Chomsky’s speech
Noam Chomsky has beenso influential among the libertairn left for so long that I can’t pass up the opportunity to invite a discussion of this speech… pro, con, etc.
One month ago, Joseph Andrew Stack crashed his small plane into an office building in Austin Texas, hitting an IRS office, committing suicide. He left a Manifesto explaining his actions. It was mostly ridiculed, but it deserves much better, I think.
rootlesscosmo:
Chomsky begins his article thus:
One month ago, Joseph Andrew Stack crashed his small plane into an office building in Austin Texas, hitting an IRS office, committing suicide.
I read carefully to see whether he might mention that Joseph Andrew Stack also committed murder, killing a blameless Federal civil servant who had the misfortune to be in the IRS office that day; he doesn’t, and, cynic that I am, I can’t say I’m surprised. If the radical imagination is to be “rekindled” by the immolation of nameless, unimportant others–the murdered man’s name was Vernon Hunter, not that Chomsky cares–then to hell with it.
20 April 2010, 3:25 pmskol:
“[T]heir institutional roles”? What rough beast slouches towards Bethlehem to be born, indeed?
20 April 2010, 6:24 pm(Boer) Tom:
I think people who’ve lost a sense of psychological independence like to see someone fight. The strategy of the parties vying for power seem to be to elevate symbols that evoke anger above what they represent, in order to inhibit thought. As an example, the ‘welfare queen’ terminology is invoked to bring to the fore anger (whether borne of racism or a very serious confusion about abiding realities) that may shut down thinking long enough to give opportunity to reduce the support system, or to gain power, depending on the agent in question (Bush/Obama et al. vs e.g. the Nazis).
What surprises me is that the left seems to be uninterested in defeating repeated lies and half-truths, despite the fact that it is often fairly simple to undermine the lies and the purpose they support. One lie-complex that is often repeated is that ’3rd worlders (read: Africans) cannot stop killing each other, and we’d thus do well to stop sending aid’. This complex is so simple to challenge that one need only take it seriously: Count the number of war dead in Africa the last 50 years, using the maximum for each war, and one gets 20 million. Maybe the person repeating the claim will say that one should include murder and failure to combat disease; let’s put aside any quibbles, and double the number for good measure, for 40 million deaths in fifty years, out of a population of 1 billion. During WWI and WWII, the minimum dead was 80 million, out of a total population of 0.5 billion, or 160 million per billion. At this point, one should probably not point out disease deaths and non-war murder in Europe at the time.
So generally, why not point out where symbols are being abused, and why not take the racist arguments seriously for the purpose of undermining their aims?
20 April 2010, 7:16 pm(Boer) Tom:
Of course, one may add that aid is disasterous, by design…
20 April 2010, 7:18 pmStan:
As long as the radical imagination is fired by an Enemy, how can it be otherwise? On another thread, I blathered on a bit about political “issues” have the inexorable tendency to trap advocates inside an agenda (related to a thread a long time back on how policy fights substitute gaming for honesty).
Cos and I and probably a couple others have been involved with political cadre organizations where this dynamic takes over, becoming a raison e’etre.
I’d just call further attention, as part of thinking about that same dynamic, to the things that happen when we have an Enemy that becomes the focus of our praxis. For starters, it forecloses anything resembling reconciliation between people. It strips away the personhood of the Enemy.
But it also sets up a culture of suspicion and probative legitimacy. I had someone here tell me not to long ago that being a pacifist made me an “objective ally of fascism.” Inside many organizations, a culture of “calling others out” is dressed up as “criticism, self-criticism,” and becomes a ruthless system of policing, wherein one feels compelled to him/herself engage in denunciations as a way of proving one’s bona fides.
It’s a sectarian dynamic too. Denunciation of others (enemies or their “objective allies”) becomes a subcultural norm.
Smaller and smaller intellectual cadres come to appoint themselves as the cops of a movement (or more often, an ideology), presuming to tell any and all others how to think and what to do to merit the status of… member… ally… etc. Inclusion becomes an ever more arcane gauntlet, with a few cult-like gatekeepers.
When you follow the ethical logic of enemizing, and you introduce the dare-ya mentality of proving oneself down with the revolution (whichever one it is), then enemizing always ends up in the same place. The enemy has to die; and someone has to kill that enemy.
There’s nothing left but escalation.
21 April 2010, 6:53 amrootlesscosmo:
@Stan:
As long as the radical imagination is fired by an Enemy, how can it be otherwise? On another thread, I blathered on a bit about political “issues” have the inexorable tendency to trap advocates inside an agenda (related to a thread a long time back on how policy fights substitute gaming for honesty).
In particular there’s a long-standing practice of being way too generous with other people’s suffering. I think Chomsky is an example, and for me (and others) the cogency of his analysis is compromised, and his conclusions made deeply suspect, by it. Elsewhere I’ve expressed my view that Audre Lorde’s “You cannot demolish the Master’s house using the Master’s tools” raises as many questions as it answers, but I think it’s safe to say that you can’t–not just the ethical “shouldn’t” but also the practical “can’t”–build a fine new house on the fresh corpses of your fellow-slaves.
21 April 2010, 8:54 am(Boer) Tom:
@rootlesscosmo
21 April 2010, 11:16 amWhat moral/ethical checks would you suggest on using other peoples’ suffering to make an argument? If I say that someone suffered as a victim of a great crime, and in that context, (s)he decided to commit a smaller (if still in some sense great) crime, is that problematic, and if so, how? My fear is that we might get back to the moral equivalency arguments. Further, some fellow slaves do collaborate with the masters to undermine resistance; if we condemn killing them, can we at least remind ourselves what motivates the urge to violence, even if in the course of an argument against the violence?
Richard:
“If the radical imagination is to be “rekindled” by the immolation of nameless, unimportant others–the murdered man’s name was Vernon Hunter, not that Chomsky cares–then to hell with it.”
Ok, except that Chomsky doesn’t say the radical imagination ought to be rekindled by Stacks’ action. He’s talking about the failure of the Left, of the radical imagination, to “suggest an answer” to the kinds of questions posed, and problems experienced, by people like Stacks, whether they commit murder or not. The word “rekindled” appears only in his last paragraph:
“For the radical imagination to be rekindled and to lead the way out of this desert what is needed is people who will work to sweep away the mists of carefully contrived illusion and reveal the stark reality, and to be directly engaged in popular struggles that they sometimes help galvanize. What we need, in short, is the late Howard Zinn, a terrible loss. There won’t be another Howard Zinn, but we can take to heart his praise for “the countless small actions of unknown people” that lie at the roots of the great moments of history, the countless Joe Stacks who are destroying themselves, and maybe the world, when they could be leading the way to a better future.”
It seems to me that he’s precisely not talking about what you seem to think he’s talking about. And I don’t really know what you mean about him being “generous” with the suffering of others.
That said, I don’t think this piece is very interesting. I’ve read a lot of Chomsky over the years, and owe him a lot. This doesn’t say anything he hasn’t said over and over again.
21 April 2010, 1:09 pmrootlesscosmo:
@(Boer)Tom:
21 April 2010, 3:06 pmI’m not good at hypotheticals and I don’t want to try to lay down any general guides or principles. I think if Chomsky wants to use Stack’s document as the text for a lesson, he ought to acknowledge that Stack took someone else’s life by way of “collateral damage.” Vernon Hunter was 67; he left a widow and six children. I think they count; I wish Chomsky had given some sign that he thinks so too.
Stan:
“We have tried everything but love.”
-Theodor Adorno
21 April 2010, 3:57 pmShaukat:
Given Chomsky’s philosophy, I think he was simply trying to unearth the root cause behind Stack’s actions, much as he has tirelessly sought to locate the root cause of Islamic terrorism in the terrorism unleashed by the Unites States against other lands and people. He most certainly would not say that Hunter and his family “don’t count,” but that if we want to stop these tragedies in the future it’s necessary to make substantive changes. In other forums, such as his debate with Hannah Arendt, Chomsky has warned against employing violence and terrorism to affect social change, on the grounds that any new society would reflect the tactics and morals of the resistance which gave it birth.
21 April 2010, 4:48 pm(Boer) Tom:
@rootlesscosmo
21 April 2010, 7:45 pmI respect your discomfort with the piece, and your concern for the victim. I don’t mean to ask you to deal in hypotheticals per se, but was rather wondering whether you’ve developed in your experience a set of practical ethical/moral standards that seem to work – people do get upset when a murder happens, yet we need to talk about murders, and what motivate them; thus I gave the admittedly hypothetical example of discussing the motivations of a murder while still condemning it – perhaps a more fleshed out version would help. If Chomsky had said up front, “Stack elected to solve his problem by flying into a building, thus killing an office worker, Vernon Hunter; properly understood, Hunter was principally and morally Stack’s victim. Stack, however…” would you have the same/similar objections?
Marcilla Elizabeth Smith:
I am reminded of watching Der Untergang recently (best historical drama I’ve ever seen). Considered VERY controversial, particularly in Germany, for treating Hitler in a more “human” light. Amazing, since he did *look* an awful lot like a homo sapien, after all.
Also, I’ll throw in the Milgram and the Stanford prison experiments. As much coverage as they get, I don’t know the “a ha!” moment on these has happened for most people, yet.
And so we continue to get the “evil other” and the “good us”, and never the twain shall cross :: sigh ::
To see one’s face in Hunter, but not Stack, or Stack, but not Hunter is to participate in the same mass delusion that led oligarchs to do what they did to Stack, which Stack turned around and did to others.
And now I’m setting Stan up for a “turn the other cheek” quote
22 April 2010, 8:18 amRichard:
” Vernon Hunter was 67; he left a widow and six children. I think they count; I wish Chomsky had given some sign that he thinks so too.”
There is absolutely no reason to believe that Chomsky thinks they don’t count. In fact, it seems to me that any familiarity with his body of work should lead one to the opposite conclusion.
22 April 2010, 8:40 amJon:
Pacifism can be the right approach when you’re absolutely outgunned. Bows and arrows cannot beat cannon and rifles. I’m talking about a fight for your life, or for your way of life, as when colonies tried to fight Western–modern–colonialism; as in Gandhi’s satyagraha. It doesn’t always work. It probably would not have worked for the Indians in North and South America, for instance. In such cases, you either resign yourself to change, or decide you’d rather die and go down fighting. It probably would not have worked in Iraq and it’s doubtful it would work in Afghanistan. And then there’s Palestine. Either way has its truth: Crazy Horse preferred to die rather than live like the Whites; Red Cloud did too, but sacrificed that in favor of supporting the survival of his people and those who wanted to live; so he surrendered. In the long run, the Indians have bettered their lives somewhat compared to the early reservation days; and a very few of them keep to their spiritual ways, as in the examples of Fools Crow or Thomas Yellowtail. But you’re not likely to meet men like Sitting Bull or Crazy Horse any more–unfortunately. Even a Tecumseh could do nothing at this point. The world is getting swallowed-up by “the beast.” But this too shall pass. One thing seems certain to me: it is one thing to fight for your life, and it is another to act like the devil. Terrorism that kills innocents is acting like the devil, and so is drone bombing. Once you go to the dark side, you’ve sold your soul and forfeited your rights. i believe the US government–NATO has gone to the dark side. It’s like the whore riding the beast.
22 April 2010, 2:47 pmStan:
Whore!?
22 April 2010, 3:39 pmStan:
You set me up to say “hear hear!”
Hear hear!
22 April 2010, 3:47 pmJon:
Re: Whore!?
Yeah. Allusion to the Apocalypse–Revelations 17.
22 April 2010, 5:19 pmcabdriver:
At the risk of sounding like a profound apologist for the unconscionable, I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that in the grand immoral scheme of warfare, drone aircraft are merely a military technology- not a decisive and critical factor signifying that “Once you go to the dark side, you’ve sold your soul and forfeited your rights. i believe the US government–NATO has gone to the dark side. It’s like the whore riding the beast.”
Compared to what? An Arc Light strike in Indochina c.1970 by American B-52s, dropped in an illegal campaign on a neutral country, with civilian casualties in the tens of thousands?
Warfare is inherently ghastly and barbaric, and in modern warfare the power discrepancies are very often off the charts. But that doesn’t mean that anyone should feel justified in abandoning historical perspective, simply in order to wax in ever more grandiloquent fashion with rhetorical indictments.
23 April 2010, 3:09 amJon:
I believe you are rhetorically indicting.
23 April 2010, 2:25 pmStephen:
Re: In the grand immoral scheme of warfare, drone aircraft are merely a military technology- not a decisive and critical factor.
I think this stands as a perfect example of moral idiocy. Cabdrdiver, just listen to yourself. What you are saying is both unintelligent and monstrous.
If I run a prostitution ring (the grand immoral scheme), and then go and gun down with a machine gun any prostitutes that no longer bring in good money (using a machine gun rather than a baseball bat), that’s just technology in your view. Proper historical perspective. Why use a bat when a machine gun is better? Why use restraint in warfare, and avoid killing civilians (as actually used to be done in times past) when carpet bombing has so many advantages? It just makes sense to use the tools at your disposal, right?
And yes, the strikes in Indochina were the “dark side”, as were the Dresden fire bombing, the nuclear bombing of Japan, the Iraq war generally and Fallujah in particular, etc.,etc. etc.
You are to be pitied for your blindness and false patriotism.
People–for governments are peopled by persons–always have a choice, regardless of the “historical perspective” sophistries you espouse. “Historical perspectives” by no means render inoperative essential moral considerations that are timeless.
23 April 2010, 6:38 pmcabdriver:
You’re taking exactly the wrong message away from my remarks.
If drone aircraft could have been used on the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos in 1970, the air strikes would still have been illegal.
And they would inevitably still have killed, maimed, and wounded civilians, I think.
But not nearly as many of them.
Also, they wouldn’t have flattened nearly as much forest, or killed nearly as much wildlife, or led to nearly as much soil erosion or laterite formation.
Thus, strictly in the practical sense, drones represent a military technology that lessens the impacts of air strikes, rather than escalating them- as was implied by the comment to which I initially responded.
I said what I said. I didn’t say what I didn’t say.
My remarks were- I thought- quite specific in that respect. I was not addressing the question of the wider question of the morality or advisability of the present US war efforts in the AfPak region.
23 April 2010, 9:57 pmcabdriver:
“I believe you are rhetorically indicting.”
In this case, I think the term is “admonishing”. (Without losing a sense of historical perspective.)
To return to the topic: I share with Noam Chomsky a sense that the political leadership elites of the USA are, at least to some extent, amenable to influence by public opinion and resistance.
But the electoral system and the two-party system are rigged. Functionally broken. And I think that accounts for much of the current crisis- because the number of Americans fed up with false centrism is approaching a popular majority, if it isn’t there already.
I’m a moderate, I’d rather not have to face a collapse of the political system into demagoguery and fragmented extremism.
And in my opinion, double-choice instant runoff voting would restore some much-needed dynamism and novelty to the American political process, at the ballot box.
24 April 2010, 11:20 amDeAnander:
IRV might make a huge difference in the political process, which is presumably why there is such resistance to it.
24 April 2010, 12:39 pmHenry:
It may be that you’re both right in your different ways. Drone aircraft may have been more efficient and “cleaner,” but the wider perspective is that a technology is not neutral. A given technology has countless implications and consequences–many if not most of them incalculable–in and of itself. Illich, Mander, and others have demonstrated this very clearly. In the case of drone aircraft, for example, it takes a certain mentality to go to work in the morning, press some buttons, kill some people, and then go home to have dinner and be with the kids. There is indeed something monstrous in that, to which many seem to be insensible, which is a very grave problem. That a country or a person could countenance such things is truly horrific. Is it more horrific that dropping napalm or phosphorus on villagers? Yes and no.
24 April 2010, 8:20 pmHenry:
Here is a long quote from Butler Shaffer which is to the point:
“An institution is no longer a convenient tool for our mutual benefit, but an end in itself; its own raison d’être. It has taken on a life of its own, one that differs from, and usurps, our purposes. Because they can only function and survive through using people, institutions require humans to identify their sense of being with them. To this end, government schools have been established, whose primary purpose has always been to condition young minds in the necessity and desirability of the institutional scheme of things. In the words of Ivan Illich, “[s]chool is the advertising agency which makes you believe that you need the society as it is.” Schools also help us learn to seek meaningful and well-paying careers within institutional hierarchies.
When we identify ourselves with, and attach ourselves to these institutional entities, we absorb their values; their purposes; their modus operandi. Such practices of attachment can be analogized to a cancer that metastasizes our inner sense of being. In the process, we become dehumanized, for institutions have no souls; no emotions; no spiritual, moral, or intuitive sense. They neither cry, bleed, love, or experience elation. They are machines and, like other machines, operate solely on the basis of mechanics, linear processes, and material ends. When we become institutionalized, we become little more than robots – servo-mechanisms – functioning in response to how we have been programmed to perform.
The emotional and spiritual dimensions that make us human are of no value to institutions which, in times of political wrong-doing, urge us to suppress such sentiments. Anything that is nonmaterial is immaterial to members of the institutional order. In place of deeply-held philosophic principles, institutions have policies; their sense of “meaning” consists only of perpetuating themselves by maximizing their power and material wealth. To such entities, human beings have value only as fungible resources to exploit on behalf of institutional ends.
It would be easy to condemn the soldiers who engaged in this slaughter as “evil” or “depraved” or “insane” beings. Such is the manner in which we have long accustomed ourselves to blanking out any awareness of the “dark side” of our own unconscious. In such ways have we isolated ourselves from the Hitlers, Stalins, Mao Tse-Tungs, Pol Pots, and other tyrants, leaving us with the comforting feeling that we shared nothing in common with them. But history informs us – if we will only look – that, once we have identified ourselves with any purpose beyond ourselves, we can become capable of the most vicious forms of wrongdoing. How do otherwise decent men participate in a lynch-mob?
The state – an institution that is defined in terms of enjoying a monopoly on the use of violence – is particularly attractive to men and women whose “dark sides” are closer to the surface than those of more tolerant and peaceful persons. When the state energizes this “dark side” – which it does particularly in wartime, the quality that led Randolph Bourne to identify war as “the health of the state” – otherwise decent men and women can turn themselves into agents of savage brutality. When their murderous acts are conducted on behalf of the state – with which most people identify themselves – their actions acquire an aura of legitimacy that would not have obtained under other circumstances; a distinction that would prevent them from becoming serial killers upon their return home.
Identifying ourselves with the state, in other words, has a way of turning us into sociopaths. It is not that the state does this to us, but that our willingness to attach ourselves to external entities – and the values upon which they are grounded – separates us from our focused inner sense of being. This applies not just to the pilots of helicopter gun-ships over Baghdad, but to more visible political figures such as Madeleine Albright – who defended her Clinton-era policies that led to the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children – and Janet Reno, who defended her massacre of Branch Davidian men, women, and children at Waco. More recent application of these dynamics are found in George W. Bush’s fascination with starting pre-emptive wars against the rest of the world, and Barack Obama’s apparent willingness to use nuclear weapons in future pre-emptive attacks, as well as to assassinate Americans.
People who are willing to embrace – or even to tolerate – such sociopathic conduct, have lost all touch with what it means to be human; have lost their souls. No federal bailouts; no increase in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, or decrease in unemployment levels, will overcome this loss. Nor can any “stimulus package” be enacted – with or without bipartisan support – to restore the personal integrity long since lost.
There was a time, not so many decades ago, when brute force – particularly when engaged in by police and military agents of the state – was at least frowned upon, if not condemned, by decent men and women. The threshold level for such practices continues to get progressively lower. A major contribution to Barry Goldwater’s defeat in the 1964 presidential campaign, was the unfounded fear that he might be willing to use nuclear weapons in the war in Vietnam. Modernly, Bush’s and Obama’s willingness to initiate a nuclear war have raised no major outcries from most Americans, who seem to prefer “hope” (i.e., wishful thinking) over intelligent “understanding” as a way of making the world free, peaceful, and productive.
When the 2008 GOP presidential candidate, John McCain, can garner nearly 60,000,000 votes with his sociopathic dance of “bomb, bomb, bomb Iran,” should we be shocked by the butcherous conduct of some American helicopter pilots?
24 April 2010, 8:27 pmcabdriver:
Henry: with the exception of the possibility of having a stateside assignment and “going home for dinner and being with the kids” immediately afterward, very little separates the operator of a remotely piloted drone aircraft and someone directing navigation or piloting a high altitude bombing mission. It’s arguable that the operator of the drone craft has less disconnection with the consequences of their actions than a B-52 bomber pilot releasing a payload of high explosives from 3 miles in the sky, often through cloud cover. In both cases, it’s a very one-sided affair. The likelihood of effective retaliation by the target in the course of the mission is approximately zero. Because of the overwhelming similarities between the two procedures in most important respects, I’m hard-pressed to feel that drone technology ventures into any new frontier of military-technological inhumanity that wasn’t already crossed some decades previously.
I think that this subject makes for a worthwhile discussion- but I also think that it’s tangential to the topic at hand, which is Noam Chomsky’s current read on the American body politic. So I hope folks will understand if I drop the subject of the implications of drone military technology for now, and leave my remarks at that.
24 April 2010, 11:50 pmcabdriver:
“Identifying ourselves with the state, in other words, has a way of turning us into sociopaths. It is not that the state does this to us, but that our willingness to attach ourselves to external entities – and the values upon which they are grounded – separates us from our focused inner sense of being.”
I don’t think it’s quite that easy or simple.
Even if one manages to internally escape the conditioning mechanisms of the State, or “superstructure”, for most practical purposes one remains embedded in it’s grasp. And even in the course of struggling to escape that grasp, as far as outside appearances, not much distinguishes those who resist from those who comply, assent, or endorse the actions of the State. It’s in the nature of the refusenik population to be invisible, or to have a very low profile.
But termites have a low profile, too ; ^)
Grandstanding, such as going down in a fiery apotheosis a la Joseph Andrew Stack, simply doesn’t seem to signify an effective intensification of resistance, to me. I comprehend it; I’ve even felt the same fury, the willingness to wrap up all of my righteous rage in one dramatic act of violent retaliation.
But I’ve always thought better of doing so. And I think my forbearance in that regard has been informed much more by prudent reflection than by cowardice.
I really do think that Robin Morgan has some important insights on that subject in her book The Demon Lover: The Roots of Terrorism.
I also think that historically, there’s been a marked tendency in various circles of anti-Establishment resistance to want to lionize “martyrs to the cause”, and to elevate them into a pantheon of heroism. To an extent that’s decidedly more pervasive than the sporadic impulses of a few radicalized individuals toward self-martyrdom, in fact.
And I suspect there’s something bogus and hollow about that.
25 April 2010, 12:16 amcabdriver:
“IRV might make a huge difference in the political process, which is presumably why there is such resistance to it.”
Ironically enough- in terms of lip service, that doesn’t seem to be the case.
(Note the qualification.)
IRV Endorsements (Partial List)
Federal and Statewide Elected Officials
* President Barack Obama [Legislation]
* U.S. Sen. John McCain (AZ) [Audio]
* U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (VT)
* former Gov. Howard Dean (VT) [Video]
* U.S. Rep. John Porter (IL) [Statement]
* U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison (MN)
* U.S. Rep. Barbara Lee (CA)
* U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich (OH)
* U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. (IL)
* U.S. Rep. Peter Welch (VT)
* U.S. Rep. Tom Allen (ME)
* U.S. Rep. Barney Frank (MA)
* former U.S. Rep. Rob Andrews (NJ)
* Hon. Sharon Priest, former Secretary of State (AR)
* Hon. Deborah Bowen, Secretary of State (CA)
* Hon. Deborah Markowitz, Secretary of State (VT)
* Hon. Mark Shurtleff, Attorney General (UT)
* Arne Carlson, Former Governor (MN)
http://www.instantrunoff.com/supports/elected.php
But none of those statements of support have ever been put to the test in terms of support for an actual bill in the House or the Senate, as far as I know.
As far as I’m concerned, the undeniable resistance to IRV is found in the American television media, where it receives approximately zero play as a public policy reform issue.
As authentic large-scale organized grassroots populist movement in this country, were there such a thing, would make IRV the centerpiece of their movement.
The fact that IRV doesn’t even seem to have emerged as a peripheral question in the Tea Party ferment doesn’t speak well for the authenticity or independent political autonomy of the movement.
I’m not a fan of the more complicated types of IRV, by the way. I don’t want a ranked ballot that requires an algorithm program in order to tabulate final results.
I much prefer what I call a “double-choice” ballot- the candidate/ticket that the individual voter finds most desirable; and the one that they’ll settle for, as their second choice.
I don’t want to see every minor party found on the ballot subjected to a ranked numerical ranking. This isn’t the College of Cardinals, selecting a Pope: it’s a popular election for president of a large nation.
I don’t even like “digital voting” via computer (actually, popular balloting is all “digital”, it’s only at the Electoral College level that it becomes “analog”- none too accurately, either.) I like hand counted paper ballots.
Additionally, I’m also a fan of smoking out the truth about the American two-party system. And when you’ve got both the current president, his opponent, and many of the luminaries of the current majority party in the Legislative Branch supposedly on-board to support IRV, I’d like to see how sincere their proclamations really are, when put to the test. (Or, to turn cynical, to see exactly what contortions they’ll go through to appear to support it, while sabotaging a IRV ballot reform measure so that it doesn’t get enacted into law.)
As far as I can tell, there are simply no defensible practical objections to double-choice IRV. There’s an anti-IRV website that raises some good objections to full-range ranked choice voting- but in my opinion, all of their valid concerns would be effectively addressed by employing the simpler double-choice ranked ballot as the IRV reform.
The anti-IRV website, featuring its outlined objections: http://www.instantrunoffvoting.us/
25 April 2010, 3:45 amm.c.:
When I’m mentally on my game, I don’t like to Monday Morning Armchair QB, but it was well known to the authorities that David Koresh went jogging almost every day on the state hwy. near the Branch Davidian property. They also knew probably that the dwellers were well armed(maybe with non-registered guns) and probably paranoid. Why not get a judge to sign a warrant to arrest Koresh while he’s jogging? Instead of the tradgedy that ensued. Anyway…
25 April 2010, 3:11 pmany67ways:
thanks cabdriver for that IRV info
I believe that IRV would be catastrophic for the status-quo two party system (assuming it were implemented in such a way that a company such as Diebold couldn’t blatantly hack the outcome while the media ignored the fraud).
From my point of view, the election of 2000 was a slam dunk for the corporations who control all the levers of power in the U.S. Not only did they cheat to get their preferred corporate-toady candidate elected, but they managed to vilify 3rd party candidates by dishonestly accusing Ralph Nader for the whole Bush, 8 year debacle, (as if the Clinton years weren’t a debacle too, but I digress). With IRV, the false vilification of 3rd party candidates (from a throwing elections perspective) would simply be impossible.
cabdriver wrote: “As far as I’m concerned, the undeniable resistance to IRV is found in the American television media, where it receives approximately zero play as a public policy reform issue.”
and this is really the crux of the problem – think how easy it would be for the mainstream media to confuse the public with the mathematics behind IRV – remember this is a public that consists of a frighteningly large segment who can’t define the word ‘socialism’ further than that it’s evil and our non-white president is its advocate
25 April 2010, 4:31 pmcabdriver:
@ any67ways: you’re welcome.
And I definitely take your last point, which is why I support a simplified double-choice IRV system.
The aim- at least at the outset- would be to provide a formal plebiscite of the electorate- a snapshot of their political leanings that provides actual informational detail, rather than a tabulation of which side one might prefer as the “lesser of two evils”.
This would happen coincident to the actual election of candidates, of course. I doubt that any third party would be able to elect a slate at the national level the first time around, or even the second- but the effect on the potential for empowerment of outsider political movements would be invaluable.
Two likely consequences of this:
an outsider political party that finds itself with the beginnings of a strong political base would need to get serious about appealing to the numbers required to grant it true success at the ballot box- and thereby would need to get more serious about it’s proposals, in terms of fleshing out its positions with more details, and moderating ideological rigidities and impractical initiatives that no longer have the luxury of being included in someone’s vanity niche cult political movement. The ballot box insurgents would have to get real;
and, in response, the established parties would almost certainly feel pressured to modify their priorities, platforms, and openness to new ideas from the emerging outsider movements.
I don’t foresee the USA transforming into a parliamentary system in the foreseeable future. But with a double-choice IRV ballot system, it could well be possible to combine the dynamism of a parliamentary multiparty system with the traditional conventions of the American majoritarian tripartite system, with no need for a new Constitutional Convention, or similar massive structural reform.
25 April 2010, 8:11 pmMarcilla Elizabeth Smith:
OMG!!! Please stop!
LOLZ. Sorry, this just reminds me why I did the bare minimum to get through my classes as a Poli Sci major. It seems like so much technical manipulation in order to just continue to have the status quo. Two party majoritarian “democracy” is awful. Please, let’s not reform it when consensus-based decision-making has been used, and continues to be used through out the 100K or so years our species has been on the planet. No, I don’t think simple consensus would work at the scale of 6-7 billion. Yes, I am familiar with the Dunbar Number. However, that doesn’t mean there aren’t proposed solutions which can be scaled up. For example, Sociocracy.
26 April 2010, 12:45 pmcabdriver:
Sociocracy may indeed be amenable to “scaling up”. But- scaling up to the level of a nation of 300 million people?
All of the institutions in which it appears to be running successfully seems to have several things in common: small local institutions with a focused mission and a select (if partially self-selected), well-educated membership.
Sociocracy has yet to be adopted by any polity in the world, as far as I know. Not even a small town.
Let me know when it’s adopted in a place like, say, Andorra. But I suspect it will still require a few hurdles to “scale up” from there.
As for my own stated preference in reforming representative democracy: I don’t feature how providing the option of an extra box to check on a ballot amounts to some arcane “technical manipulation.”
26 April 2010, 8:07 pmMarcilla Elizabeth Smith:
Well, I am looking at how do you scale up to a planet of 6+ billion and counting, but I think that may be beside the point. If you are saying how do we change this top-down, that is an entirely separate question, and I would say one which has shown itself to be unanswerable. It is too much “working within the system.” I would no sooner attempt to hew a new handle for a broken ax by using an ax with a broken handle! I look only to do exactly as you say – to try out new things in my community, to see how one voluntary coalition can be built on top of another. This is where innovation can happen, and this is where the risks will be taken that can grow virally. Will it be adopted in Andorra? Probably, and probably by that point whatever-it-is will have passed a critical tipping point such that you may not even read about it’s adoption in Andorra before you are practicing it yourself!
But I have been accused of dreaming big before
27 April 2010, 6:26 amcabdriver:
Marcilla, I see what you mean. I’ve been telling people for some time that if voting every couple of years is all they do as far as political activity, they shouldn’t be surprised when their ideas don’t make any headway, or when they’re taken for granted by the professional political class.
But I’m also considering the facts of life in the current American political scene: for most American citizens, politics is about elections. Full stop. And given that set of conditions, I think the most directly effective way of returning some dynamism to a stagnant popular election system is to allow for the double-choice IRV system.
The double-choice IRV system does more than simply allow outsider parties for more of a chance to bid for power as far as representation in the elected positions within the institutions of government. It provides for a rough assessment of the spectrum of the political leanings of the electorate- which may be either more or less sophisticated than what is generally assumed. And that in itself is a positive score, as far as providing a starting point for outsider and insurgent political movements of all types.
And really- why not get an accurate picture of exactly how many, say, neo-Nazis, Trotskyists, Transcendental Meditation (Natural Law) Party people, LaRouchites, etc. there are in this country these days?
I’m not proposing double-choice IRV as a be-all end-all solution to anything. But it would introduce some opportunity for novelty, help to shake things up, and juice up the energy some. Apathy and resignation are a huge obstacle in this country, and I think much of that is informed by a terribly pessimistic and cynical view of the American election system that’s unfortunately entirely justified in a lot of cases. Especially at the national level.
27 April 2010, 7:21 pm