Reply #27: Thought-provoking post

[IrateCitizen]

drfemoe, your post got me thinking in several ways.

First, I'll focus on the purely electoral matters regarding your 80/20 rule. I think that, when it comes to true power politics in this country, the 20% is way too high. I'd say it's closer to 0.01% or thereabouts. That, however, does not diminish the importance of the 20% of whom you speak, because they do have a great deal of indirect influence.

Propaganda efforts are largely focused on this 20%, because they are the group that can be readily expected to turn out and vote, and to follow issues rather closely, regardless of whether they are "right", "left" or "center". Noam Chomsky has put forth this proposition, so I'm kind of paraphrasing him the best as I can remember here. Do you recall Judith Miller's columns leading up to the Iraq invasion in which she repeatedly pimped the claims of WMD's within Iraq? I can think of no clearer of an instance of the propagandizing of this 20% than that in the current context. Couple those efforts with Tom Friedman's "insight", and you have a full frontal assault on public opinion without their even knowing it.

Now, this isn't saying that the remaining 80% doesn't need to be swayed, but they're much easier. They're passive, so they can be fed more simplistic, black/white arguments via the NY Post, Fox News, etc. They also don't vote in as large of numbers, so they're not as critical as that 20%.

Now, moving on to deeper matters, the only way that those who rule are able to is due to the complicity of that 20%. Power is only as effective as the amount of cooperation -- whether it be active or passive -- that it can find within a society. This matters little whether that society is a democracy or a dictatorship. The only thing that is different is the means of control -- the old analogy "propaganda is to a democracy as force is to a dictatorship".

Here in the US, we have lots of toys and trinkets that keep us constantly distracted and complacent. We've bought into the exploitation of our wants to the extent that we have actually sacrificed happiness and QUALITY of life in pursuit of standards of living. However, as you cited in your discussions with your RW roommate, there are many of us who are aware of just how destructive we're being -- the question is whether or not we are willing to do what is necessary to change it.

A few weeks ago, in celebration of Earth Day, my UU minister gave a sermon on the spiritual obligation of environmentalism, and how we ALL contribute to the spoiling of the earth. Considering that my fellowship is in northern Westchester Co., NY, it could be best said that her sermon was aimed at "afflicting the comfortable". In fact, the subject causes a great deal of discomfort and avoidance within my congregation, because it forces people to look at their own complicity and cooperation in the current state of affairs.

However, just imagine if a large part of that 20% were able to cast off these limitations of passive cooperation, and instead do the right thing together. If it were done en masse, the conversion would not be nearly as difficult as a few people here and a few people there. You would then really see your 80/20 rule put into effect, because the passive 80% would essentially have no choice but to be drug along. The only thing stopping this is that it involves the 20% giving up some of their comfort -- THAT is the mechanism in our society that is used to enforce passive cooperation with a rather immoral system that reinforces our worst patterns while penalizing our better instincts.

Does any of this make sense? I'm kind of talking off the top of my head here, so perhaps I could clarify it after re-reading and a little time in reflection/editing.