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Perhaps I'm a dreamer, but I'm Not the Only One
Subtitled:
“Field of Dreams: Build It and They Will Come”
The 2004 Presidential election is the very first in which the power of communication technology such as the Internet has begun to play a major role in politics. It presents a new paradigm of political power that has not been anticipated by the Right wing, and which has begun to erode the very foundations of it’s global control. This trend will continue, and usher in a renaissance of true global democracy.
The theory behind this new paradigm is an analog to what is known as a “nanotechnology swarm”. The idea behind this concept is quite simple: take a large number of basic entitites, each of which have a very small measure of power and that communicate at a high rate with each other, provide them with a “learning algorithm”, and let nature take over. The result can be unpredicatble, but if the programming algorithm is correct, the swarm will follow evolutionary laws, and act in a way to survive and thrive in it’s environment. The application of this theory to the events we are witnessing is discussed below.
Looking back just over 18 months, we can observe at least three major evolutionary events in this new technology:
1. The rise of Howard Dean: coming out of nowhere, with no establishment support, Howard Dean challenged a sitting US President, and put him on the defensive over his obscene and dishonest war in Iraq, something that until that time would have been suicidal for any established national figure. Dean’s followers used the Internet to build a “virtual community” on a national scale for the first time. They created an opening for other candidates to challenge Bush, who had previously been considered impregnable.
Dean’s message intuitively reflected the new paradigm, as he reminded his followers at almost every appearance: “YOU HAVE THE POWER” !
2. After Kerry was chosen as the Democratic nominee, the Reich wing started to catch on and mimic this new phenomenon, although they did so to spread darkness instead of light, evil instead of good. Their first entry into this new medium of an national Internet community was through the Swift Boat Liars and Slimers, who managed to invert reality for a month, creating the illustion that Bush was a hero and Kerry was a coward.
In essence, the Swift Slimers created a new form of “anti-truth virus” that the public had not been innoculated against. Once the anti-bodies in the body public rejected this filth, the damage to Kerry had already been done. This campaign of hatred, albeit in a very vicious way, proved the power of the new medium, as the expenditure of about 1M$ did more damage to Kerry that 80M$ of hate ads from the Bush campaign. It should be noted that further smear campaigns will have to try much harder to be effective, as there is some residual resistance in the system now.
The impact of this upon the Presidential race was substantial, since Kerry was chosen for the very fact that he could contest Bush’s caricature of himself as a strong and brave leader, and emphasized his military background in the Democratic convention. By undercutting this image of Kerry, the Bush campaign managed to stem the tide of what would have normally been a wholesale rejection of a truly witness and incompetent leader.
3. Using pyscho-ops, media control, and manipulation of the public (through the use of fear alerts, and manipulation of the war in Iraq), the Bush administration manage to maintain the façade that Bush is liked by the American people, and a likely winner of the 2004 election. This image is important, as all the vote manipulation in the world is useless if the public perceives that you are a strong underdog on election eve – politics is not like football, in which miracles can happen in the last 2 minutes of play.
This sets the scene for the actual manipulation of the results of the election, using techniques prototyped in 2000 and 2002, documentation of which is becoming uncovered each and every day.
However, after the election is over in this 3rd phase of evolution, the portion of the body politic that had been informationally sensitized does not buy this fraud of the 2004 “results”. It really starts out without evidence of fraud in 2004: the fraud is being uncovered because many people just felt something was very wrong, and proactively started to look for “something fishy”.
The new dynamic now operates with vengeance; starting from nothing, within a matter of weeks, the questioning begins to percolate upward, and the unthinkable is now being debated. The fact that the mass media discount the concerns does not matter; the powers that be are weakened by the very thought that this new information must be refuted and contained.
In a way, many in the Right wing really know there is monkey business in 2004, just as they knew that the actions in Florida and Supreme Court in 2000 were totally dishonest. Like a team that gets the benefit of a totally incorrect call from the referee in a game, they accept it as a lucky fluke, and have no qualms about picking up the spoils of victory, and raising the championship trophy.
However, they are nagged by the incessant refusal of the other side to concede defeat: even if the capitain officially concedes (as he must) the opposition has “won the game”, the players who were cheated just keep digging and digging…All the while the cheaters cannot really savor their so-called victory, because they sense the tide of history is turning against them. A great illustration of this dynamic is given in the movie “The Gladiator”, in which the cowardly prince who crowns himself with the glory of his father, Julius Ceaser, then pretends to engage his challenger in a fair contest. However, like the Swift Slimers, he dishonestly tries to weaken his opponent before the contest by effectively stabbing him “in the back”. However, we all know how the movie turns out….
While this process of information discovery is still underway in multiple forums on the Internet, there is no doubt about the eventual outcome. In a way, it does not really matter if the Right wing succeeds in holding onto their 2004 championship “trophy”, as their legitimacy will continue to be challenged more deeply and broadly that they could ever have imagined. We all know how this movie will turn out….
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