Deliberate Programming or Unconscious Incompetence

The difference between direct democracy and demagoguery

I see where Marge got all of Springfield up in arms again. This time it was because she avowed that the January sixth event was a one off. Kind of like murder for the victim? She must not have gotten enough of an uptick in campaign contributions from her spat with Jimmy. But then Jimmy was so mean to the little girl from Georgia that Big Brother himself had to protect her. That’s right Matt had to say mean things about Jimmy so that Marge would feel better. Matt had no choice. The capitol police wouldn’t do anything to help the poor damsel in distress.

Then there was the Cawthorn boy from North Carolina. He just had to accuse the Republican folks up in Washington of having orgies and doing cocaine. I don’t care if they do or not. If it melts their butter they should have a good time. What bothers me about Matt and Marge and the Cawthorn kid is that their stupidity is something that I even know about.

There is a study concerning social structuring of mammals which found that “mammals meet their needs by watching others. Seeking what others have is the core survival strategy of the animal brain. …No conscious thought is necessary due to mirror neurons and dopamine” (source). I suppose that most people know that dopamine is a substance in the brain that makes us feel good. A mirror neuron is “a neuron that fires both when an animal acts and when the animal observes the same action performed by another. “ (source).

The idea that at a very basic and quite other than conscious level, we humans consider that survival requires, “we want what other people have” and that our very thinking machinery will mirror or mimic the actions of others. This leads to a few questions about how the media treats such behavior as that exhibited by Matt, Marge and the Cawthorn kid. All three of these yahoos crave attention. If their names are mentioned in the national media don’t they get what they want? The question then becomes why does the media report their silliness?

It certainly appears to be because the media and the Republican conspiracy mongers have a symbiotic relationship. It’s not like we could say that these kinds of political hacks can be considered as representing an opinion. They are not voicing policy they’d like to see implemented. They’re only voicing their need for attention. They’ve become the political equivalent of the National Inquirer. Which is to say that they’re not quite news and they’re not quite entertainment. But they are examples which will be followed just as The XLV and even Russia’s neighbor from Alaska, the failed Vice Presidential candidate, Sarah Palin herself.

Winston Churchill said, “No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” People from Plato to the authors of the Federalist papers have found fault in democracy. The Federalist argument was for representative democracy as opposed to a direct democracy. The problem with democracy is it seems to be rooted in the idea of education. In a population which values education, direct democracy can function. In a population which values itself, democracy has a dim future.

During the 2016 election Hilary Clinton and her supporters played into Daren the XLV’s hand by calling his supporters a basket of deplorables. That did not age well. It may or may not have been true but it galvanized folks who identified with the general tone of the statement to rally around the XLV. His supporters were more attuned to reality tv than to the Republican Party. Yet the national media refused to report that the guy really did have his bread buttered by Russian money. There were rumors, but at this point in time, we pretty much have enough proof to know beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the guy was laundering Russian money. That should have made him into voter kryptonite. But the media wanted to be fair and balanced so they reported on Hilary’s missing emails and The Orange Baby’s war chant of “lock her up”.

Is it any wonder that given the psychology of wanting what we see and mirror neurons and dopamine that we have a new crop of political liars? Like all young mammals they have learned from their elders. The saddest part of all of this is that none of these behaviors are directed from consciousness in any of the players. Just as we can not see the color of our eyes, we can not see the programs with which we see the world either. Those programs do not represent logic or thought. They represent mammalian survival mechanisms and nothing more.

If we as a nation are going to survive QAnon and other conspiracies, we must begin to acknowledge our nature as programmed and programmable entities. We must begin to seek the most effective ways to educate ourselves about our own programming, and how to best adjust that programming so that it functions in society, and for each of us on a personal level. For that momentous event to take place the national media must step up to the education plate and take some meaningful swings.

The common denominator for Matt, Marge, Sr. DeSantis, The XLV, the Cawthorn boy, Lauren, and even Trucker and Sean, is that they are all involved in appeasing the ordinary uneducated folks. They appeal to their prejudices and to their desires. This is not democracy. This is demagoguery. To be sure they are gaming the system as it exists. For the most part they are not doing anything illegal, but they are not following the letter of the law either. But they should be deterred if we are going to remain a democracy. That is a question that must be answered by direct democracy and not representative democracy.

As long as we fear to speak truth to power we will remain in demagoguery. It appears that this concept must exist in the executive, the judicial, and the legislative branches of government and also in the media. We can see that the judicial branch of government is the only one not infected by the false power of demagoguery. So far. We do have to raise eyebrows at the shenanigans of the Thomas’s but for the most part the judicial branch has behaved fairly.

Mr Biden has done a masterful job of returning the executive branch of government back to some semblance of normal. It doesn’t matter if I agree with his policies. At least he has policies. It isn’t that he hasn’t pandered to the ordinary folks at the expense of the country, but he has stayed true to his stated beliefs. He has not lied about everything that he’s encountered in his term. He’s no doubt lied about plenty, but not about everything. He has not brought disgrace to the Office. All of which brings us to the question of the day. Is demagoguery worth the effort and cost? Then how does demagoguery not lead us to full fledged fascism? Or do we succumb to the “us and them” mentality that people like Marge promote, where we blame Jewish people for our misfortunes. Well, blame never solves any problems. Like Michael Jackson sang: Change starts with the man in the mirror.