Decius wrote:
I think that there ought to be more outrage about the Clark Lytle Geduldig & Cranford memo which you can read here and I highly encourage you to do so.

THIS is THE HEART of the problem with Democracy in America - special interests spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on cynical campaigns to discredit people because they can't win on facts. We know that this kind of stuff goes on, but in this case these people more or less spell out what they are doing in black and white. Everyone should read this memo. They need to understand the amount of effort that goes into lying to them and manipulating them.

This morning I imagined remixing this as tongue in cheek television advertisement.

[Suit 1 - standing in front of the Capital building] Are you concerned that the United States might become a more Democratic country, with strong political institutions that faithfully represent the will of the people?

[Suit 2 - with OWS protestors far in the distance] Do you have important initiatives in Washington that could be undermined if they become the target of popular protests?

[Suit 3 - older man, in a wood paneled office] Here at Clark Lytle Geduldig & Cranford, we're here to help.

[Suit 2 - handing money and a bong to a hippie and directing him to join the OWS protestors] We can help you develop negative narratives that will undermine the credibility of people who express political opinions that you disagree with.

[Suit 1 - handing money to a radio talk show host before he goes on the air] Large companies are not always the best spokespersons for their own causes. We can leverage our vast coalition of both traditional and non-traditional allies to make it clear that standing in opposition to your initiatives will carry severe political costs.

[Suit 3] Manipulating the democratic process is an important part of doing business in America today, and nobody does it better than Clark Lytle Geduldig & Cranford. So give us a call, our agents provocateurs are standing by.

At risk of really pissing off Rattle... why is there no +1 button on this site?!?!?

Dagmar wrote:
At risk of really pissing off Rattle... why is there no +1 button on this site?!?!?

Technically, just rerecommending the post is the right thing to do. We had a philosophical discussion about this and I guess we decided that the +1 button was too easy to click - if you didn't want the post in your own blog you didn't really endorse reading it enough for it to be worth promoting. Clearly later social systems have proven us wrong there.

Decius:

I think that there ought to be more outrage about the Clark Lytle Geduldig & Cranford memo which you can read here and I highly encourage you to do so.

THIS is THE HEART of the problem with Democracy in America - special interests spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on cynical campaigns to discredit people because they can't win on facts. We know that this kind of stuff goes on, but in this case these people more or less spell out what they are doing in black and white. Everyone should read this memo. They need to understand the amount of effort that goes into lying to them and manipulating them.

Perhaps it's hard for the public to be outraged when you consider that the success (effectiveness) of these campaigns depends entirely on the public's unbounded susceptibility to these sorts of shenanigans. To grok this memo is to accept the fundamental, pervasive insincerity of the contemporary media landscape. In order to care deeply about this deceptive behavior you have to care deeply about the integrity of the political process. At the same time, these campaigns can be attractive because they work, whereas, who goes to the local city council meeting? What fraction of the voting population takes a deep dive into the text of a bill under consideration? The mass reactions are more visceral than principled.

I'm more inclined to be outraged about the apparent fact that these campaigns work. In fact they apparently work so well that, as Lessig has explained, a credible threat of a campaign is often sufficient to achieve one's objectives. To my mind, the underlying vulnerability is at least as worthy of attention as the various ways in which it has come to be exploited. High school students are expected to demonstrate their understanding of analogies on standardized tests, but no one seems to think it a worthwhile use of classroom time to equip them with the skills that would inoculate them against such false media manipulation.

noteworthy wrote:
Perhaps it's hard for the public to be outraged when you consider that the success (effectiveness) of these campaigns depends entirely on the public's unbounded susceptibility to these sorts of shenanigans. To grok his memo is to accept the fundamental, pervasive insincerity of the contemporary media landscape.

I'm more inclined to be outraged about the apparent fact that these campaigns work.

You've gone an hit the nail on the head here. I think most people's reaction to this memo is "ho hum - not surprising." They KNOW this goes on and yet they STILL BELIEVE. Of course I'm outraged about that. I'm constantly outraged by my friends and coworkers who buy into the crap these people are slinging.

They're not incapable of seeing through it, which is why its so damn frustrating. For people my age I think politics is what fashion was to us in junior high school. These people are trying to be adults, by staking out a point of view, but as you point you they lack the true interest required to dig deeply into these things.

Its about fitting in. Its about peer pressure. Its about staking out who you are - its not really what you think.

They don't think that what they think matters.

Perhaps its a kind of cultural disenfranchisement.

We're not really a democracy but we're trying to look like it because we think that its cool.

Maybe that kind of social posturing is all my generation knows how to do.

No one gave a fuck what we thought when we were kids, so we didn't grow up trying to think. So we can't actually participate in a democracy now that we're adults. We don't know how to do that.

What we know how to do is form social cliques and figure out whose in and whose out. We're absolutely spectacular at social cliques.

We don't know a damn thing about respecting people's independent opinions. That is almost the polar opposite of what we are. Independent opinions are like poison in a social clique. We don't bother developing them and we don't value them.

Perhaps whats missing are adults who encourage children to stake out independent opinions and value them even as they correct them. Whats missing are adults that ask children to figure out amongst themselves what the right answers are.

You can't teach democracy without empowering the students.

We're a whole generation thats never been empowered. We're like slaves who don't know what to do with freedom - like cons who've spent their whole lives in prison and then one day they get released.

We can't deal with it. We go back to our old ways. And they use us.

There is no solving this.