Politics. One just cannot seem to avoid it. Often it is coupled with talk of the daily news. Looking back, I could say that the worthwhile, informative and meaningful conversations of this type I have been party to could be counted on one hand. They were conducted with people who had not attained higher education. Rather they were people who had been forced to live through the visions of those who have letters after their names.
One day, I met a man on my postal route who had a vision for my town. He told me that a group of consultants had been hired decades ago to inform the local group of assembled visionaries of the projected road improvements that needed to be done. The gentlemen tabled their reports calling for freeway development to begin immediately. When the guests had left, the august gentlemen of the City Planners decided to scrap those suggestions. They next decided to pack eight hundred thousand newcomers into town.
When I asked the man where he planned to put the people, "In the sky," he replied.
Then I asked him where he planned to put their cars. He answered that they wouldn't be using cars, they would walk or bike to work. I pointed out the three new housing units he had just constructed next door to another property he owned. They were so expensive and so short on square feet that each unit had an even tinier mortgage helper hovel in the back lane to be rented out. I told him that anyone who could afford a half million dollar brick-front rabbit hutch, certainly owned a car and that being human, they were bound to use it and contribute to the grid-lock, which was sure to come.
Maybe he'd read too many Utopian novels in his formative years or taken one too many guided trips, I reckoned. He graciously bore my lack of vision and offered to explain himself further over coffee. I had to decline his generosity and a few weeks later, I heard that he had passed away. His vision did not cease, however. Within a week someone had stolen a statue of a man on a horse with both arms raised in triumph that he had standing in his front yard on Cambie St..
There was a black man that I met down in Galveston, Texas who was a refugee from Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. That storm and flood were far from the worst problems he and his sister had faced in their lives. And they wouldn't be the last catastrophes, you can bet your narrow behind. People like him know many of the plays of high rollers by feeling the blow back. And when they are able to read books, it is with an eye to truly educating themselves. A little sure goes along way. We had a wonderful conversation on the shore of the Gulf of Mexico and each of us learned a little from the other while our separate paths were converging on the same ridge.
I had a meaningful conversation on the topic of politics with a man in the American desert. He was a Vietnam war veteran and was living near a roadside rest stop down in New Mexico. I gave him some landjaeger sausages and he gave them back, thanked me and showed me that he had only a few teeth left in his head to chew with. I gave him some wool socks instead. He could have taught a third year Political Science class, if he'd had the strength, such was his first-hand knowledge of politics.
A man I met in Manila back in 1993 called Rambo, lived with a rooster in a shelter made of tropical grade plywood leaned against the back wall of a building in a Makati side street. Rambo was an alcoholic Master chess player. I played him daily for two weeks and never came close to besting him. His mind was keen as a scalpel and had the rare ability to analyze what he read and come to a reasonable idea of the truth of matters by folding in what he had seen and experienced first hand. His specialty was the history of his country.
He was the only Filipino I spoke with in country who had looked past the propagandized education that America set up after the Philippine-American War. Of course, everyone on the street thought him crazy and he and I found this extremely humorous. They laughed at us and had no idea why we laughed so hard back at them. When I returned to Canada, I wrote letters of thanks to everyone whose house I had slept in or taken meals in. Some of those people were well to do and others were very poor. The only letter of reply I have received to this day is a beautifully penned and worded brief from Rambo who must have won the price of the stamp in a street chess match.
The way that talking politics is usually done is to pull out any topic from the daily news and select one of the two opposite opinions already provided for you. Then you gab for hours going nowhere. It is a good social pressure release valve and that is one of the reasons that these topics are put in your path. If one is astute, one may be able to tell which level of print or media the person talking with you is a reader or watcher of. We begin with the Daily Blatt (aka the METRO or 24 HOURS) and move up the education ladder and pay grades to the city paper of what ever city you live in. Next come the big city papers. A little higher up are the periodicals, weeklies, monthlies and quarterly magazines.
Then there are special publications, for instance newsletters and insider financial blurbs or health tip rags. Each rung of this info ladder uses the vocabulary of the intended target readers and appeals to that groups education level and economic standing in the System. The outcome, however, remains the same. Two polarized sides of a contentious issue served on a floppy paper plate. Over-easy egg yolks on one side of the hash-browns and scrambled eggs on the other. Served by a sexy person who always seems to know when to top up your coffee cup.
You pick a side, go forth and have a meaningless conversation with one of two other marionettes. The guy who also likes 'em over easy or the scrambled gal. You can have a damn good argument with the latter. This clashing of prepackaged, undigested, politically correct or of purposefully shocking arguments is salted by the mewling sonorous regurgitation of snake charmers and forms the lion's share of the political conversations in the civilized world.
Other types of media follow much the same methods when covering politics. From community TV to big city news. Movies and TV shows are also there for folks who like to take their politics in a passive, receptive state. On the internet you can spin out in never-ending politifractals. Pretty, random candy, but it doesn't pay your rent.
There are ever higher levels of media for your consumption. Documentaries and journals such as Foreign Affairs. It is boasted that this is what politicians themselves read. Some books are also given to them to read, such as some of the books by Zbigniew Brzezinski and Jacques Attali. These will tell politicians what is going to happen in the future just like a crystal ball in the hands of an old gypsy woman. At that level and above, the books do get very interesting.
The practice of creating jargon for different fields of expertise functions as a filter. It makes some people think that they know less than other people. This confines the debate to a smaller group. In reality, each set of jargon users have their own publications and entertainments which keep them all arguing over the same two kinds of eggs on the plates offered to their peers. A different sandbox to play in, if you will. Professional journals are replete with statistics. A man once said that there are lies, damn lies and then there are statistics. Statistics can be massaged into any desired form to effect any desired direction of thought in the mind of the average person who ingests them.
At one time books were written that told truths without much concealment because most people could neither read nor afford to buy books. Those books are treasures and are very costly, though still available. There are other books that never see the light of day due to being blocked from publication. Yet other books are self-published in small batches, on demand or by independently wealthy writers and researchers, such as Eustace Mullins. Most of these are very expensive and in short supply. Libraries are running low on space and jettisoning old books so some people have uploaded PDF files of many rare books.
One evening, after eating a good meal with my relatives, the topic of the latest mass-shooting was trotted out along with the attendant debate on gun control. One gentleman had just before related a funny personal story that had taken place in Runnymede, England. The home of the Magna Carta. There are shrines to that document all over the world, expounding its importance as the precursor of every Charter of Rights and Constitution in all civilized countries.
As the usual pro and con gun control arguments ensued, I took the less popular side of the debate, but not for the reasons suspected by those present. Inspired by the previous talk of Runnymede, I thought it first necessary to distinguish liberty from freedom as both were understood in the Old World. That would get the debaters on the same page of reference. I defined liberty as a thing bestowed on a person by another person. As it is bestowed, so may it be withdrawn. Freedom is freedom. It is not bestowed and thus, may not be revoked. It does come with responsibilities in order to have a chance of flourishing over time. But let us return to Runnymede.
Back in 1215 we would have seen King John surrounded by a large crowd which included twenty-five armed Barons. Those men were the landlords of serfs and they were angry about King John having bowed to the Pope and for having lost their Normandy real estate holdings in a lost battle the year before. The Barons demanded to have veto power over the King among other things. Without arms there would have been no Magna Carta that day. King John was expecting tardy French mercenaries even as he placed his Great Seal on the document.
The serfs gained the liberty to be tried by the law of the land rather than the whim of the King. If any serfs were cheering afterwards, it would only indicate just how much it sucked to be a serf. They remained tenant farmers and were the human property of the armed Barons. But now they had recourse to justice. The Barons, no doubt pronounced the word, just-us. Before we leave England, let us ask ourselves why the Domesday Book of 1086 is not as popular as is the Magna Carta in the public eye.
The tried and true formula of creating a problem, provoking a reaction and providing a solution needs no amplification here. Remember that this is the backbone of popular print and media. The method hasn't changed over the centuries because it works. Technology has sped things up and leveraged the effects. Such is the realm of politicians and is why we elect them. Any talk of politics includes talk of politicians in general. My recent debate was no different and I somewhat ignobly referred to them as fly larvae, collectively. I was asked if I'd ever known one personally. My truthful answer was a no. But I have spoken personally with several.
Now, upon further reflection, I would be more inclined to describe politicians as aphids. Creatures engaged in busily sucking up the lives of their constituents. This is also an imperfect analogy but it gives a starting point for reflection on the matter. Productive working people are the plants being milked by the pudgy little band of parasites. Aphids in their turn are aided, abetted and controlled by ants. The ants in their turn are controlled by a queen and function as robotic units of a collective entity or hive mind.
One can easily spot the unsightly sap-suckers on a once healthy stem, but the ants are hardly noticeable unless one patiently watches for a while. Everyone reviles aphids, but ants are hard workers, much less visible and appear very industrious and noble. They tickle their fat charges and take the released nectar to their brood chambers. They police the entire area around the host plant against all interlopers. This is done in the same spirit that a Baron protects his serfs, so that only he can milk them. To debate endlessly about the aphids is to miss most of the story. Exactly!
In a discussion, if you are using the ants and aphids analogy, you will inevitably be asked, “Who are the ants?”
The aphids are relatively short-lived, high profile, visible, made men and women whose names are household words via repetition. It is hoped by the questioner that their question will win the day by the sheer difficulty involved in naming all the myriad individual ants and then trying to explain who they are to those who have never heard of them.
“Can't be very important if I haven't heard of them,” says the ego.
This attitude draws attention away from the reality of the ants being a hive, by focusing on its singular individuals. The truth is that any individual ant is already replaced before they expire. The hive abides.
If I was having a political discussion about WWI and was asked, “Who are the ants?” I would name one.
Just one. That way, the other person could easily verify things for themselves. I wouldn't bet on it, though. Let's say, one ant in the WWI scenario was Bernard Baruch. If the person who asked didn't know who he was, I would argue that the person did not understand WWI. If the person who asked me knew all about Mr. Baruch but only Mr. Baruch, I would argue that they did not understand the prewar period nor the postwar period.
Ants are born that way. They belong to a collective with a hive mind. They farm aphids and are very industrious. Some humans make choices to accept the will of others by taking oaths and surrendering to the hive mind for a sense of security. Politicians usually make the choice to be well kept pets given liberties by their masters in return for milking their constituents. Free people are like dandelions. They just keep popping up all over.
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