[extropy-chat] electing ideas [was Re:Fahrenheit 911 -objectivereview?]

[Brett Paatsch]

Brent Neal wrote:

> ..  voting on the principle of least incompetence.

If only it would catch on.

> http://www.reason.com/0408/fe.bd.john.shtm

Good article.  Maybe some will read excerpts that won't read
16 pages.

" ..by virtue of our abdication, a very authoritarian, assertive
form of government has taken over. And oddly enough, it is
doing so in the guise of libertarianism to a certain extent. Most
of the people in the think tanks behind the Bush administration’s
current policies are libertarians, or certainly free marketeers.
We’ve got two distinct strains of libertarianism, and the
hippie-mystic strain is not engaging in politics, and the Ayn
Rand strain is basically dismantling government in a way that
is giving complete open field running to multinational
corporatism."

" From a multinational’s standpoint, the best thing that can
happen is the best thing that can happen right now. They have
to deliver maximum shareholder value today, next quarter,
which means that they don’t worry about whether there are
going to be resources for them to exploit in 10 years."

The following seems to resonates with Spike's comments:

"TV in America created the most coherent reality distortion
field that I’ve ever seen. Therein is the problem: People who
vote watch TV, and they are hallucinating like a sonofabitch.
Basically, what we have in this country is government by
hallucinating mob."
---

Brett