The Game

Its goes by many names including: “politics”, “promotions”, “public relations”, “punditry”, “preaching” and "Pin the Tail on the Stupid". But among players it is simply called “The Game”. The objective is to get ignorant people to believe falsehoods for fun and/or profit (if you’re profiting by telling the truth you’re not playing the Game). The key to success in the Game is the ability to get people to turn off their objective reasoning skills (i.e., to be stupid).

In the Game you get points whenever you profit from someone else accepting your baseless propositions as facts. In the same way that most drug dealers know not to “get high on their own supply”; true players know not to internalize anything they say in the context of the Game. Points are awarded in the Game based on a combination of the blatancy of the proposition’s falsity (i.e., the stupidity required to believe it), the number of people who believe it and the depth to which they believe it. The accumulation of points manifests as increases in the player’s worldly influence and wealth.

Thanks to the Internet no idea is too stupid (i.e., too egregious a violation of the fundamental laws of logic) to gain traction with some group of marginalized tinfoil hatters. Skilled players try to broaden the distribution of their most preposterous propositions by connecting different groups of believers together using conspiracy theories and then encouraging them to ideologically cross-pollinate. To maximize the depth of penetration of more improbable ideas players typically shape them to be consistent with the personal narratives of their marks. The best players are actually able to convince their marks that believing pure drivel makes them more knowledgeable than everyone who doesn't. Such tactics increase the persistence of an unlikely belief, which in turn increases the chance of it being passed on to other like-minded individuals. As a result, these absurd propositions can provide a solid foundation for building multilevel monuments of idiocy that accumulate huge points in the Game thanks to a multiplier effect.

At the periphery of the Game are lurkers who watch it as a harmless, if sometimes mean-spirited, pastime. Lurkers are able to appreciate the subtleties of the Game but are saddled with too much conscience to play it. The less sympathetic lurkers get a perverse enjoyment out of seeing marks proudly brandishing, as signs of their “superior” intelligence, the stupid ideas that active players have pinned on them. Anyone who wonders why more sympathetic lurkers don’t intervene to warn those being played has obviously never tried to separate people from beliefs that are important to them. As bad as the inaction of lurkers may seem to outsiders, it is the professionals who you really should watch out for. The high-end pros in the Game are wielding immense power in society and often pulling down seven and eight figure (USD) annual salaries. This can incentivize them to play a merciless game that is indifferent to any harm they might cause. These players are generally willing to ruin careers, destroy lives, bring down political systems and if necessary wreck economies in their single-minded pursuit of points in an ultimately meaningless game.

The Game has been played in one form or another since time immemorial. In its earliest versions it was often synonymous with we now think of as product advertising. While much of the action today is still driven by the movement of goods and services, some truly innovative moves have come out of the news media in their efforts to attract viewers and be regarded as relevant (the media equivalents of wealth and power). Their success in combining news, opinion and entertainment into an addictive concoction that is completely lacking in substance has opened the door to a whole new level of play. And through that door has marched the two major American political parties. The Democratic and Republican Parties have revolutionized the Game in terms of the generation and mass distribution of completely idiotic ideas that a significant percentage of the country believe with all their hearts. As such, the lurker-organized fantasy leagues invariably heat up during the run-up to elections. But be aware that the members of these political parties are by no means the top of the Game hierarchy.

In the Game if you are not a player you are probably a mark. The key to avoiding being played is a willingness to question your beliefs. Any belief you have that is based more on your self-image than on empirical evidence from the world around you is, at best, suspect. If you can think of anyone who might be benefiting more from your belief than you are, you have definitely been played. Unfortunately, if you’ve been played by a high-end player, suspecting as much will not provide enough of an incentive to abandon the belief, unless you are also a player. In other words, faced with the choice, a mark will always take the blue pill.

The Washington Prescription

People often complain that the artistic quality of Hollywood feature films has gone down over the years. Those who make this observation typically blame Hollywood for this phenomenon. However, like any free enterprise system, Hollywood produces products that ultimately reflect the demands of its market. Note that in the face of the general perception that its products' artistic quality is sinking, Hollywood's revenues are setting new records each year. Think about this in the context of the current political mess in Washington DC.

At the risk of being accused of blaming the victim I maintain that the electorate is responsible for the toxic political environment in Washington DC. The politicians there are well aware of the fact that we have the power to vote them out of office. As such, they act the way they do because it continues to provoke a positive electoral response from us. Arguably, most Washington politicians today are directing more of their efforts towards triggering that response than to actually doing their jobs.

Others have argued that the growing influence of deep-pocketed lobbyists is responsible for the current culture in Washington. However, such lobbyists have power in Washington DC primarily because it is still possible to sway enough voters to decide an election through the use of paid political ads. Our relative ignorance of the issues leaves us susceptible to such ads. This means that our political ignorance transfers some of our political power to those who pay for those ads. But we remain the source of that power. The same is true of the growing power of pundits and political entertainers. Being the ultimate power in Washington DC means we are responsible for its current condition.

In order for the electorate to have a direct hand in improving the political atmosphere in Washington DC, we must first accept responsibility for its current state. As long as we deny being responsible for this situation, we distance ourselves from the power to fix it. Expecting that things will get better simply by sending different people into the same noxious environment is analogous to that switching from regular to menthol cigarettes to treat your emphysema.

To improve the political environment in Washington DC we must each take it upon ourselves raise our level of political discourse. In order to do this, we must allow our personal ideologies to be primarily shaped by our life experiences rather than the talking points of people we like or even admire. We must develop our positions on political issues by analyzing them through the filter of our life experiences, rather than simply accepting or rejecting them based on how they are labeled (typically by people with a vested interest in how we react to them). When we present our political opinions to others we must do so in a manner that demonstrates our intelligence and respects theirs. We must give respectful consideration to divergent political opinions presented to us in this manner (rather than disparagingly dismissing them as partisan crackpottery).

As more of us begin to interact in such a manner I maintain that our elected officials will react to the spread of this new reasonable discourse by emulating it, if for no other reason than to avoid losing their jobs. In other words, by becoming a sensible, respectable electorate we can shape sensible, respectable representatives.

Ideological Dynamics

So which is the superior end of the political ideology spectrum: liberal or conservative? Each is appropriate at a particular point in the history of the state. The ideological needs of a people tend to cycle from one extreme to the other. This is because each political ideology addresses certain of the people’s needs while ignoring others.

Liberalism addresses our need for freedom; but in doing so it can ignore our need for security. This is because by not accounting for the worst aspects of human nature liberalism often fails to address the needs of certain segments of the society to be protected from them. In addition, the anarchic tendencies of liberal states can undermine the defining structure of a society.

In its effort to manage the worst aspects of human nature conservatism addresses our need for security; but in doing so it can ignore our need for freedom. This is because conservatism attempts to suppress divergence from the cultural normal. But in the process it often suppresses the best aspects of the human nature and as a result conservatism denies certain ideas and avenues of expression that can facilitate the advancement of the culture.

When a static ideology is right for the times there is relative equilibrium in the state that is governed by it. But, over time, the needs that are being ignored by that ideology become paramount in the political discourse. As these needs continue to go unaddressed by the leaders of the state, the ideology that was once the source of equilibrium will begin to undermine it. Eventually, the degree of dissonance will exceed the tolerance of the people; leading them to replace their leadership with one that espouses the complementary ideology.

During the times of equilibrium produced by an alignment of the needs of the people and ideology of the leaders, the state tends to run in a relatively smooth and efficient operational mode. But the longer the leadership ignores an increasing divergence between their static ideology and the changing needs of the people, the more significant a project it will represent for the leaders to restore political equilibrium. In other words, the longer this growing divergence goes unaddressed the more potentially disruptive the realignment will be.

The forces required to reverse this divergence sometimes produce a thrashing condition in which the corrective action overcompensates for the initial delay in addressing the needs of the people and the newly installed ideology veers too far to the other side. This can trigger an ideological recoil in the other direction, which depending on its strength, can cause a bounce back to the other side again and so on until at some point the ideology of the leadership comes back into alignment with the needs of the people. At this point the political system has returned to its equilibrium state.

In a bipartisan political system one of the two major political parties will invariably embrace a more conservative ideology while the other will be consistently more liberal. But parties are not required to be bound to a static ideology and members of a given party are even less so.

On those rare occasions when the leadership of the political party in charge chooses to transcend static ideology, they can remain in power indefinitely by adapting to changes in the ideological needs of the people. In order to accomplish this, the leaders must be willing to abandon policies and dismantle programs (even those they put in place) that were consistent with the waning side of the ideological cycle and replace them with those that are in keeping with waxing side, which is shaped by the unaddressed needs of the people. To be successful, this leadership must remain attuned to the greatest needs of the people rather than being focused of scoring ideological points.

Political Ideology

From a political perspective the conservative and liberal positions represent opposite ends of the ideological spectrum. Conservatives are characterized by a fundamental suspicion of human nature that manifests in their tendency to impose limits on the rights of the people. In this context, they generally believe rights should be earned. By contrast, liberals ascribe great value to human nature and so are inclined to maximize the rights of the people. This is because liberals typically believe most rights are innate.

People will invariably prefer a situation in which they have more rights over one in which they have fewer. As such, the more their rights are limited, the more oversight will be required to keep the people from circumventing these limits and thus undermining the stability of the encompassing political system. This is why the more conservative systems of government require greater oversight of the people, which usually manifests as more pervasive internal security forces. The underlying principles of liberal states lead them to impose less oversight of the people. As a result, the more liberal a government is the closer it is to anarchy.

An interesting juxtaposition of the liberal and conservative positions occurs in the context of corporations. Liberal states have a tendency to treat corporations in the same manner that conservative governments treat the broader population. As such, while they believe that the people should have the maximum rights; liberals also feel that corporations require greater oversight. The latter point implies that liberals judge corporations as deserving fewer rights. It can be argued that this judgment is based on the liberal perception that corporations’ greater capacity to influence society through their economic power provides them with the potential to abridge the rights of the people. In other words, liberals tend to view corporations as a prospective threat to any state-guaranteed rights of the people.

By contrast, contemporary conservative states are inclined to treat corporations in the same manner that liberal governments treat individuals. As such, while conservatives believe the people should have fewer rights, they also feel that corporations require less oversight. The latter position indicates that conservatives regard corporations as meriting more rights. This is because conservatives often interpret the relative success of corporations as proof that they have earned more expansive rights. Conservatives are inclined to regard corporations as having transcended the more dubious aspects of human nature.

The liberal manner in which conservative governments are inclined to treat corporations and the conservative way that liberal governments often deal with them indicate that today the practitioners of these political ideologies are not as far apart as one might think. By embracing qualified forms of these ideologies, today’s liberals and conservatives each have insight into the other’s position through which they could conceivably work together for the common good.