Sunday, June 24, 2012
Fronts
Recently I was bitching about the rigidity of Gerrymandering. Political operatives have figured out how to create districts that steadily contain one form of thinking, which guarantees that a candidate can simply recite the appropriate slogans to stay in office. A positive (bad) feedback loop forms: the political slogans reinforce the local thought pattern, and the candidates shout the slogans even louder because they get more votes by doing the same thing.
Article in this morning's UK Guardian notes that Mexico has the same problem, without the trick of Gerrymandering; and Europe is similarly stuck. So perhaps Gerrymandering is just one of the symptoms, not the underlying problem.
On every meaningful subject the solution is obvious but the political systems are incapable of steering, accelerating or braking. They just keep running along the same track, making the same noises and having the same empty "debates" on completely meaningless fake "subjects".
= = = = =
This morning I was watching a weather pattern that refuses to move:
Analogy struck me: Our current weather situation is identical to our current political situation. For the last decade or so, highs and lows have been Gerrymandered. A high will stick in one place for months, keeping an area dry and hot; the counterpart low will keep an area wet and cold. Positive (bad) feedback again. Wet reinforces wet, dry reinforces dry. Storms keep training along the line between high and low.
= = = = =
We've been here before in weather; the 1930's were also a time of stuck highs and lows, with the same symptoms. Cold fronts and warm fronts were stationary.
But the politics of the 1930's were emphatically NOT stuck. Nationalist Fronts and Communist Fronts moved through countries quickly, changing the temperature dramatically. Governments actually responded to the fronts, because they sensed that their own existence was in peril.
What do we have now? No organized Nationalist Front, unless you count the occasional convective pop-up like Anders Breivik. No Communist Front at all. Instead we have these intentionally weak little dust-devils like Tea Party and Occupy, which serve to dissipate local gatherings of energy without doing any useful work.
Solution? None that I can see.
At the very least we need to start by understanding the phenomenon and ignoring the "experts".
In weather, the "experts" tell us we need to eliminate Evil Carbon, which has precisely zero connection to the real problem. The genocidal Carbon Cult just wastes infinite quantities of money and kills thousands of people.
In politics, the "experts" tell us that we need to "use our vote" to "hold the government accountable", which means "voting" for one of the "two" "parties" whose sole job is to waste infinite quantities of money and kill thousands of people. ¶ 5:52 AM
Article in this morning's UK Guardian notes that Mexico has the same problem, without the trick of Gerrymandering; and Europe is similarly stuck. So perhaps Gerrymandering is just one of the symptoms, not the underlying problem.
On every meaningful subject the solution is obvious but the political systems are incapable of steering, accelerating or braking. They just keep running along the same track, making the same noises and having the same empty "debates" on completely meaningless fake "subjects".
= = = = =
This morning I was watching a weather pattern that refuses to move:
Analogy struck me: Our current weather situation is identical to our current political situation. For the last decade or so, highs and lows have been Gerrymandered. A high will stick in one place for months, keeping an area dry and hot; the counterpart low will keep an area wet and cold. Positive (bad) feedback again. Wet reinforces wet, dry reinforces dry. Storms keep training along the line between high and low.
= = = = =
We've been here before in weather; the 1930's were also a time of stuck highs and lows, with the same symptoms. Cold fronts and warm fronts were stationary.
But the politics of the 1930's were emphatically NOT stuck. Nationalist Fronts and Communist Fronts moved through countries quickly, changing the temperature dramatically. Governments actually responded to the fronts, because they sensed that their own existence was in peril.
What do we have now? No organized Nationalist Front, unless you count the occasional convective pop-up like Anders Breivik. No Communist Front at all. Instead we have these intentionally weak little dust-devils like Tea Party and Occupy, which serve to dissipate local gatherings of energy without doing any useful work.
Solution? None that I can see.
At the very least we need to start by understanding the phenomenon and ignoring the "experts".
In weather, the "experts" tell us we need to eliminate Evil Carbon, which has precisely zero connection to the real problem. The genocidal Carbon Cult just wastes infinite quantities of money and kills thousands of people.
In politics, the "experts" tell us that we need to "use our vote" to "hold the government accountable", which means "voting" for one of the "two" "parties" whose sole job is to waste infinite quantities of money and kill thousands of people. ¶ 5:52 AM
