Tag: Political Science

American Authoritarianism

Even thought important voting will be done today the big story in the media has been the violence around the Trump campaign…..

Of course everyone is trying to get a handle on what is really happening….we have those that blame ISIS or the Left or the Radical Right for all the incidents….the problem is it is around only ONE campaign (so far)….but the media does not have a good handle on the situation (in my opinion)….

If you would like an explanation to the phenom then maybe political science can help out and give you the answer you seek……

Source: American authoritarianism: the political science theory that explains Trump rally violence – Vox

Open The (Overton) Window….We Need Fresh Air

By now the whole world is reeling at the comments of GOP front runner Donald Trump……although he has made many similar comments his newest has everyone (those that worship at the feet of the messiah) having to either justify the comment or condemn…..

About 5 years ago here on IST I offered up some philosophical techniques used in politics…..nowadays politics is full of innuendo and in some cases out right lies…….but this does have a practical side…..

Source: Argumentum ad populum–Revisited | In Saner Thought

Source: Argumentum Ad Hominem | In Saner Thought

It is nothing new….Trump likes to drive the conversation and will say whatever it takes from him to be the center of media attention…..just remember the statements he has made in the past 6 months or so…..since the beginning of his candidacy he has been the dominant voice in the coverage and the conversation……just read about his technique…….

Source: How does Trump do it? Understanding the psychology of a demagogue’s rally

Are there any PoliSci majors out there?  If there are then the traditional ideas of an election are flying in the face of everything you have been thought up to this point…..especially on the Right side of the spectrum.

The reason I ask is there is a theory in PoliSci first proposed by Joseph Overton…..it is called the Overton Window.

 A political theory invented by arch-conservative Joseph Overton, VP of the anti-tax Mackinac Center for Public Policy in Midland, Michigan.
In theory, the Overton Window represents the boundaries of “acceptable” public policy and discourse — what a politician can support without seeming too “extreme.” Opposing forces try to broaden this window (or shift it to one side) to make formerly “radical” ideas seem more “mainstream.”
Overton’s theory has a decidedly pro-business, anti-regulation slant. Something is either “more free” or “less free” in his view. He never mentions “more just” or “more fair” or “more practical.” In fact, the entire theory tailor made for paranoid people and right-wing lunatics who think Obama is a totalitarian Marxist dictator bent on world domination.
Trump is showing the classic signs of the Overton Window and his rival is doing exactly what was predicted…..He, Cruz, is not saying Trump is wrong but he is positioning himself as an ally so if Trump crashes then he can step in to the candidate’s donors and supporters.  Cruz will wait for an opening before he makes his move….that weakness will be first in poll numbers….

The Birth of a Citizen: Political Scientists Study How to Engage Young People | Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching

Since our dynamite congress cannot get anything done in the last 6 years maybe we should design a program to show these do-nothing twats what it takes to be a loyal official of the realm.

This might not be a bad idea for the rest of us also….maybe then we will stop electing big mouths and start finding people capable of being worthy of the office we give them.

If they want to act like immature morons then let us treat them as such….and keep it simple…….

 

The Birth of a Citizen: Political Scientists Study How to Engage Young People | Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

All Things Political

Nope, not a spot on NPR or some wild accusation by Glenn Beck…..but rather an explanation and a bit of history…..

Politics!  As my readers will know that I enjoy all things about politics….all the little things as well as all the really big things…..but what is meant by the term politics?  According to Gore Vidal the word politics is a combination of two Greek words…….poli meaning the people and tics which are blood sucking insects…..

Back in the day……way back to as early as the Greek city states……politics referred to the operation and the administration of the state or the sovereign….everything else fell into the realm of social or private…it is a recent invention to include just about everything as political…..our leaders wishing to claim responsibility for all things good in our society and dealing out blame for all things that are bad, all are happening because of political decisions made by the state or its opposition…in other words blame everything on nature of politics.

Issues like marriage, guns, prayers, flags, etc….these are social or private issues and do not belong in the realm of politics….these are decisions made by an individual and not by a government.  I know…I know…this sounds a bit libertarian….believe me these issues have only recently been associated with the study of politics……personal opinion…..they were introduced into the conversation because some had NO idea how to govern and they were used to divide and conquer a populace.

In these days of limited government/small government maybe a real good place to start would be to limit the politics to issues that actually pertain to the governing of the masses……..I realize in these days that the concept of government be about the running of the country and to stay out of people’s lives is a novel concept….but what the Hell?  We could do no worse than the system we have today.

Theatrics is NOT the way to have a successful government……and since that is true……we have a dysfunctional system of governance…..lack of civility, disrespect and lack of national unity….the three pillars of American politics…….is going to kill a system that our Founders were proud of……if only they could see it now!

There Is NO Nation Building!

College of Political Knowledge

Since the invasions of Afghanistan and then Iraq the US has been accused of trying to nation build….and of course this has been denied by all involved…Bush/Rumsfeld/Gates/Clinton/Cheney/Obama…..yada yada….all those in Washington have denied the accusation…..we were at war to remove AQ, destroy the Taleban, find WMDs, execute Saddam and on and on…a whole litany of reason why we dropped that first bomb…..we are assured almost daily that we are not involved in nation building……but is that the truth?

Let us look at just what nation building is…….to build a nation one needs to have 5 ingredients……these are…..identity, legitimacy,penetration, participation and distribution…..without all 5 there is NO nation to build……let me simplify this for my readers……

Identity–the people must identify themselves as one people…..that will not happen in Afghanistan….they see themselves as Pashtu, Tajik, etc……

legitimacy–a government must have the respect and willingness to go with the wishes of the people…..Afghanistan has NONE of this with thye exception of Kabul and Karzai and his cronies….

penetration–the nation must have the support of all its citizens and that includes those people in the isolated areas……Afghanistan will have NONE of this for the small villages feel that they must fend for themselves against all comers…..

participation–the residents must feel that if they take part in the system that their concerns will be addressed by whoever wins the election….Afghanistan will have NONE of this….ancient suspicions will always lead the vote……

distribution–this addresses the wants list of the people…….the villagers will always want more than they get and the ritzier people will always get what is more than they possibly deserve….and then there is the distribution of laws….will all people have the same rights?  In Afghanistan, we know this will NOT be true……

Now with the knowledge of what it takes to build a nation…..what are our chances of Afghanistan becoming a fully functioning nation?  My opinion….slim to NONE!

If NONE is the correct answer……..now ask, just what the Hell are we doing in Afghanistan?

On a side note…..this just in from Newser website……..

The head of Afghanistan’s central bank resigned yesterday, and says he won’t return to the country for fear of reprisals thanks to his investigation of the Kabul Bank corruption scandal. Abdul Qadeer Fitrat is currently in the US, the New York Times reports. In a scathing resignation letter, he says Hamid Karzai’s administration constantly tried to block his inquiry, threatened him with legal action, and even “used law enforcement agencies against the staff of the central bank.” “Some known circles were plotting against me,” he said in an interview on Afghan TV, though he declined to name names. The head of Karzai’s high commission on corruption, Azizullah Ludin, shot back that they blamed Fitrat himself for Kabul Bank’s problems, while an official in the attorney general’s office said they had charges against Fitrat. But Western diplomats, the Times notes, view Ludin with skepticism; he presided over Afghanistan’s fraud-ridden 2009 election.

And my friends will be the major obstacle to Afghanistan becoming a fully functioning nation…..CORRUPTION!

Is America In Decline?

College of Political Knowledge

Subject:  American Government

With the 2012 election season quickly approaching all those candidates, or should I say, all those presumed candidates are trying to find the best hook to excite the American voter…the socialist tag is waning…..so what could they blame on Obama that would start the masses jerking off to vote?

I have it!  American is in DECLINE and it is Obama’s fault!….his policies and those of the liberals are destroying our once great nation….sounds good?  You betcha and it will make a helluva hook for Americans that listen to Limbaugh, Beck and other such notables…..

But the question remains…..Is America In Decline?

I believe it is!  And it has been since the 90’s with all the terrible decisions made by our leaders……  And now you would like to know why, right?

After 30 years of some vague policies that have done little to improve life for most Americans….we are now entering into a period where , if things do not change, the Middle Class will be gone for as it is today, it is disappearing slowly…..

Millions of Americans see corporate power as the obstacle to progress and the negation of the democratic ideal of government of the people, by the people and for the people. They see that their vote means little and in most cases….NOTHING to the elected representatives……that their (the people’s) desires and concerns are seldom met, if at all……

Chrystia Freeland writing for Reuters:

Global capitalism isn’t working for the American middle class. That isn’t a headline from the left-leaning Huffington Post, or a comment on Glenn Beck’s right-wing populist blackboard. It is, instead, the conclusion of a rigorous analysis bearing the imprimatur of the U.S. establishment: the paper’s lead author is Michael Spence, recipient of the Nobel Prize in economic sciences, and it was published by the Council on Foreign Relations.

Spence and his co-author, Sandile Hlatshwayo, examined the changes in the structure of the U.S. economy, particularly employment trends, over the past 20 years. They found that value added per U.S. worker increased sharply during that period – 21 per cent for the economy as a whole, and 44 per cent in the “tradable” sector, which is geek-speak for those businesses integrated into the global economy. But even as productivity soared, wages and job opportunities stagnated.

This conclusion is a very big deal – Spence is telling us that global capitalism is working the way it should, but that the American middle class is losing out anyway. Since global capitalism is the best way we’ve come up with so far to run our economy, that creates quite a dilemma.

Spence is honest enough to admit that he has no easy answers. But he has posed the right question. American politicians in both parties are focused on a budget debate that is superficial, premature and ultimately about something pretty easy to figure out. Instead, we should all be working on the much bigger problem of how to make capitalism work for the American middle class.

Political games and partisan bullshit is bringing about the decline and the American people have NO one but themselves to blame!

Sad to say, my friends, America is in decline…..and if we fall….how long will the rest of the world stand?  I am NOT preaching American Exceptionalism here but that so much of the world depends on the US for so much….how long can it last if the the US fails in a big way?

A Liberal Gene?

For decades conservs have tried to say that liberals are some suffering from a mental disease or that it is a sickness or some such dribble……oops!  It seems someone has found a liberal gene…..

Appearing in the latest edition of The Journal of Politics published by Cambridge University Press, the research focused on 2,000 subjects from The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. By matching genetic information with maps of the subjects’ social networks, the researchers were able to show that people with a specific variant of the DRD4 gene were more likely to be liberal as adults, but only if they had an active social life in adolescence.Lead researcher James H. Fowler of UC San Diego and his colleagues hypothesized that people with the novelty-seeking would be more interested in learning about their friends’ points of view. As a consequence, people with this genetic predisposition who have a greater-than-average number of friends would be exposed to a wider variety of social norms and lifestyles, which might make them more liberal than average. They reported that “it is the crucial interaction of two factors – the and the environmental condition of having many friends in adolescence – that is associated with being more liberal.” The research team also showed that this held true independent of ethnicity, culture, sex or age.

Fowler concludes that the social and institutional environment cannot entirely explain a person’s political attitudes and beliefs and that the role of must be taken into account. “These findings suggest that political affiliation is not based solely on the kind of social environment people experience,” said Fowler, professor of political science and medical genetics at the Univer. of San Diego.

Okay, I can just hear Limbaugh, Beck and the rest of Right Coast radio jerking off…..so liberals are born and conservs are made…is that about it?

OMG! It’s Corporatism!

College of Political Knowledge

Professor’s Classroom

Subject:  Government/Political Philosophy

Paper  #32

For this lecture I could start where corporatism was most pronounced…that would be with the “illiterate Italian and the Krazy Kraut”….but that would start a whole new conversation into the merits of such regimes and I will not have that conversation at this time….

But I would bet that you have no idea what “corporatism” is and how it works…let me help….

I will use a more modern definition of the term….we have talked about the whereto fores of the Kraut in the past….Corporatism is a means of incorporating organized interests into the process of government….it refers to a tendency in mature liberal small L not the large L) democracies for organized interests to be granted special privilege and institutional access for these interests to policy formulation…..

T put it another way…it is an way of state which develops along with republican style democracy….corporatism has become entrenched in the economic and social levels of a democracy….corporatism is quickly becoming an end point of democratic rule where special interests and state have become the one and the same….

There you are…a description of what is happening in the US with the oil, health, drug and financial interests…they all have unlimited influence over the formation of policies that effect us all.

You think not?  The Supreme Court recently made it legal for corporations to use their unlimited funds to influence the direction of the country…not that that is unusal….it has been happening for decades if not longer…..

These corporations are now in the drivers seat of government….before they were a passenger with a good amount of influence but thanks to SCOTUS…they are now driving the country….

Is the trip into corporatism good for the country and the people that live here?  Is this inevitable or is it just a phase of our government?  Once the corporations have the power, how do the people take it back from the special interests?

The Theory Of Recurrent Cycles

College of Political Knowledge

Professor’s Classroom

Subject:  Political Theory/Political History

Paper #30

I believe that politics travels in circles…..and so did the Greeks…..wish I could remember which one of the ancient political philosophers came up with the theory….but I do recall he was a Greek dude…..

Okay, the theory of recurrent cycles runs something like this…….the Greeks thought that monarchies degenerated into tyranny, tyranny was overthrown by aristocrats which degenerated into oligarchies that exploited the population, which was overthrown by a democracy, which slid into the instability of mob rule, which brought about a strong individual that set himself up as a monarch…….and the whole process would begin again…

Now in the modern world there could be a few exceptions to this theory…but the main jest of the theory is as true today as it was in 400 BC…….Greeks were pretty damn sharp in their philosophical ramblings……but when they were coming up with this theory, there were about a gazillion city states in the country and each one of them went through a process that got them to the birth of democracy….but it did not always end there……

Look around today, pick a third world country and you can plot this theory without using Google.

A good example will be Pakistan and the political upheaval the floods may have (an upcoming post, I may sure).  The military seems to be doing its  job but the government is a bit slow in response, other than looking for cash….this could be a deadly event for the present government.

It seems that Pakistani militants are trying to take advantage of the situation on the ground……

The worst floods in decades, triggered by unusually heavy monsoon rains more than three weeks ago, have overwhelmed the Pakistani state’s ability to respond.

One major risk is Islamist charities and militants successfully exploiting anger over the government response, even as the United States and international allies rush to deliver additional aid.

The senior official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said militants were even dispensing money for victims.

“There are certainly clear indications that the insurgents and affiliated groups are trying to use the flood and the relief from the flood to try to gain support for their broader effort of being able to control large parts of Pakistan,” the official said.

Do not look now….but those darn cycles may be in the process again……..

A Solution For Afghanistan

The College of Political Knowledge

Professor’s Classroom

International Studies

Subject:  Afghan Politics

I thank my friend Quin over at Quintessential Havoc (blogroll will get you to his site) for making me think about this….I enjoy it when my talents are put to the task and Quin does have a way of pulling my chain….thanx my friend…..

As the war in Afghanistan drags on into its 10th year, there are many that are asking just what is the end game in the country, me being one of many that is asking.  There are many vague excuses for the continuation of the armed conflict….you noticed I said vague?  Yes vague…..is it to get al Qaeda?  How about the Taliban?  We are trying to give Afghanistan its first stable government in a thousand years.  But we are NOT there to build a nation.  What would you call it when one country imposes its political beliefs on another through the use of arms?

In case you are not sure….it is called NATION BUILDING………

Because of the tribal mentality of the country there is only ONE logical and rational answer….a DICTATORSHIP!  Sorry people…..you must be realistic….there is NO way that Afghanistan will ever have a stable representative government like the US in the foreseeable future.  The only viable alternative is a dictatorship…like it or not….

We have seen how weak the president/legislation example is in Afghanistan?  There will NEVER be a stable form of representative democracy in Afghanistan.  An authoritarian dictatorship would be the ONLY answer for stability.  If you like we could call it a guided democracy if that makes you more comfortable.

An authoritarian dictatorship would have a command of the political system but is kept in check by other institutions like the church or the military.  And that brings us to another point…Afghanistan needs a strong general that can command ALL the army and keep it in tow.

Saddam comes to mind…..that much hated dictator of years past…..but if you look at the societal part of his reign you will find education for all, including women, health care for all from cradle to grave, inexpensive energy, abundant food…granted his rule had its ugly sides but there was relative peace within the country…Afghanistan could use a good dictator at this point if they are ever to move into the 21st century.

Or another example is Libya…..an authoritarian state with an assembly of 700+ seats elected from the people’s committees….this could be a sample of what to do….give the heads of the different factions a seat in government, in the Jirga…..

Like it or not, without what I outlined the US and its troops will be serving and dying in Afghanistan for a generation or more.  Let us NOT delude ourselves…..calling for a democracy will NOT make it so.  Many people have many definitions for democracy , but to think that Afghanistan will ever have an American style democracy is just a pipe dream, at best.