Do we need a stable consistent focus derived from a holistic rendering?

Great Debates
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Divided threads may put undue focus on symptoms while the problem itself does not get the lion’s share. The issue is primarily power and money and the influence that those two things produce: From the beginning of the election, to the middle of the election, to the end.

-the Lakers made it to the NBA finals- big surprise (i’m from la, so I thought i’d throw them into my argument). They had the horses
-Bush outspent Kerry by 40 million-- enough to make up 3 or 4 million legitimate votes?
-incumbents in the 2000 election in the house won ALL seats (and with a Rep owned house, their OK with that)
-Outside of legal funding, the Reps have an incrediblely well FUNDED and ORGANIZED machine.
–maybe Bush was actually wearing a wire for the debates. though it’s hard for me to believe that they really couldn’t conceal it.
–maybe the election was stolen through the election process itself. But I submit it was stolen a long time ago when they stacked the deck ahead of time. Crappy machines in Dem voting poor areas could have been an ace in the hole or insurance policy in case things didn’t work out.

My point is, does any of this really matter when only looked at separately, when the larger issue is that power has dominated throughout time (especially in hegemonic countries), and logically speaking, will, unless the balance is turned in some fundamental way. I truly see the Internet as a great assett but also see how it could be manipulated, controlled, or even censored as well. How can we make the checks and balances that we were promised into a reality. How do we do that. I believe the evidence is clear that THAT is the thread we should be focusing on, if we actually felt like making a difference in this country or any country. Otherwise, not only are we divided culuturally, racially, etc, but also even among ourselves in the inability to pool our focal strength on the dominant crux issues. The data is in folks. The cards are stacked. How will you respond? Is there a crux focal point that would bear the most fruit.

I’m not suggesting that looking at voting, wires, creating propositions that get the evangelical vote out in larger numbers, swiftboat, etc are not important to discuss, but that, in addition to those things, we identify crux targets and build, expand, and spend larger amounts of time on those. I believe that this has been the dominant organizational tactic of the conservative party and the great failing of the liberal party. The conservative party has been able to organize, identify real crux focal points, and following through–with cash and clout, of course. I think that the proof is in the pudding there, especially when you consider most people in America side with the Democratic party on issue after issue, nearly categorically as I’m aware of. So, obviously, the Reps focus on character and morality and marginalization and the power of the repeated message from their incredible propaganda empire.

If there is going to be something to go against this group, I believe it would have to be largely grassroots and very organized. It would have to be a very committed and serious citizenry to have permanent and long lasting effects. Are we there yet? Do we have the takeoff effect necessary to allow something like that to gather inertial strength and momentum? Everything has a beginning point. Are we in the window, or is that window in the future.

Democracy began to work in the 60s and then got shut down hard. Monied interests and the rich found their wallets and checkbooks springing open to keep the rabble in line. Just when people were beginning to feel empowered. We were caught off gaurd and slowly saw our voice dissappear. Now we are gaining strength again, I believe, but need to find an apparatus to reclaim OUR government. When will we be ready? When will the critical mass coelesce, take flight, and sustain flight and sustain a consciousness of higher empowerment and self worth?

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What?!?

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Well, I can’t see where you’re wrong, I’ll admit.

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Quick! Someone triple-post something weird but catchy and turn this into another “Death Rays” thread!

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Mr Anderson (sounds very Matrixlike, cool). Can you explain your cryptic post. I’m new here and have missed your allusion

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Let me have a go at parsing succinctly.

“Republicans are backed by big money and therefore have more resources to win elections. Those who oppose them concentrate on the details but should be looking at the big picture.”

How’d I do?

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I didn’t know I had to be paraphrased. If that is the case I apologize.

The point was that they are powerful AND organized. You are partly right that in focusing on details we are disorganized. We need structure and organization in order to get a well thought out message to represent whatever party might go against the conservative one. There are SO MANY attack points that liberals, for example, could make against what was going on, if it were made repeatedly, and became a part of the common discourse. But they don’t, because they don’t get the air.

The big picture is that election fraud and wired elections are just a part of a larger power, influence, and money problem.

Moreover, that big money has translated to the control of media is really my central concern in this influence

My larger point is that liberals or democrats, or ANYONE opposing this machine would have to make a greater organized, concerted, and committed effort to go against such a monolythic enterprise. Otherwise, all we end up doing is complaing about certain things that, even if corrected, will find other outlets of expression. You find a wire in a debate, you build a better wire. You get caught rigging an election, either you get better at it, or find another way to gain influence (and btw, please. Don’t you think that as president for the biggest office in the world, they couldn’t come up with something better in being wired. I highly doubt that was what it was on that logical summation–I could be wrong, but my gut tells me they are NOT stupid as well as rich and that technology can build a smaller and better receiver. Thinking logistically, they could have given him baggier pants and stuck it to his thigh. The back gets taught sometimes and might reveal a bulky instrument. It just doesn’t fit for me).

Anyhow, I’ve got to get my exercise in and go play some tennis and go lose some of the pounds I’ve gained lately :wink:

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The problem I have with this thesis is that the political evidence is based on the Republicans/Bush Campaign outspending the Democrats/Kerry Campaign by 40 million, and suggesting that resulted in a pay off of approximately 4 million more votes for Bush. With an approximate aggregate spending for the presidential campaign, alone, at $4 billion (From AOL News, it may be off, but I doubt by more than, say 10%) $40 million dollars is approximately 1% of the total spent. Assuming equal efficacy on a per megabuck basis, that should have only resulted in a 1% difference in votes. Whereas, 4 million votes represents about a 3.5% margin in a total of about (Doing rough numbers here using 59.5 million votes for Shrub, and 56 million for Kerry.)

I’m not trying to say that money isn’t a large factor. It is not the only factor, however. Incumbency is usually the key pre-election indicator of who will win, no matter what party they might represent. Of course, that does re-inforce the theory that power is a large part of what controls elections. I simply mean to offer some doubt that campaign money is the most relevant form of power.

On a completely different tack - why does the OP claim that the 60’s were the beginning of “real” democracy? As far as I’ve been able to tell there are two popular views of the sixties, and neither really has much relation to reality. It was the time of the civil rights movement, yes, but it was not the era that most of those rights were accepted. Nor was it free of corruption.

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My thesis is actually very simple: The key to change, if you are not a conservative, is to not fight about each individual abuse and try to correct it as if it will really fix anything in the end, but truly comprehend, from a holistic view, that nothing will change unless the microphone (a fair and free press) is there to report it. So the focus should be in the domain of the press and how we are losing it and therefore losing our ability to make our own decisions when exercising our vote (by make our own decisions, I am implying that he who owns the media, also owns the opinions of those listening to it. This is why the battle over the concept of who, in reality, controls the media, is such a hot one). Without that sort of dogged determination to key on prominent sores we will not make progress.

If you do not believe that there is a conservative media then you won’t buy my thesis. If anyone does, then the thesis is pretty simple and solid. Therefore, I would ask again to those who have researched and found the media to have been compromised heavily, what do we do? Go around complaining about all the events that are peripheral to the larger event, or do we see things macroscopically and holistically and see the big picture and determine that the focal point should continue to be returned to how to get the microphone back and organize. Scattered disoriented focus may wail at the powers that be, but it is highly ineffective without consistent and stable focus

The problem is, is how do you achieve that kind of organization structure? How do you gain that sort of committment? Are people just merely pissed off that the guy with their values lost and will now go back to business as usual? It’s much easier to complain about the abuses. But won’t that song be sung forever without taking a look at the root of the cancer? Centralization of power among the rich, influencial, and the elite, through the use of a manufactured consent through our media outlets.

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OK, I can refine my argument better here. We are constantly looking at the details which never change. If it’s not this scandal or rape its another. What we should be constantly focusing on, if we believe in change (otherwise we have to consider that we are just being entertained), are the enduring underlying problems. To fixate on what might bring about change. By looking at things holistically and in larger context, we can find the crux issues rather than the peripheral and ephemeral.

An example in voting fraud would be who controls the machines that malfunction? Evidence has it that they are in Rep hands, no? Their is a power problem there. What about Dem voting areas getting the machines that produce more spoilage (destroyed votes because of inconclusive results)? That is another power issue. Thinking holistically on this particular issue, I see that the election was largely won by a larger problem: the whole game, tilted in favor of incumbant and the media. It’s like any sporting event, you can complain about the call at the buzzer, but in the end, it was the long haul that made it that close to begin with. The underlying problem beneath the two power problems, is media. Our larger outlets should be reporting on those Dem machines AND the ex con votes thrown out in florida in 2000. IF our media were responsible, IF they believed in Democracy these stories would be followed up with veracity and tenacity until there were a resolution. But they are not. Instead we have a non independent council in Kenneth Star conducting a which hunt, and the media being VERY willing accomplices. Oh, they smell the rat now, but it’s too late. Hindsight doesn’t repair the damage done. The media does not get its point across by single messages, but by creating stories by carrying them for days, weeks, months. When a story drops in a day, it’s not a story. It has to be whipped up in popular discourse. One shot stories die just as quickly in popular discourse. There are MANY more factors involved in how the media influence us and. There are MANY crux issues about the media that the vast majority of people are unaware of on a critical level. I’ve had too many conversations with intelligent people to know that they are pretty unaware of the factors of what causes and creates discourse in our popular culture–which is most of it.

Now if you happen to believe in a conservative press, the crux issue should be obvious. And you also believe in trying to affect change, that the concept of a free media is perhaps the most fundamental freedom we enjoy, then the choice is also simple. If you do not happen to be completely versed on the argument that the media is conservative, but have questions, if you are committed to change, you then ought to learn everything you possibly can about this CRUX issue. It is the underpinning for any sort of change.

I’m NOT really trying to rouse a rebellion here. Moreover, I am simply putting forth an argument about typical discourse and what our conscious mental preoccupations might be, if our actions followed our heart and reason.

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On a holistic scale, I’d give your posts a three out of six. On an analytical scale I might give you more points in some areas. Your conventions, sentence fluency and word choice are within the four range, but organization, voice and topic development are within a three range.

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guestforever: There is beauty in simplicity. Your assignment, should you accept it, is to reduce your above posts to 10% of the words and still get the same message across.
Peace.

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Of course power dominates. That’s a tautology. Doing what you propose cannot change that. It might tip the balance of power, but it will never change the fact that power dominates. In other words, the powerless will not and can not rule.

Freedom, after all, is participation in power. (Cicero)

To my mind – sorry if this offends, but it’s how I see it – your post is a perfect example of why you’re on the losing end. It’s incoherent… which is ironic, given that you seem to be advocating focus.

The primary reason the Democrats failed so broadly (albeit by a slim margin) is that they can’t seem to develop a coherent marketing focus. The Republicans have done a superior job for some time now, and Bush-Rove have taken “on message” marketing to state-of-the-art levels.

In fact, doing-what-you-say matters much less than being consistent, insistent, and unrelenting in presenting to your target audience a message that they will accept.

If you want to combat the vested interests of the media conglomerates, you’ll have to first give them a reason to present your stories, and to give them your preferred spin. Unless you do that, you’re just farting in a hurricane.

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Dammit. I translated that, then lost it.

Anyhow, it seemed to me that Sample_the_Dog is saying mostly the same thing as the OP: get focused.

The difference: Sample_the_Dog seems to be advocating something akin to pandering, whereas guestforever is concerned with focusing on fundamental issues with respect to the balance of power.

Sadly, I’ll have to say that defining issues such that you form a big choir, and them preach to them, seems to be the most effective way to win an election. A lot of the reasoning I’ve heard from Bush supporters has little to do with fundamental issues regarding government.

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I used to have a girl friend that was into holistic rendering.

I wasn’t able to get the hand of it and actually, didn’t see the point of it.

Wait, it was my dog that liked that rendering part.

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The OP’s argument does not sound very “holistic” to me.

All the examples you mention are grossly oversimplified. Like the electronic voting machine issue. There are many, many more factors and parties affecting the issue than the political convictions of executives at the firms that produce the machines. There are many more issues with “media” than the influence of conservative politics on the contents of some of them. (Surely you know that there exist many very non-conservative media, although I agree that conservative media seem to reach larger audiences right now.)

The worst oversimplification is reducing progressive politics to a Pub-versus-Dem matter. Pubs and Dems combined represent but a tiny range of political opinion. Furthermore, Democrats are hardly a progressive force in American politics, unless you define “progressive” very narrowly.

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Rereading the OP, I see that it hardly mentions the Democrat party. So maybe I misunderstood. If the OP intended to equally criticize the Republicrat and Democan parties then please disregard the last paragraph of the previous post.

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:smiley:

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You do understand that beauty AND simplicity is in the eye of the boholder? Oversimplifications can render (damn, maybe i’ll lose that word) the heart and soul from an argument.

If you’ll offer an opinion, i’ll try for more conciseness.

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OK, I’m aware of the duh value of that. But, some forms of power are better than others, no? Simply as an example of that principal only, Hitler’s form of power differs from Roosevelt’s.

Uh…that is exactly what I said. Except, what the public will accept is more open for debate than you are probably giving credit.