The choices we get to make about our government are dictated by minority opinion.
Those opinions come from:
- Party politics - people who actually participate in a particular political party and are heavily financed.
- special interest - people who lobby party politics and are responsible for the financing of party members.
- mainstream news media - those who decide what we get to learn about which in fact shapes “public opinion”.
- academia - the people advancing the ideas responsible for the opinions of these other minority groups.
The people who make up these minority groups represent the ruling class.
We call it “democracy” because supposedly it is “we the people” or whatever…but really it is the same as it has always been:
The ruling class still decides who gets to be in the ruling class; a vote does nothing more than legitimizes the ruling class without actually changing who is in it.
Republicans and Democrats two sides to the same coin. I concur
I don’t agree with your premise or whatever it is you’re trying to accomplish here. If you take points #1-4, that actually encompasses a huge array of public opinions in this country. #1: party politics; the Democrats and Republicans in govt are the same in terms of how they operate and what they really want (as many political offices as possible) the opinions that each party represent are fairly diverse.
#2: special interests; well, there’s all sorts of special interest groups out there. The NRA is the biggest one but there are large political interest groups that cover a wide range of issues, including the AARP, ExxonMobil, gay rights, PETA, the auto industry and the American Bar Association. They all get attention from politicians and have sway over them to varying extents.
#3: mainstream news media; in many ways the mainstream news media fails miserably at covering what’s really important in the world and in the country without some sort of slant. That slant is viewership/ratings/readers. They all want it and they get it by giving US what WE want. So I’d think that any major news media outlet that prospers while dishing out biased news of some sort is really only giving us what we want anyways. Since both FoxNews and CNN seem to dominate news media and their “opinions” seem to be pretty different, I’d say they also represent a wide range of political opinion and choice. Not only that, with the proliferation of the Internet, anyone can find any news media source that tells them exactly what they want to hear about any relevant political topic within a few seconds.
#4: academia; academia represents a wide, wide range of opinions and ideas. It’s infinite, really. Professors at universities hold diverse opinions. Most that do consider themselves liberal consider themselves as such in a traditional sense and not within the American liberal/conservative spectrum that has become so distorted today. There are many liberal professors at universities and there are many conservative ones and there even more that fall in between. Some professors are actually quite apolitical as well. So depending on who has influenced you throughout your academic career and what area you studied in, you could end up influenced by any number of politically-slanted people. And that’s if you’re influenced by them at all. Some people go to college and are bombarded with liberalism and they turn sour to it and become very conservative.
So I wouldn’t call these four entities the main culprits in the infestation of minority opinion in American politics that unfairly decides for us who leads us. You left out the one entity/group that DOES have an unwieldy, large influence over who becomes part of the ruling class: the rich.
The rich are the ones who have the most sway over the direction of political campaigns and the agenda of the two parties. The rich are the ones who have the most influence on special interest groups and the rich are the ones who can afford to bankroll or make large cash contributions to specific super PACs as well. The rich are the ones who own mainstream news sources, and as such have the most influence over the final decision regarding content.
Yes, I think we actually agree. There are many opinions that are in the minority if we query the entire “world opinion bank”; however, the opinions that drive governments are very limited. We are given choices that bear no distinction. The minority rules the majority because they can control the conversation.
I did not mean that to be an exhaustive list. These are the institutions I think most destructive when it comes to how ideas are promoted.
Wealthy people in general are not an issue because there are plenty of wealthy people who do not concern themselves with obtaining power. There are plenty of wealthy people who earned their wealth honestly; however, there are wealthy people who mean to rule us. They are in the minority and some of them make up the people in those groups I listed.
[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
Yes, I think we actually agree. There are many opinions that are in the minority if we query the entire “world opinion bank”; however, the opinions that drive governments are very limited. We are given choices that bear no distinction. The minority rules the majority because they can control the conversation.
I did not mean that to be an exhaustive list. These are the institutions I think most destructive when it comes to how ideas are promoted.
Wealthy people in general are not an issue because there are plenty of wealthy people who do not concern themselves with obtaining power. There are plenty of wealthy people who earned their wealth honestly; however, there are wealthy people who mean to rule us. They are in the minority and some of them make up the people in those groups I listed.[/quote]
I don’t think those institutions you mentioned are necessarily the reason why destructive ideas are promoted. Those institutions are responsible for SOME bad ideas and lines of thought, but not all. The fact is that there’s a wide array of ideas and choices and philosophies and so forth that are available through the institutions you mentioned. It’s up to people to sift through the bad ones. If we expect society to be insulated from bad ideas and destructive ideas, we may as well roll over, spread our legs wide open and tell Lady Totalitarianism to have at it with a big silver fucking dildo. I could name any institution, group, entity, organization, whatever that deals in destructive ideas. I could find those everywhere from Wall Street to K Street to the local church to the Chamber of Commerce to Langley, VA to Silicon Valley and everywhere in between.
I won’t disagree with you about an elite minority running the majority, but I refuse to believe that they are in any way responsible for the proliferation of “destructive ideas” in society. Those sorts of things always exist and there’ll always be an elite minority looking to protect its interests; the proliferation occurs when we expect some vague outside force or something like that to insulate us from bad thought/choices, rather than fight it with good thought/choices.
[quote]DBCooper wrote:
It’s up to people to sift through the bad ones.
I won’t disagree with you about an elite minority running the majority, but I refuse to believe that they are in any way responsible for the proliferation of “destructive ideas” in society. [/quote]
How does it matter if the choices we are offered bear no distinction?
Take your pick: R or D?