Forum Post: The great political branding machine
Posted 11 years ago on Sept. 7, 2012, 12:41 p.m. EST by richardkentgates
(3269)
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
If you cannot move beyond political brands, your argument is not ready for this forum.
Breaking party lines is the most important thing we can do to improve public discourse.
I also think it is inherent to the human condition that we are competitive and tribal and stratify ourselves into levels what ever they may be (e.g., more vs. less intelligent). In the context of large populations of people, what ought to be the optimal way of ordering ourselves so that we don't live like barbarians? Is there a system capable of this optimization? What would its value structure be? Is it making the right assumptions about human nature to be viable? Or, the wrong assumptions. Capitalism has been successful in part because it makes a correct assumption at its foundation: people are perfectly greedy. Remember this new way will need to include that too.
I like your points. But doesn't protest -- if successfully done -- convince large enough numbers of people to take corrective action? Tell me what this protest movement's corrective action will be after it has say 90% of the American people in full agreement with it?
I've seen so many different versions of that answer from bloody revolution to anarchy, to new party building, to changing laws, to dropout turn on..
What ought to happen? If you had a Gennie who could change the world to right this wrong, what would you have it do?
Saying this is a protest movement and then being silent on any new direction is confusing.
Begin the process of creating a culture, both individually and institutionally, of automatically filtering out garbage from fact. Ignoring talking points and fluff without a second thought, calling people out and discrediting anyone that has a habit of skewing facts. At the core, we all agree on 90% of the issues. The fairy tale paths of how to get there is what divides us.
The path beyond is to fix our culture to disallow this from become an issue again down the road.
I love it. So, the healed culture of fact recognition will automatically manifest itself in lawmakers and laws and public officials and policies in our current constitutional form of government (which has the nice feature of being updated by way of amendments as needed)? This of course won't change the basic fact that people can legitimately disagree even within such a new culture. But that is ok, really. For example, if it were understood by 90% of the people that climate change was a fact and we collectively need to make painful changes to reduce carbon emissions, we would have a federal government structure through which to enact and enforce the needed laws and regulations. In other words in this future culture, a government would need to be present? I don't want to put words in your mouth.
Oh, I thought your question was about the direction of the movement. No, nothing will happen automatically.
Yes, that is a good direction. So, I think there is a great deal of agreement on this fact-recognition culture and a number of existing, non-partisan organizations that are doing good work in this area. I don't think protests are needed to do more of this. Perhaps public communication / education of people is needed too. But that is also happening now: my children are being taught in grammar school how to recognize fact from opinion. Perhaps it is going to take generational change too and require people to instill it in their households. But, in the meantime what means will we have to establish households if the economics of the middle class keep degrading and most of us fall into poverty (which by the way breeds lesser and lesser intelligent people). What can be done in the interim? Time is short.
I think people are smarter these days due to internet access of information
Well said Richard. Partisan politics do not help OWS at all. They only divide us. It's time to destroy Partisan Powers AKA Team Twinkle (VQkag2, zendog, shooz, shadz66, DKAtoday). Join me and my warriors. We are known at The Crew For OWS Factuality AKA Bridge To The Ground.
Well said Richard. Partisan politics do not help OWS at all. They only divide us. It's time to destroy Partisan Powers AKA Team Twinkle (VQkag2, zendog, shooz, shadz66, DKAtoday). Join me and my warriors. We are known at The Crew For OWS Factuality AKA Bridge To The Ground (hchc, Odin, Thrasymaque and sidekick April)
Our ultimate goal is to create reality on this forum by bridging it to ground protests. We will be inviting protesters from around the country to tell their stories, and tell us how we can help them.