Monday, March 19, 2018
Monitoring isn't the problem.
Survey linked by ZH finds that a strong majority of Americans UNDERSTAND what Deepstate is doing, though most don't use the term Deepstate.
Few Americans (13%) are very familiar with the term “Deep State;” another 24% are somewhat familiar, while 63% say they are not familiar with this term. However, when the term is described as a group of unelected government and military officials who secretly manipulate or direct national policy, nearly 3-in-4 (74%) say they believe this type of apparatus exists in Washington. This includes 27% who say it definitely exists and 47% who say it probably exists. Only 1-in-5 say it does not exist (16% probably not and 5% definitely not). Belief in the probable existence of a Deep State comes from more than 7-in-10 Americans in each partisan group, although Republicans (31%) and independents (33%) are somewhat more likely than Democrats (19%) to say that the Deep State definitely exists. Fully 8-in-10 believe that the U.S. government currently monitors or spies on the activities of American citizens, including a majority (53%) who say this activity is widespread and another 29% who say such monitoring happens but is not widespread. Just 14% say this monitoring does not happen at all. There are no substantial partisan differences in these results.Missing the big point as usual. Monitoring AS SUCH is a good thing. In fact an ideally responsive government would be monitoring everybody all the time. The relevant variable is what government DOES with the info. The ideal representative government would pick up areas of discontent and ADJUST ITS OWN BEHAVIOR to minimize the discontent. NEGATIVE FEEDBACK. We had an ideal representative government just once, from 3/4/33 until 4/12/45. Twelve good years. FDR monitored public discontent and ADJUSTED THE GOVERNMENT to minimize discontent. NEGATIVE FEEDBACK. All administrations before and since have practiced either positive feedback or no feedback at all. Most of the regimes before Wilson had no feedback at all. The Federal government simply didn't do much, so it didn't need to know much. Wilson brought in POSITIVE FEEDBACK, intense lethal monitoring and cultivating of "subversives" so the government would have an exponentially increasing supply of "problems" that must be "solved" by cultivating more "subversives". Harding abandoned the positive feedback for unknown reasons (which would still be worth understanding!) Coolidge and Hoover continued in pre-Wilson mode while real problems multiplied. FDR solved the problems. After FDR, the Wilson mode SMASHED back into control. Since 1946 it's all about cultivating "problems" which are "solved" by cultivating more "problems."
Labels: #DeplorableLivesMatter, Asked and badly answered
¶ 9:45 AM
