unusualmusic_lj_archive (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
unusualmusic_lj_archive) wrote2008-03-30 05:04 am
unusualmusic_lj_archive) wrote2008-03-30 05:04 am
Entry tags:
The Fallacy of Candidates and Issues
*Blink*
And so, being unable to sleep, I wonder over to The Infamous Brad, and get an perspective change upside the head at 5:00 in the morning. (yes I haven't slept all night. It's normal, now) Anyway, go read! And tell me what you think.
In a 1979 reprint of an interview he gave to Conspiracy Digest (reprinted in The Illuminati Papers), Robert Anton Wilson said this: "The difference between me and Conspiracy Digest is that CD defines the Power Elite as somebody else. I always define the Power Elite as myself and my friends. ... Brain power (the work of all artists, scientists, and symbolizers since the dawn of humanity, but particularly those of the nineteenth century) created the 'real world' over which monopolists fight each other in the twentieth century. Similarly, Brain power right now, today, is creating the 'real world' of the twenty-first century, over which monopolies will then be struggling. The Brain people create the realities over which the Power people fight each other, and the Brain people even create the techniques of the fight."
Think I'm blowing smoke? Consider this. Republican political candidates campaigned on ending welfare from 1936 to the present. And for the first forty years of that, any candidate who campaigned on "ending welfare" got completely trounced at the polls, was reduced to an asterisk in history, and you've never heard of almost any of them. Then all of a sudden in 1980 one candidate ran on "ending welfare as we know it" and won handily. You hear this pitched as proof of just what an incredibly effective political campaigner he was (or he hired), but that ignores something rather substantial and important: before Reagan even declared his candidacy for national office, the public had turned against welfare. And their opinions changed because the people who were trying to change the country smartened up and stopped funding candidates; what they funded was writers and speakers, through institutions like the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute. Reagan simply had the good fortune to be the anti-welfare candidate who was running when the public changed their minds. In fact, the public had changed their minds so thoroughly that for the next 20 years, no Democrat could win any statewide or national election without also being anti-welfare.
And so, being unable to sleep, I wonder over to The Infamous Brad, and get an perspective change upside the head at 5:00 in the morning. (yes I haven't slept all night. It's normal, now) Anyway, go read! And tell me what you think.
In a 1979 reprint of an interview he gave to Conspiracy Digest (reprinted in The Illuminati Papers), Robert Anton Wilson said this: "The difference between me and Conspiracy Digest is that CD defines the Power Elite as somebody else. I always define the Power Elite as myself and my friends. ... Brain power (the work of all artists, scientists, and symbolizers since the dawn of humanity, but particularly those of the nineteenth century) created the 'real world' over which monopolists fight each other in the twentieth century. Similarly, Brain power right now, today, is creating the 'real world' of the twenty-first century, over which monopolies will then be struggling. The Brain people create the realities over which the Power people fight each other, and the Brain people even create the techniques of the fight."
Think I'm blowing smoke? Consider this. Republican political candidates campaigned on ending welfare from 1936 to the present. And for the first forty years of that, any candidate who campaigned on "ending welfare" got completely trounced at the polls, was reduced to an asterisk in history, and you've never heard of almost any of them. Then all of a sudden in 1980 one candidate ran on "ending welfare as we know it" and won handily. You hear this pitched as proof of just what an incredibly effective political campaigner he was (or he hired), but that ignores something rather substantial and important: before Reagan even declared his candidacy for national office, the public had turned against welfare. And their opinions changed because the people who were trying to change the country smartened up and stopped funding candidates; what they funded was writers and speakers, through institutions like the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute. Reagan simply had the good fortune to be the anti-welfare candidate who was running when the public changed their minds. In fact, the public had changed their minds so thoroughly that for the next 20 years, no Democrat could win any statewide or national election without also being anti-welfare.