Equality by lot

Already weakened by the vast impersonal forces at work in the modern world, democratic institutions are now being undermined from within by politicians and their propagandists. The methods now being used to merchandise the political candidate as if he were a deodorant positively guarantee the electorate against ever learning the truth about anything. —Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited, 1958, VI.

We vote, indeed we perceive political reality, through the people with whom we are in contact. Most of us are reached by the mass media only in a two-step process, by way of other people’s perceptions and reactions to them. —Hanna F. Pitkin, The Concept of Representation, 1967, p. 223.

… it has also become evident that if one acts ruthlessly …, cleverly organized propaganda can accomplish swift and drastic changes in opinions and attitudes, especially in difficult and critical situations; it can … also instill patently false ideas about actual conditions. — Daniel Boorstin, The Image, 1961.

Regarding one of those Pernicious P’s, Wikipedia says the following [2024-07-01] about the influential author Edward Bernays and his book, Propaganda (1928):

[Bernays] outlined how skilled practitioners could use crowd psychology and psychoanalysis to control them [the masses] in desired ways. Bernays later synthesized many of these ideas in his postwar book, Public Relations (1945), which outlines the science of managing information released to the public by an organization, in a manner most advantageous to the organization.

The entry quotes the following from Bernays:

Universal literacy was supposed to educate the common man to control his environment. Once he could read and write he would have a mind fit to rule. So ran the democratic doctrine. But instead of a mind, universal literacy has given him rubber stamps, rubber stamps inked with advertising slogans, with editorials, with published scientific data, with the trivialities of the tabloids and the platitudes of history, but quite innocent of original thought. Each man’s rubber stamps are the duplicates of millions of others, so that when those millions are exposed to the same stimuli, all receive identical imprints. … The mechanism by which ideas are disseminated on a large scale is propaganda, in the broad sense of an organized effort to spread a particular belief or doctrine.

The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government ….

(Too strong—“influence” would be better.)

Propaganda is disseminated (and sometimes manufactured) by the Press (media), another Pernicious P. However, Proxy Electorates need no intermediary Press to feed them fake news or one slant or another. They will get information more directly, with less filtering and less spin.

Furthermore, PEs are mini-sized, not massive, so they will have the agency and adeptness to investigate, and the ability and motivation to “reason together.” Therefore, they should think less like manipulated mass-men and more like free men, for themselves. So “Let George (our neighbor or coworker or friend) Do It” (elect and oversee legislators). We don’t have the time, or interest, or, mayhap, ability, given our situation.

About one-quarter of the mass electorate already, in effect, hands the baton over to “George,” by not voting. Of the other three-quarters, many or most, I believe, would like the additional or alternative ability to select a good neighbor via the ballottery, to settling for some lesser (hopefully) evil in the voting booth.

It is simply a waste of time to prate that individuals [under DeMockery] should want and should be able to govern themselves in detail…. Most citizens … are interested in the results, not the process of government. —H. Wentworth Eldridge, The Second American Revolution, 1964, 324 & 361

Filed under: Books, Elections, Press, Sortition | Tagged: citizen deliberation, citizen juries, Citizen Legislature, citizens' assemblies, random selection, sortition |