Sunday, September 27, 2015

Negative Externalities


Shortcuts are not in and of themselves a bad thing. We rightly trust sources of information because who has the time or resources to latch onto all that our informed consent requires? It's the usurpation of those kinds of shortcuts against which we must guard.

Saying "both sides do it" has become, all too often, a provider of cover. Although there is a sliver of a grain of a morsel of truth to that notion, borrowing from Orwell: some sides do it more than others. And limiting the infinihedron of political positions to merely two sides is surely a "tell" in that regard, regardless of its prevalence. It provides disproportionate cover to the darkest forces within our constitutionally secured self-government.

Small wonder George Washington was the last president not under the umbrella of one political party or another. Though not actually in The Constitution, political parties have achieved the status of national tradition nonetheless.

The lesson of 2000, beyond the electoral shenanigans of Jeb!'s Florida, is that limiting ourselves to two major parties provides the greatest opportunity for triumph to both. We are not coalition builders; we are winners, taking all. Sure if you add the Nader vote to the Gore vote you get something way better than a Bush administration, but you need to file that one away with Boehner's candies and nuts.


The biggest downside to our modern news media is the provision of an unrelenting coziness to a press which views and asserts itself as but a forum for the "he said" along with (to be fair) a modicum of the "she said." It's like the country and western of Blues Brothers fame. Add to that the financial imperatives of the all too holy business model and presto!

Dividing the press into two factions that mimics the two parties is surrealism and way beyond the realm of irony. What has bias ever contributed to the telling of truth but what else is the purpose of the fourth estate? Eschewing bias in favor of a squishy middle ground shouldn't be worth inventing yet it has already been amply put into service by those seeking a differentiation from the obviously propagandist if only for market share.

Sure as tonight's total eclipse of a blood, super, harvest moon was knowable, tomorrow's unfounded givens will prove to be the fruits of squandering the power to debunk.


Nothing says death is final more than the inability of James Madison to effect the right combination of shaming and lightning bolts from wherever.   

"Thinking is hard. If only there were a shortcut to understanding," says that majority of Americans which squanders the greatest gift of the American Revolution and shouts "Eureka" with their page views and Arbitron numbers when they find it in all the wrong places.

To repeat, shortcuts are not in and of themselves a bad thing. But allowing bait and switch by once trusted sources of information or perpetuating unabashedly bogus derivatives aren't just lapses in vigilant citizenship. They give aid and comfort to forces which would have the whole notion of self-government fail.

An everyday term the plutocrats use when limiting their discussions to only the things that matter to them and their profits and not the universe of possibilities is "negative externalities." They only know enough about them to give strategic lip service. I'm puzzled. Where exactly would be the comfort in saying "both sides do it?"