Trust in Automation

Wednesday, November 05, 2008

Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel

From a 2006 CounterPunch article on Emanuel:

What are Emanuel's views on war and peace? Emanuel has just supplied the answer in the form of a scrawny book co-authored with Bruce Reed, modestly entitled: The Plan: Big Ideas for America. The authors obligingly boil each of the eight parts of "The Plan" down to a single paragraph. The section which embraces all of foreign policy is entitled "A New Strategy to End the War on Terror," a heading revealing in itself since "war on terror" is the way the neocons and the Israeli Lobby currently like to frame the discussion of foreign policy. Here is the book's summary paragraph . . .:

"A New Strategy to Win the War on Terror"

"We need to use all the roots of American power to make our country safe. America must lead the world's fight against the spread of evil and totalitarianism, but we must stop trying to win that battle on our own. We should reform and strengthen multilateral institutions for the twenty-first century, not walk away from them. We need to fortify the military's "thin green line" around the world by adding to the U.S. Special Forces and the Marines, and by expanding the U.S. army by 100,000 more troops. We should give our troops a new GI Bill to come home to. Finally we must protect our homeland and civil liberties by creating a new domestic counterterrorism force like Britain's MI5.

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Tuesday, November 04, 2008

some election day thoughts

i am very interested to see the distribution in age and internet access among people who continue to believe lies about barack obama's citizenship, religion, ethnicity, affiliations, etc. i think that the existence of this group is not only a reflection of the multitude of derisive viewpoints presented online, but, more so, that some of those who end up believing lies about obama do not have the presence of mind, or perhaps the basic ability, to critically evaluate what they take in via internet media. (it reminds me of david st. hubbins in 'spinal tap' when he says, "i believe virtually everything i read.") too many people simply believe what they read online at face value, and i think this is correlated with age and internet access, to some degree. for others, the lies are just a convenient way to repackage racist sentiment or other prejudices, so those beliefs would arise regardless of being exposed to some sort of online attack.

it's remarkable what the two-party system has led to... to be a "stereotypical", or perhaps "ideal", democrat or republican a person has to have such an incredibly narrow viewpoint on myriad topics. (in my mind and in the minds of innumerable republicans, sarah palin is an "ideal" republican as far as her espoused ideology.) considering the impact of social entropy, we're only going to have more issues, more policies to consider, more problems to address, resulting in a larger variety of distinct opinions over time. how can we expect one of two parties' ideologies or its representatives to satisfy the ever-diversifying viewpoints of the electorate? it's not necessarily as if a voter would agree with republicans on 30% of the issues, and democrats on the other 70%; rather, it's more likely that some percentage of their opinion set will not be reflected by any candidate. right now, we have one more mainstream political party than a communist country -- how can we expect to have our viewpoints fully expressed in a political election process that stifles diversity of opinion?

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