Equality by lot

Here are a few instances where DeMockery has badly failed us, and where Demiocracy [to be explained later] would have done a better job—and had greater legitimacy with the public, because of its Everyman composition. The priorities of common folk are not as much warped by the Pernicious P’s. (Their relative resistance to Propaganda, for instance, was portrayed by the cynicism of the “proles” in the saloon-set scenes in 1984.)

To me, as to the alienated Greeks I posted about yesterday, these outrages are not just incidental accidents, but revelations of the essential objectionable character of the political class that is nurtured and sustained by DeMockery.

There’s no such thing as a cheap politician. — Ferdinand Lundberg, Scoundrels All, 1968.

1. The Great Depression, Part 1. I’ve read that some officials wanted the Federal Reserve to be more hawkish in 1927, because a house of cards was a-building due to its loose credit policy. But moderating the roaring Twenties then would have impinged on the wealth of Wall Streeters and dimmed the GOP’s presidential prospects in 1928, so pressure was applied to keep the party going. Even if this speculation isn’t 100% correct, it is the SORT of thing that is likely occur under DeMockery. For instance:
   

   Also to blame is former President Donald Trump, who repeatedly pressured and even threatened to fire Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell to continue to keep the interest rates low to aid his re-election campaign. When Mr. Trump was first elected, the 2007-09 recession and its aftereffects had more or less ended. But he wanted low interest rates to artificially boost the economy at great expense. He met with the Fed chairman to remind him of his expectations. —Letter to the WSJ, April 10, 2023, by A. Salinity.

   
   Political interests and/or special-interest Pressure groups (e.g., financiers), having intense focused desires, and being insiders, are able to override the mass outsider-public’s unfocused, unintense desire to avoid risky financial bubbles. Only under Demiocracy can the public’s general will coalesce and assert itself, via a topic-focused Proxy Electorate.

2. The Great Depression, Part 2. The Smoot-Hawley Tariff of 1930 deepened the Depression; it was the result of pressure group politics and political-party angling for factional votes (mostly farmers), and was passed over the published objections of most of the country’s economists.

   Some historians believe that the tariff hike deepened the Great Depression, which might have incited the rise of political extremism and extremist leaders. —Google.

3. The Warren Commission. It did a shoddy job and thereby increased cynicism about (and diminished the legitimacy of) democracy. A Proxy oversight group would have heard the critics and witnesses who were overlooked or kept out (e.g., Secret Service agent Paul Landis, who—it now (Sept. 2023) comes out—found the “magic bullet” behind where JFK had been sitting), and in general would have drilled deeper, with the assistance of its investigators. (I’m not saying that it would necessarily have endorsed any of the JFK-conspiracy theories. Just that it would have done a less obviously objectionable job.)

4. The Vietnam War. Insider George Kennan stated that if the American people had known what he and others in the State Department knew about the situation in Vietnam, LBJ would not have been allowed to escalate the war there. An appropriate Proxy group would not have been misled by the Gulf of Tonkin incident. It would have got timely access to the Pentagon Papers.

   It, unlike the mass electorate, would have heard the advice of a Marine general: to defend only the easily defensible coastal provinces. If so, there would have been far fewer casualties, no Agent Orange, no Phoenix program. (LBJ rejected that advice on the grounds that the Republicans would then blame him for losing Vietnam. This is an example of how a system dominated by Politicians and Parties is governed by their petty personal and partisan concerns, not by concern for the good of the country.)

   Indeed, a Demiocracy mightn’t have wanted to defend an unpopular DeMockery like South Vietnam at all.

   What would you do if 5000 soldiers you had sent abroad came back dead? Would you say it happened because you made a thoughtless, headstrong decision? Not likely [if you are a professional, party-oriented politician]. You’d say they died in a noble cause which it was now more important than ever to insure its victory. So you’d double and redouble the number of troops sent. —George Reedy (former press secretary to LBJ), “Making Sense of the Sixties”.

5. The M-16 Rifle Debacle. This was a replay of the Mark-14 torpedo scandal of WW2. “It is a pure portrayal of the banality of evil.” See “M-16: A Bureaucratic Horror Story—Why the rifles jammed,” by James Fallows, via The Atlantic on June 1, 1981, at M-16: A Bureaucratic Horror Story – The Atlantic.

   The mechanism of bureaucracy… is an antidote to the awakening of the public conscience. —Robert Michels, Political Parties, 1915, p. 189.

6. Hurricane Katrina (2005). Our officeholders were uncaring, shortsighted, and pennywise about safety measures, like Greece’s. They behaved similarly in advance of and during the 2023 wildfire in Maui, Hawaii—despite having been warned in detail about what to do and avoid after a 2018 fire.

7. The OPEC oil embargo

   …only 0.1% of the electorate know of the role of Nixon’s maintenance of oil import quotas in forming up OPEC and precipitating the oil crisis. —T. Schulz, in Esquire, May 1974.

8. The TWA Flight 800 crash investigation. Ditto. (Although perhaps there were justifiable “raisons d’etat” for the coverup.)

9. The Impeachment of Bill Clinton re Monica Lewinsky. This might not have happened in a system less dominated by Party concerns, by Politicians, and by the Press.

10. The Great Recession (2008). This was a replay of the run-up to the Great Depression. Years before the home mortgage crisis of 2008, astute insiders recognized that federal policy (e.g., at “Fannie Mae” and “Freddie Mac”) was contributing to the construction of a huge house of cards whose collapse would wreak havoc. A Proxy Electorate topic-group would have paid heed.

11. The second Gulf War. Possibly avoided; the occupation likely better handled.

12. The Withdrawal from Afghanistan would have been less bungled. (I’ve read that there were petty “political” motivations for Biden’s hastiness.)

13. UFOs. A PE (Proxy Electorate) group would have forced the government to get serious about the topic 50 years ago, or earlier, instead of turning a blind eye to it. (Unless, again, there’s some raison d’etat why not.)

14. Organized Crime and Political Corruption Unchecked by Compromised Officeholders.

    Official and Confidential: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover (1993) by Anthony Summers reveals a dark, noir-ish, “juice”-driven side (I hope it’s only a “side”!) of American politics. Ordinary-citizen Electors and amateur, “Demi” politicians would have done a far better job than Hoover and his overseers, even if they themselves had become somewhat corrupted. Here are two excerpts:

    • Neil Welch, an FBI Agent in Charge who became a legendary fighter against organized crime after Hoover’s death, praised this book. ‘Official and Confidential,’ he said, ‘is a powerful indictment of both the presidents and the Congress which allowed one man to have such enormous power over the nation’s law enforcement machinery – with no real accountability. FBI agents in the field could have been vastly more effective in their war on crime if the issues raised by Official and Confidential had been responsibly addressed in the public dialogue while Hoover lived.’

    • Jenkins recalled, ‘… He [Hoover] implied that he had such detailed and damning material on every U.S. politician of note, particularly those of liberal persuasion, that his position was impregnable. No one could afford to sack or discipline him.’

In none of those blunders above did public opinion have an opportunity to get an insider’s perspective on events as they unfolded, or have a chance to “know itself” through discussion and reflection, or have a way of affecting events. Only a task-dedicated, right-sized, proxy-public can do that.

To the extent that public opinion is not the result of such informed, thorough deliberation, it is short of legitimacy—and will often be wrong. DeMockery is only occasionally democratic. It can’t be trusted to discover the right thing much or most of the time, or to do it effectively even if it wants to.

DeMockery often elevates phonies and duds, aka shams, and their make-believe, blundering behavior can collide catastrophically with reality, as above.

To raise the Sham-Noblest, and solemnly consecrate him by whatever method, new-devised, or slavishly adhered to from old wont, this, little as we may regard it, is, in all times and countries, a practical blasphemy, and Nature will in no wise forget it. Alas, there lies the origin, the fatal necessity, of modern Democracy everywhere. — Thomas Carlyle, Pamphlets, 22.

Nature is a hanging judge. — Anonymous, The Viking Book of Aphorisms.

Nature abhors a moron. — H.L. Mencken.

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