law should never be a first resort, and that the state has some right to imprison protestors who stage sit-down strikes or block traffic. Indeed, only half of the effectiveness of any act of civil disobedience arises from inconveniencing the obdurate majority. The other half comes from proudly and willingly accepting proportionate punishment, demonstrating sincerity, courage and commitment. Protestors who whine about serving a small amount of jail time, for protesting in some provocative manner, miss the whole point.

As do authorities who use disproportionate force. Very few cultures in history would have let Gandhi or King live long enough to try out their methodologies and begin the long process of rousing the conscience of a semi enlightened majority. Today, though, civilization appears to (at least for now) 'get it'. If you protest something with letters to the editor - or a posted irate blog - there are (supposed to be) no repercussions. If you picket, you get more attention, perhaps, but pay a deterrence penalty of lost time and possibly abuse from passersby. If you lie down in front of trucks, you may be fined. Even in the unenlightened fifties, when Rosa Parks sat in the wrong part of the bus, she went to jail, but wasn't shot. And like Rosa, if your protest succeeds, you may be rewarded later and lionized as a cultural hero for the second half of your life.

(As you can tell, I am cribbing a bit from a never-published essay that I wrote in more innocent times. For example, consider the next two paragraphs, that seemed applicable until just the last few years. On today's context, they illustrate just how badly things have become poisoned.)

Minority factions may not be able to get their assertive agenda passed. But almost any group can veto actions it dislikes, providing its size, multiplied by its vociferousness, reaches a certain level. Political rigor mortis is one possible result, which is fine for the sanctimonious on both sides, who don’t want action, only a continued state of warlike threat, in order to keep the adrenaline and endorphins flowing.

But this is adversarial gridlock is a serious problem for any group or ideology that’s serious about accomplishing action. It means that a 51% majority will do you no good at all if a strong 40% opposition is truly determined to block you. In order to succeed, proponents must divide the enemy by reaching some sort of compromise consensus with ‘moderates’ on the other side... something that is loathsome to the purist. More loathsome, perhaps, than inaction.

What has changed? One of our parties has become utterly radicalized. Under conditions like this, no amount of fervor or remonstration by 49% can avail if 51% have total control of all branches of governance. Individual mavericks like John McCain may speak up occasionally for compromise. But the proof is in the pudding. GOP party discipline is so perfect that, after four and half years, George W. Bush has yet to use a single veto.

We might as well have a European system of ideology-based parties. We are certainly moving away from the American principle of emphasizing the individual candidate/delegate over the party manifesto.

 ====     ====   =====

All right, what about the executive branch? If Congress used to be a nexus for negotiation, the US political process seems to have chosen an almost military command structure for our executive. When a European country's cabinet votes, the Prime Minister generally obeys. When a president's cabinet votes, he ponders their advice and does as he likes.

Often an ideologue, riding into the White House by a slim margin, acts as if he's been anointed the mantle of history. Even when just forty percent are left out, in a landslide, should tens of millions be lightly dismissed? Of course, things are even worse when the electoral margin was razor-thin. We'll talk more about this next time..

I get into many specifics about the most recent election at: http://www.davidbrin.com/realculturewar1.html

====  ====  =====

Summarizing this section. Those who push "majority rule" as something sacred are doing the same thing that prior generations of ideologues did, when promoting the divine right of kings - or minority rule by a privileged elite. They are pounding the pulpit for a pure platonic essence that also just happens to support the power needs of their aristocratic patrons.

Yes, majority rule was an improvement over earlier systems of governance. But western civilization has long-since become more sophisticated, developing methodologies of minority veto and negotiated consensus.

Those who would have us abandon all of the hard-won pragmatic progress and subtlety of modern democracy, in favor of a gross oversimplification, are not friends of democracy in any form.

Next: a modest suggestion for how to respect minority opinion in the presidency, during an era of increasing polarization...

==See also:

Part 1: Why Majority Rule is a Deadly Ruse
Part 2:  The Propaganda of Enlightenment
Part 3: The Myth of Majority Rule
Part 4: The L-R axis redux: More on the war of ideas

==And on another topic…

Finally, a few comments in the Star Wars thread. I agree SW has common elements with both Faust and classic Greek tragedy. Indeed. In Poetics Aristotle defines a tragedy as watching the inevitable suffering of a hero who is doomed by Fate, with no way out. This defines tragedy in the old style I've been calling nostalgist, fatalistic, or romantic...

...and because it's old, that does require us to approve. Yes, when I watch a good rendition of Oedipus, I cry in sympathy as he twists and turns, caught by the gods like a fish on a hook. But I ALSO want to leap on the stage with a pistol, put poor Oedie out of his misery, then use the rest of the bullets to hunt down the nasty "gods" who committed this crime against him .

That possibility - of average (or above average) folk holding capricious elites accountable - was inherent in the sappy-silly but wonderful "Xena" and "Hercules" series, a few years back. Though they were demigods, both characters chose to side with humanity. Average joes could matter. Both main characters dabbled with anger quite often, demonstrating mature choices, instead of automatically turning irreversibly evil.

And yes, you can have "tragedy" without assuming it's fated or ordained. There was never anything ordained about nuclear war. Hence, "On The Beach" and "Dr. Strangelove" were terrifyingly tragic tales precisely BECAUSE the destruction of all life was inherently avoidable. In modernist view, drama concerns the making of good-bad choices, not twisting in the wind because three old crones happened to spin your fate that way. (For more on these fabled creatures, see my short story, "The Loom of Thessaly"!)

Oh, one more thing: someone said "films don't deal with contrition". Really? Spielberg's magnificent "Schindler's List" teaches precisely the opposite moral lesson than SWIII ROTS. Think about it. Enough. Back to this culture of ours and trying to make it work. The gritty hard work of pragmatic modern problem solvers, negotiating in good faith to make things better.

Modern(ist) Political Subtlety - or Why "Majority Rule" is a Deadly Ruse

And now for something topical about the rationalizations used by those who either despise - or don't 'get" - the Enlightenment...

===Minority Veto===

This week's Senate imbroglio - featuring efforts by the majority to bypass a democratic filibuster of administration judiciary appointments - can be viewed as yet another front in the Great Big War Against Modernity.

On a purely political basis, this entire stance is simply stupid. Even George F. Will has complained that the GOP position seems to assume there will never again be a democratic president, with a democratic Senatorial majority. Under those circumstances, would not republicans wish for a way to stymie the worst, most doctrinaire and ideological court appointments? A method to force some kind of negotiation and compromise, or at least respect for the views of a large and strong-willed minority?

Either their sense of history is extremely myopic... or else they think they know something that we don't know, about the political shape of our future. (Ponder this paragraph at leisure, till that last remark makes sense. And shiver.)

But let's consider this issue at a more abstract level. In a very general sense, what we are seeing is one party - claiming justification based on a slim electoral majority - asserting that they thereupon have a sweeping mandate to rule without negotiation or compromise.

Let's break up that last sentence. One of the great, consistent patterns of human governance, seen in nearly all cultures, has been a tendency for some group to claim justification based on __________, and thereupon assert that they have a mandate to rule without negotiation or compromise.

Fill in the blank. What justifications were used by past ruling groups?

Rationalizations ranged from royal divine right to the verdict of the battlefield, all the way to some inherent, logical superiority of "philosopher kings." Often these excuses were articulated with great care and passion by clever, nerdy fellows - by priests, wizards, or court ideologues, who thereby won the privilege of hanging around real power - the big fellows who got their swords, or vast estates, or trust funds mostly the old-fashioned way. By inheritance.

This pattern was so universal that it really deserves to be noticed and discussed.

Instead we have allowed arm-waving romantic rationalizers to distract us with a myriad details and fast-talking incantations. Theologians and Marxist theoreticians. Aryan mystics and Hegelian dialecticians. Machiavelli, Confucius, Rand, Mao, Strauss and all their ilk wove verbal spells to justify the use of raw power by those who already had it - or soon intended to get it - free of any obligation to negotiate with those who might suggest alternative methodologies of statecraft.

I mean, really, were the Communist theoreticians who justified a narrow clique of Party Nomenklatura families any different from the churchmen who preached in support of the slavocracy in the Old South, or the Social Darwinists who wove excuses for robber barons in the 1890s?

This commonality keeps being obscured by a bewildering storm of particulars. Which, of course, serves the common interest of their Ideologist Guild.

Alas, we keep buying into one or another of these trips. Take the latest version: majority rule.

Now, please. Let me avow that majority rule is vastly better than any previous political oversimplification. Indeed, it began as a reform generated by the Enlightenment, won at great cost, overcoming desperate opposition by every kind of social elite. In other words, majority rule was better than minority rule. (But is there something even better still?

No quasi-mystical catch phrase ever contained more essential wisdom than the one asserting that states derive their legitimate powers from "consent of the governed."

But what does 'consent' mean? Majority rule helps guarantee against the worst kinds of tyranny - those featuring iron-fist repression by a truly narrow, unaccountable and coercive elite. Hence, if we ever do have a dictatorship, it will cover the fist with silken gloves, and suffer great lengths to convince us that "we" (the majority) voted for it.

Still, that will not protect minorities. Nor will it ensure that statecraft is performed with attention to CITOKATE. (Criticism is the only known antidote to error.) Indeed, it is quite possible for majorities to be flat out, cockeyed wrong.

Moreover, majorities can also be manipulated. Whether based on ethnic, religious, sexual, lifestyle or political differences, it is easy to create a sense of "us" and "them". Such distinctions can be leveraged through propaganda, as Hitler used his campaign against Jews, gypsies and other minorities, to mobilize large portions of Germany, both before and after the election of 1933.

Consider the statement above. "Such distinctions can be leveraged through propaganda" to manipulate majority opinion. Are we immune? And by "we" I mean even we modernists? (If you do not ever doubt or question yourself, you do not belong on this list. Go away. Now.)

Are "modernists" immune to propaganda? No! We are human and thus can be swayed. Indeed, for most of our lives we have been subjected to "pro-enlightenment propaganda" in the greatest indoctrination campaign of all time!

Some of you have heard my riff on this, many times. But it bears repeating. So, next time we will talk about Enlightenment Propaganda... how effective it has been... and why this very success may be the reason why the romantics are now fighting back so hard.

Continue to: Part II: The Propaganda of the Enlightenment

or: The Myth of Majority Rule Part III

See more: Politics for the 21st Century

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A couple of science notes that you'll find amusing, in light of some of my novels...

*Augmenting the Animal Kingdom Wired News May. 3, 2005 **James Auger in his controversial new book, Augmented Animals, envisions animals, birds, reptiles and even fish using specially engineered gadgets to help them overcome their evolutionary shortcomings. He imagines rodents zooming around with night-vision survival goggles, squirrels hoarding nuts using GPS locators and fish armed with metal...

*Chimeras on the Horizon, but Don't Expect Centaurs New York Times May 3, 2005 *** If research on human embryonic stem cells ever gets going, people will be hearing a lot more about chimeras, creatures composed of more than one kind of cell. Such creations -- of pigs with human hearts, monkeys with human larynxes -- are likely to be unsettling to...

*A journalist tracks down the source of a claim, often cited by
greenhouse denialists, that most of the glaciers in the world are
growing: This one is very important!