I don't share your view about dictatorships being the inevitable result of giving more democratic control to people, with its strange implication that keeping things closer to how they are is therefore less likely to lead to a dictatorship. The societies that have attempted democratic self-rule did not devolve into chaos because of some internal flaw that sparked a wave of resentment, but because outside forces would not tolerate their existence. The Spanish revolution of 1936, the Paris Commune, and the early months of the Russian revolution are all examples of budding functional societies run on libertarian socialist principles, and to say that they met their end because of some flaw inherent in the ideology ignores the role of reactionary and counter-revolutionary forces.
I am categorically NOT making that argument. I am saying the flaw is inherent in humanity, not necessarily the ideology, but then inherent to humanity in a nurture sense, not necessarily a nature sense.
Iow, we can't seem to help fucking up our children in ways that keep this cycle rotating (or corkscrewing). And that's even among families with the best of intentions and the most enlightened parenting (or so the parents believe).
I grew up from 1-10 in the suburbs of St. Louis and then from 10-17 in Eugene, Oregon. I've seen the strictest of Republican parental oversight and the haziest of "hippie" it's all good "buddy" oversight and in almost every single instance the kids naturally rebel against whatever it is the parents are.
Iow, the drive to rebel--to stand out, to form one's own identity--may be an inherent part of our "nature" but it is also an inherent part of our "nurture." Not so much
genetic as sociological? Fundamental, having more to do with the nature of
identity than anything neurological? Does that help clarify what I'm talking about?
This may simply suggest that it's too late for us as a species, as the only way to make society fair in one place is to have it be fair across the globe, but that's a very different kind of problem than the suggestion that immovable forces of human nature or an in-built Catch-22 behind autonomous self-rule
Again, not nature. Nurture. The flaws--the ones that make the biggest problems--are in the nurture side, not the nature side of the equation. Well, absent inclusion of serious problems like brain damage or the like.
And the Catch-22 is that it evidently takes a murderer to stop all murder. Iow, it evidently takes someone like a Hitler--with idyllic dreams of a Thousand Year Reich of bio-engineered "super men"--to create any such utopian environment for enlightened self-rule to exist as a condition for its existence. You follow? Hence the Catch-22. In order for anarchism to exist, the conditions for anarchism must first exist, which means we need to first eradicate anything in our
nurture, first and foremost, that could exacerbate things in our
nature. Capisca?
People are not as predictable as politicians calculate they are, and nobody has yet discovered the pattern to our shifting tendencies.
I obviously disagree. Tell me what kind of abuse you suffered in your childhood and I can pretty much plot your entire life's narrative from there. Not 100% of course--as that's absurd--but likely more than enough to be able to profile you for how you'd vote on various policies and the like. Political analysts do this all the time in fact. As do advertisers and marketers etc. Hell, psychologists and psychiatrists as well, of course.
It's not too difficult, so long as you have knowledge of certain variables.
The entire discussion about how to govern ourselves has taken unexpected turns in the era of the internet, which makes possible a level of participation that was unimaginable mere decades ago.
Except that the problem we are now discovering--since the technology is still in its infancy--and as demonstrated very clearly in the 2016 (and before that, 2008) election, is that it artificially inflates the fringe that has normally, historically been ignored precisely because it was the fringe; the extreme ends of the political spectrum.
It's not because the ideas are unknown or even valuable; its precisely the opposite in fact. It's because the new medium only celebrates and raises up the extreme and the unobtainable.
With the newspaper and even TV news, the maxim used to be: if it bleeds, it ledes. Iow, blood and death--being primal fears--is what sold the newspapers. With the internet--with social media--that maxim has exponentially increased such that ONLY blood goes viral. It's the exact flipside to what the mainstream was.
That is not a good thing. That is, in fact, a very bad thing, as, once again, Trump's occupancy proves in spades.
We need to engage these ideas as real options instead of remaining satisfied with what has been presented to us.
Categorically false. And an excellent example of precisely what I am talking about.
You are not understanding a fundamental principle; that all of life is lived in the center. You are
thinking magically, even though you may not realize it or cop to it (and are probably offended by my making any such declaration; I don't know you, after all, how dare I and the like). But this is the exact problem with Sanders' hucksterism.
It confuses
broad thinking with
magical thinking. There is nothing wrong with thinking broadly; i.e, what can we accomplish with the given parameters? Magical thinking, however, is shit like,
so long as we have 70-80% of the entire population supporting us after the election we can do the impossible...
Well, yeah, that's almost tautological, but how the fuck do we GET to 70-80% of the entire population supporting somebody, let alone after the election? And no amount of you or I or anyone itt or on the internet talking about how great it would be to have magical ponies is ever going to get us magical ponies. Why? Because magical ponies
don't exist.
But "medicare for all" COULD exist if only...................wait for it............70-80%.
See the problem now?
The way to get "medicare for all" is to never say the words "medicare for all." It is through incremental changes over time, not by everyone sitting around a bong and imagining peace in our time.
It's important to me that you understand I'm NOT saying no one should think big--to think
broadly. I am not saying that. What I AM saying is that we need to think
intelligently and within the parameters of the system, because there is no changing it absent a more violent approach.
Again, this isn't a failure of "vision" in me or the like; this is the cold hard reality of
how shit is. And not "according to Koy"; according to the objective parameters that readily exist and are on display for anyone to see.
Rejecting that notion is certainly within anyone's purview, but it does the
actual "conversation" no good to do that, as, once again was painfully demonstrated by the Sanders zombie civil war primary if by nothing else I've argued.
