I have an idea, and let me explain it really simply, because that's all I can do, I'm a moron.

[originalpckelly]

Imagine you're walking down the street. If you are sighted, you can see where you're going and navigate by sight. Imagine you have a peculiar disability, you can only see something 5 minutes after it happens. How the fuck would get around using that information? It would be useless, you might as well have your eyes closed.

This delay is called latency in music, and I imagine it is called that in other arts or sciences. People like me who are hobbyists or professionals in the area of music will know what I'm talking about, if they do recording with computers. It happens if you shout something into a mic, and then hear it on your headphones like a few seconds later, on a really crappy computer with a bad sound card.

I think this is what's wrong with the American system.

If a politician is allowed to keep things secret, and we only find out about them 10, 20, 30 or more years later, how are we supposed to make decisions about them at the polls? That's latency like in music production or in the seeing example. It makes that type of information useless.

How the fuck do I know how to vote on someone if I don't know all their policies, because some of their policies are secret?

And to think we've got people supporting this. You may not be able to handle the truth, but some of us adults can. We may not all know how to interpret it at all times, but there are independent analysts who work outside of government who can. They're being snubbed, even with their expertise. The argument doesn't hold true for them, and it shouldn't for anyone else. There are some things we can all understand.

[postulater]

1. Yeah, you can't even spell moran!

:sarcasm:

[originalpckelly]

3. I swear to you that I sincerely thought I had mispelled it.

I am a moran. :P

[BrklynLiberal]

2. Politicians think the people are too stupid for the truth...

Ironically, the repukes NEVER tell the people the truth, and convince them to vote for them anyway. Messaging and debate framing are more important than the truth...one would have to guess.

http://markmaynard.com/?p=7501

<snip>

The best part of the article is the contribution by Thomas Frank, the author of What’s the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America. Here’s a highlight:

….Right-wing politics has become a vehicle for channelling this popular anger against intellectual snobs. The result is that many of America’s poorest citizens have a deep emotional attachment to a party that serves the interests of its richest.

Thomas Frank says that whatever disadvantaged Americans think they are voting for, they get something quite different:

“You vote to strike a blow against elitism and you receive a social order in which wealth is more concentrated than ever before in our life times, workers have been stripped of power, and CEOs are rewarded in a manner that is beyond imagining… It’s like a French Revolution in reverse in which the workers come pouring down the street screaming more power to the aristocracy.”

As Mr Frank sees it, authenticity has replaced economics as the driving force of modern politics. The authentic politicians are the ones who sound like they are speaking from the gut, not the cerebral cortex. Of course, they might be faking it, but it is no joke to say that in contemporary politics, if you can fake sincerity, you have got it made.

And here, according to the author of the article, is the big takeaway message from all of this… “If people vote against their own interests, it is not because they do not understand what is in their interest or have not yet had it properly explained to them. They do it because they resent having their interests decided for them by politicians who think they know best. There is nothing voters hate more than having things explained to them as though they were idiots. As the saying goes, in politics, when you are explaining, you are losing. And that makes anything as complex or as messy as healthcare reform a very hard sell.”

<snip>

[Jackpine Radical]

4. We're lucky if the information is only delayed.

Then at least we have some hope of learning from historical patterns and applying those models in new situations.

Most of the time, though, we get disinformation that is never corrected, or forces in the present try to overwrite messages from the past in an attempt to deceive us. Like when the Reptilian Republicans throw Jefferson out of the history books or claim that FDR's policies worsened the Depression.

If we conceive of the nation as being like an organism, then it is a demon-possessed one in which the demon keeps deceiving the organism's senses, perverting its internalized model of reality and leading it to make choices that lead to its destruction.

[Jackpine Radical]

5. We're lucky if the information is only delayed.

Then at least we have some hope of learning from historical patterns and applying those models in new situations.

Most of the time, though, we get disinformation that is never corrected, or forces in the present try to overwrite messages from the past in an attempt to deceive us. Like when the Reptilian Republicans throw Jefferson out of the history books or claim that FDR's policies worsened the Depression.

If we conceive of the nation as being like an organism, then it is a demon-possessed one in which the demon keeps deceiving the organism's senses, perverting its internalized model of reality and leading it to make choices that lead to its destruction.