13 ms·
How to Subvert a Democracy, Stage 2: Condition the Masses
- jjtheblunt 3y agoI wonder if strict and short term limits would inhibit the ability (for any entity) to condition the masses.
- LegitShady 3y agounfortunately political parties are machines to continue influence and power. It would change how influence was applied, but the team sport that is politics would continue with different spokepeople in office and the same people running the machinery of party in the back.
- macintux 3y agoI expect lobbyists would be winners if short term limits were imposed. Inexperienced legislators would tend to rely extensively on party apparatus and lobbyists.
- junofan 3y agoInteresting, I would expect the opposite: tenured legislators rely more on lobbyists and party apparatus. You don’t really see increasing independence over time; rather, wayward legislators get primaried by the party.
- LegitShady 3y agothe party doesn't necessarily lose any power in this case, so their ability to control elections by choosing who runs might be undiminished.
- macintux 3y agoMy suspicion is that the bills and amendments the legislature debates, and their direct and indirect impacts, are so complex that a young legislator will necessarily need help navigating. So experienced staff, parties, and lobbyists will necessarily be strong influences. A veteran lawmaker has better intuitions, and knows who both inside and outside the system they can trust for advice.
- jimbob45 3y agoFor which office are you suggesting shorter term limits?
- jjtheblunt 3y agonone in particular, i'm just curious what the partial differential of corruption with respect to terms is, very vaguely said.
- Analemma_ 3y ago> I wonder if strict and short term limits would inhibit the ability (for any entity) to condition the masses. No, it would do exactly the opposite. Short term limits mean you perpetually have a revolving door of inexperienced and naive legislators who are much more prone to a) manipulation by experienced and cut-throat lobbyists and b) grabbing everything they can for their district with no regard for long-term sustainability, because they'll be gone before they can see any consequences. I'm not picking on you in particular because I see this all over the place, but it really makes me crazy when people default to their gut emotions and desire to punish, and so come up with non-solutions like "shorter term limits!" which actually make the problem so much worse.
- GreedClarifies 3y ago"which actually make the problem so much worse" I'm sorry you haven't made that case at all. All you have done is listed the costs of the "term limits" side, you haven't listed any of the benefits. A couple off of the top of my head: 1. Seats would be up for effective election more often allowing for democracy to perhaps function more effectively. Perhaps there would be more of a market of ideas instead of cults of personality. 2. Less time for legislators to establish "ties" (corruption) with regulators, business leaders, party leaders, and others in power.
- jen20 3y agoAs opposed to the competent legislators there today? I don’t think they can really be much worse in many countries.
- jjtheblunt 3y agoI’m not claiming it would help; I’m asking if it would help.
- lostmsu 3y agoNot sure. Power corrupts, but it is not doing it instantly. Freshmen politicians might be less touched.
- than3 3y agoIts a balanced scale, any good is equally weighed by the bad. Except the larger representative lobbyists often tip the scale towards bad more often than not.
- yamtaddle 3y ago1) This assumes that long-serving politicians are a major driver of this activity. Doesn't seem right to me, but hey, maybe I'm wrong. 2) The main downside to term limits is that it tends to put more power into the hands of actors who are not subject to elections—professional bureaucrats, lobbyists, interest groups, and party machines, basically. My perception is that those latter three groups, especially, are behind a lot of this kind of thing—if true, term limits would make things worse, not better.
- BuyMyBitcoins 3y agoDoes this assumption still hold if the term limits are somewhat generous? For instance, 18 years (3 senate terms or 9 house terms)? Almost all of the evidence detracting from legislative term limits centers around attempts to allow only 1-2 terms. But there’s very little about medium to longer term restrictions.
- FpUser 3y agoWould be taken over by big corporations. Already happening to a good degree
- hedora 3y agoThe US used to have media ownership rules for this purpose. On balance, they worked well until they were repealed (at each step, the politicians responsible for repealing them had ties to the companies that directly benefited).
- PrimeMcFly 3y agoI feel like Reagan almost single handled did more to destroy the US than any other individual. All of reaganomics while allowing Fox News to spread lies and propaganda to rile peopel up.
- jjtheblunt 3y agoHow old were you then? (i'm curious, because i was small, and the subset of news i saw was more focused on the strategy of outspending the soviet union, but that's at that time in the news, i mean.)
- PrimeMcFly 3y agoI wasn't old enough to pay attention to politics, and wasn't in the US at that time. I've just read about it a few times. Seem I was wrong though, glad I just looked it up. Here's a Snopes article debunking it: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/ronald-reagan-fairness-doctrine/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/ronald-reagan-fairness-doc...
- hayst4ck 3y agoTerm limits seem like the type of thing that would not necessarily create positive or negative results, but modulate the system. I think it is a thing that feels right to a lot of people, but if you ask "What will term limits achieve, and what are possible unintended consequences of term limits?" I think most proponents of it would have a very hard time coming up with a satisfying answer. I would prefer age limits before term limits. I think the real question to ask is: "If corruption were against the law, would people still want term limits?" or "Will term limits reduce corruption?" I think the answer is no and I think it is obviously no for the latter (revolving door).
- HybridCurve 3y agoNo. Term limits have nothing to do with the overall strategies being used by subversive non-government organizations. They function in the background and direct the party to steer policy in their favor. All of the deep research required to apply stress to the weak points of an institution is done at NGOs and the execution plan is essentially handed over to the party members and officials.
- drewcoo 3y agoIf you want to address the problems of politicians . . . find a way to: 1. pay them all FU money so they're not corruptible (I don't care how much. Maybe a trust fund for life.) 2. harshly, legally prohibit them from making any money from ever having been in office (the FU money is a cushion here) And then . . . why limit their terms? If you have eliminated corruption, at least ostensibly, why limit terms?
- hedora 3y agoIronically, I just got downvoted in another thread for saying science advisors should have relevant education or practical experience.
- hdiwhxisjshs 3y agofor that we all must drop the pretense that a centralized government is not for the preservation of status quo, i.e. maintaining existing privilege. all ministerial positions are about positioning, not effectiveness. china has this spelled out in some laws and govt practices. e.g. they assume rural resources will be abused by a central group until they can get a stronger state law presence. but accept it and keep dumping resource till then and then work with those corrupt entities to ease the region absorption into proper state mechanics instead of "fighting corruption" or some other grand but disconnected goal for and older but more comprehensive view on the article points, there's: Coup d'État: A Practical Handbook
- drewcoo 3y agoHow is that ironic? This is HN . . .
- xg15 3y ago> ...and that potentially meant that the government might force United Fruit to make costly changes, like raising wages. [...] Ideally, Guatemala would back down and start praising United Fruit for being a job creator instead of a foreign plunderer. Somewhat OT, but one of the feats of propaganda that impresses me the most is how "jobs" were successfully established as an end in itself instead of a means. As a politician, you can easily run on the platform of "creating jobs" without ever discussing wages. As an employee, it doesn't matter if the job is wrecking your health, making you neglect your family and pays less than living wage, just having a job on its own is something to be grateful of. An employer is not needing services that employees provide, no, an employer is creating jobs and then in infinite grace giving them to the employees. It's crazy, but it works.
- elecush 3y agoGermane: there can be no green new deal without a robust manufacturing sector in America. Some sort of higher-tech revolution could be possible, though.
- parineum 3y agoJobs are better than no jobs, across the board. More jobs increase the wealth of the employed. More jobs improves the job market for the employees (more demand for their services). More jobs helps (small and large) business owners (more wealth in the hands of customers). If there are 10,000 coal mining jobs and 9,000 coal miners, coal mining conditions will improve.
- hayst4ck 3y ago> Jobs are better than no jobs, across the board. What about slavery? What if there is a spectrum between chattel slavery and owning the means of production? How would you determine where "job" exists on that spectrum? Slaves still get fed and housed. If the only thing that a job offers is food and housing, how different is that from slavery? How free is a person who can only afford to house and feed themselves?
- 3y ago
- johnea 3y agoThis whole 7 part series is really an eye opener. Most people have heard about Allende/Pinochet, and Regan's illegal war in Nicaragua, but I don't think that many people in the US have heard about this. I certainly hadn't. This series is excellent, especially in the many references to decassified documents. Agencies denying operations for decades, only to have those operations confirmed after declassification is a repeating pattern. Seeing how powerful this media based campaign was in the 1950s also sheds some perspective on how overwhelmingly powerful modern fake-video can be in persuading a population. All rolled up, this really spells a very hard road ahead for democratic government. How are ordinary people supposed to pull back the deception and understandd the truth, in the face of highly-funded media campaigns to deceive them? It becomes less and less possible with every new technical development.
- GreedClarifies 3y ago"Regan's illegal war in Nicaragua" Ok, huffingtonpost.
- sammalloy 3y ago> Similarly, much of the Russian disinformation campaign of 2016 — especially in the beginning — was not about convincing people of falsehoods. It was about sowing seeds of discredit and doubt about Hillary Clinton, and about the U.S. electoral system generally. It didn’t matter what was actually on Clinton’s email server, so long as talking about it cast doubt on her integrity. This tactic of fear, uncertainty and doubt has been addressed by numerous authors in recent decades. Science historian Naomi Oreskes pointed to the deliberate cultivation of uncertainty about climate change by Bill Nierenberg, Fred Seitz, and Fred Singer to slow down and stop regulations on fossil fuel companies. In 2012, Jay Rosen, journalism professor at NYU, described this cultivation of uncertainty on the right as a process of "reverse verification", with the example of the question, "Was Obama born in the United States?” Rosen: "Verification is taking something that might be true, and trying to nail it down with facts. In reverse verification, you take something that’s been nailed down and try to introduce doubt about it." This is the primary way that American democracy is being subverted now, in 2023.
- davidw 3y ago> Jay Rosen Very interesting to follow on twitter in that he picks apart bad journalism and explains why it doesn't work.
- Andrew_nenakhov 3y ago> Russian disinformation campaign of 2016 Are you referring to the disinformation campaign that promoted the conspiracy theory that Russia somehow influenced the 2016 presidential elections, or the conspiracy theory itself?
- sammalloy 3y ago[flagged]
- Andrew_nenakhov 3y agoYes, bought ads on a whopping $100k on Facebook. That really changed the outcome of the elections: https://time.com/4930532/facebook-russian-accounts-2016-election/ https://time.com/4930532/facebook-russian-accounts-2016-elec... Anyway, why the big fuss? US has meddled in the affairs of other countries via media/grants/other types of funding, public and covert, for over a century by now. Why being so sour because some countries influence you back? If it is the citizens who do the voting, your compatriots, and you should respect their choice. Or you think they are too stupid and too easily influenced by misinformation, that they are too naive to make a rational choice? How about stripping the voting rights from such people? They clearly need to be steered by more competent leaders!
- justinzollars 3y ago[flagged]
- carabiner 3y ago[flagged]
- justinzollars 3y ago"distract from things like healthcare, raising the minimum wage" Good luck funding healthcare with 130% debt to GDP. ngmi.
- dang 3y agoCould you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and/or flamebait? It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. We've had to ask you this at least once before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25773624 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25773624 (Jan 2021), and unfortunately your recent comments have a lot of this kind of thing in it. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
- elecush 3y agoVery interesting take. In order to keep a democracy functioning properly, education is required. The lines between education and propagandalf wizardry become blurry when economic incentives and dearths of ethics enter the field.
- avodonosov 3y agoTLDR anyone? This style of writing is so unfriendly to readers. The text could have been 3 times shorter. The first paragraph where he is standing with wavy hair could just be thrown away. It does not continue anyways. IMHO
- avodonosov 3y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays
- AnimalMuppet 3y agoYour point?
- avodonosov 3y agoWell structured, informative, easy to read text.
- sufehmi 3y agoThe easiest way to subvert democracy is by (1) creating political parties, then (2) claim that its party members represent the people, while (3) they actually represent its political party, and therefore, of course, prioritize its interests. In my country, every major oligarchs have its own / is a member of a political party. So our "Council of People's Representatives" actually works as "Council of Party's Representative" - and therefore work very diligently to fight for the interests of our oligarchs. And yet no one is upset, not even our "democracy activists" - because they're already conditioned / believe that, political parties are a requirement for a proper democracy. Nope, they're not - and they're actually the way to subvert democracy, and enabled the oligarchs to create massive profits AND control the people at the same time.
- int_19h 3y agoParties are an inevitable feature of any representative democracy for the simple reason that MPs who pool their votes will consistently beat those who do not. Even council democracy - where the delegates vote according to instructions of their electorate and can be instantly recalled - is not immune to this.
- digging 3y agoIt's a pretty simple equation if you abstract voting into a competition. One can think of political parties as miniature states themselves. In a world of individuals trying to survive - the ones who survive will not remain individuals. They will form alliances and have power over those who are alone. A small state has little power, but a stateless individual has orders of magnitude less, roundable to zero. Likewise an independent member of a voting body will control the discussion among large parties. Parties could only be avoided by explicitly outlawing them - and not just by name, but by proscribing specific behaviors which could create de facto parties. Sounds incredibly difficult and would be amazing to watch attempted.
- than3 3y agoParties are the formation of demagogues, and we all know how that worked out for Rome.
- Etrnl_President 3y ago[dead]
- imiric 3y agoIt's patently evident that the current social and political instability in the West is caused by ideological subversion carried out by their political enemies. The internet and social media have provided the perfect weapon to deliver disinformation and propaganda to manipulate the masses, and create a state of internal conflict and confusion. Modern warfare is no longer carried out by soldiers and artillery, but by words, videos and troll farms. Why waste resources investing in physical offense, when you can undermine your enemy via ideological means, using the same tools they built for you, and watch their political and social systems crumble from within? If nothing else, it makes the eventual physical offensive much cheaper and more effective. This has been known for decades[1], yet the West has done little to stop it from happening. They engage in the same psyops, but information in the countries of their enemies is much more strictly controlled, so it has much less of an impact. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1EA2ohrt5Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1EA2ohrt5Q
- UberFly 3y agoI was going to post this exact interview. What's crazy is that the tools to do this are now so much more powerful and far-reaching. Worth a watch.
- 8note 3y agoI think without the adversarial subversion, the states would be in just as bad of a place. It would be less clear in policies implemented, but the root cause is a lack of engagement in politics and use of the tools from modernity and the enlightenment. People aren't sold on debate and discussion, and aren't aligned on goals, and don't have a way to align on goals
- tcbawo 3y agoThe middle of both parties are getting older and older. Newly elected politicians tend to be populistic culture warriors. Consequently, we’re not able to elect anyone that gets anything done. Gone are the days of electing the most serious and responsible public servants. We’re not able to replace aging incumbent politicians with grownups. Or so it seems.
- 3y ago
- dukeofdoom 3y agoDoes criminally charging your leading opposition candidate count?
- youngNed 3y agoIt's a well written path in those trying: "Lock her up" certainly was attempting it
- Alupis 3y agoThere's quite a difference between saying something, and doing something, no?
- add-sub-mul-div 3y agoDefinitely. The difference is extant vs. invented evidence of criminal activity.
- Alupis 3y agoI suspect we can make this claim about all discussed parties at this point...
- krapp 3y agoNot when they actually commit crimes, no.
- dukeofdoom 3y agoas determined by the ruling party?
- krapp 3y agoIf you refuse to see the system investigating your chosen candidate as legitimate, then I suppose you could describe the process of the rule of law in hostile and bad faith terms, yes.
- carabiner 3y agoOnce you get down to it, everything in the US seems to be designed to benefit big business / oligarchs. Culture wars topics are intended to distract from things like healthcare, raising the minimum wage, solving the housing crisis in cities, taxing the rich, and so on. They create our pain, then dangle "jobs" as a salve.
- ss108 3y agoI think this line of thinking is unrealistic and rather unempathetic. People on both sides of culture war issues really do care about them. I agree that there are a number of more important issues, but the ordering of political priorities is basically subjective and nobody needs share anyone else's.
- coldtea 3y ago>People on both sides of culture war issues really do care about them. That's the goal of every diversion. Sports fans really care about their teams too (in some cases to the point of mass hysteria, or beating other people over them). >but the ordering of political priorities is basically subjective and nobody needs share anyone else's. Not so subjective, since conveniently almost everybody ends up sharing the ordering of one of the two sides they are conditioned to chose among. That's like saying "fashion is subjective" and then seeing 90% of the people wearing the same shit for the season, "mysteriously" the very thing promoted in fashion magazines and celebrity videos and advertised to death 24/7.
- drewcoo 3y agoCalling caring "unempathtic" is clearly newspeak. Also, whenever you see only a "both sides" then that's the MSM circus.
- rco8786 3y agoYea more or less. Things that benefit the standard of living for the population but cut into corporate profits are basically DOA.
- 3y ago
- PrimeMcFly 3y agoI think the easiest way to subvert a democracy is to deny or prevent access to education. IMO that's what has been happening in red states in the US for some time now.
- than3 3y agoIts more about indoctrination prior to the age of reason. Kids biologically can't discern lies prior to that age unless they've had some form of trauma (from what I've been told), and often accept what's read and written as truth. Few re-evaluate those beliefs later as they become part of their identity. Its why that Florida education issue was such a hot-button topic. They tried overtly embedding some of that junk into math problems.
- PrimeMcFly 3y agoOh I agree completely. I do think education can help combat indoctrination though, at least while it's happening. Teach kids there are other possibilities and how to think critically and they won't be so quick to accept BS.
- than3 3y agoWell indoctrination is one of those things that's hard to believe unless you see it in action. Its hard to teach about too because it is something that you don't really believe is happening until you've seen it from experience. There are a number of things like that, and to undo the damage you have to have reached a certain level of self awareness which many never get to. Critical thinking by itself isn't really enough in my opinion either. It only impresses how much additional work is needed, on an ongoing basis, to defend yourself. Its often overwhelming, and rarely are things like negotation and credibility taught in a way that kids can understand.
- Andrew_nenakhov 3y agoAnyone worried about foreign interference in the elections in your country, disinformation, etc: you simply do not respect your compatriots. As long as the elections are fair, and people do the voting themselves, they do it rationally, judging the information available to them and weighting it according to their beliefs. If you do not trust them to make a valid choice because they are unable to know what's true and what's not, you are on a path that will logically end with stripping voting rights from such dim masses and installing an enlightened Fuhrer (you) who would lead them to the better future.
- akomtu 3y agoArbenz's fault was not knowing the nature of the state. When he chopped off a tentacle of the US state, the United Fruit Company, he didn't know that the only way to survive the inevitable rage of the US is to create his own state - an oppressive and controlling creature who is only good at making war. Arbenz thought that by saying true things on radio he would stop the demon. Democracy is just a way to confuse and domesticate the state.