Cross-Responding to the Cross-Post
On Jul 24, 2011, at 9:08 AM, Owen Densmore wrote:
> I'm trying to figure out if Tom Friedman has been taken in by a
too-weird-to-believe stunt, or its a real example of internet governance
we've all discussed and by now dismissed as impossible: http://goo.gl/bnvFM
I am a fan of Friedman's commentary in general. I think I understand
why he called this out to us. In the spirit of positive divergence from
existing limited choices, I understand his not questioning this more
critically (which is his penchant). I look forward to him doing a
follow up after this gathers a little more momentum, asking harder
questions. While his announcement and positive statements may seem like
an endorsement, what I think I know of Friedman still leaves lots of
room for him to ask them hard questions down the road or better yet, as
*us* hard questions.
Specifically to the Americans Elect (America Select?) website and
organization.
1. It seems too slick, to populist, too dumbed down for my taste.
2. I followed their process and found several things less than stellar.
1. populist/dumbed-down. Always a balance... I might be able
to forgive this part if the underlying process and values
turn out wholesome.
2. the vector of important issues was a little odd too me...
there is always a bias imposed by choosing the questions.
I find Education and Health Care a significant part of
Social Issues so it was hard for me to rate them without
wondering what they really mean by "Social Issues"... gay
marriage? women/minority rights? I feel that Immigration
is is entangled with Social Issues AND Foreign policy, so is
Foreign policy mainly related to what dictators we prop up
or undermine, or who we sell weapons to, or take military
action against, or who we feed, or ?
3. I was curious to participate and reluctantly started the
signup as a "Delegate" but was stopped by the Terms of Use.
4. The Terms of Use might have been written by Microsoft's
laywers. There was little progressive in those terms of
use. Basically they solve the problem of potential
questions about things by reserving all rights. That and
not having a clue what they meant by Delegate.
3. I agree with the commentary to date here regarding two-party
systems. There are good game-theoretic reasons we have a
two-party system. Underlying election laws/processes need to
change before 3rd parties can be more than spoilers and/or locally
viable (Green) and/or waiting-in-the wings (e.g. Tea Party).
4. All this said, I'm willing to give them some benefit of the doubt
and treat them as "a good start". If this had been started or
promoted by EFF or similar, I would be more hopeful. We need a
much deeper consideration of what a new, progressive, democracy
really looks like. But this, as I said, might be "a good start".
Shaping the Debate
This is the part of their rhetoric that moved me the most. In the
2000 democratic primaries, I watched a group of (8?) candidates, many
with very good intentions (best I could tell) chip away at eachother
when they should have been building a platform. Kucenich and Sharpton
could have been the token tricksters asking the other's the hard
questions, yet it felt to me like everyone was asking undermining/hard
questions during a phase of the process when they should have been
reinforcing common ground and looking for nuanced differences, not
trying to kick the legs out from under eachother's stumps.
This group (and others that might be inspired by, replaced by or
find alliance with) might very well generate a better public debate
among candidates and voters alike. The *media* and the standing
politicians shape too much of the debate for my taste. In our attempts
to make the complex and subtle issues fit neatly into a sound-bite and a
simple vote, we do ourselves a disservice.
Dream Team
That said, I'm willing to play the "dream team" game a little.
Ignoring their rule about running mates needing to be from a different
party, I'd strongly consider endorsing Kucenich and encouraging him to
take on Obama as his running mate. Maybe Kucenich can declare
"Independent" or "Radical Centrist" or something to fit their rules.
While I'm disappointed in what Obama has been able to achieve and I
question a number of his methods and actions to date, I'm not ready to
give up on him. His presumed biggest fault going in was a lack of
experience with DC... well, now he has it, and Kucenich has been in the
fray even longer. Kucenich's questioning of Obama's decisions on many
things is healthy... he's been trying to keep him (like everyone else)
honest and straight. If Obama can put aside the sting that I'm sure
Kucenich's censures must have brought, they might make a powerful
*progressive* team despite their roots in the Democratic Party.
I started life as a Conservative and still have a soft spot in my heart
for some of the *motivations* of Conservatives. I appreciated the Tea
Party trying to stand up for what they believe even if there is little
of what they believe that I agree with. Right now their best feature is
the way they are helping to divide the Republican party. But I don't
want to see the other side lose an election, I want to win one. So who
do the Conservatives have to offer up in this internet-mediated
populist game? Before McCain aborted his assault on Bush in 04 I might
have been interested in him... but that plus his abysmal showing in 08
(mostly in his choice of running mate) completely invalidated him in too
many ways. I don't trust my intuition about Conservatives... I still
have a soft spot in my heart, but I'm not letting that make one in my head.
It is not mere political correctness that has me wanting to see a female
candidate. Sadly I'm afraid we are still in an era where we will
choose a "manly" woman this way. Sarah Palin gets half her credibility
(whatever that looks like) from her "bulldog with lipstick" and "I shoot
wolves from helicopters" maleness. Hillary *has to* (IMO) put on a
mannish/bullish style to be taken seriously (but then dismissed for
being such a bulldog)... that may have started in law school for all I
know. What I know is that we aren't asking for *feminine* leadership,
we are asking for "masculine" leadership in a female body (at best).
High Tech
So what are we to do, those technophiles among us who want to
imagine that sprinkling some high tech pixie dust (a Blog, a Website, is
that really all that high tech?) on the problem will fix it. First, I
say make sure we have the *big guns* in on it... starting with the likes
of EFF, but there are many more serious-minded socially
aware/responsible technogeeks out there. We here have our own
contingent, so I say let's not be swayed by the natural mistake that
technology solves all nor that the first ?serious? example of a new (but
overdue) paradigm shift should be the one we expect to take us to the moon.
What can *we* do? I'm not sure, but I think efforts like Tom
Johnson's and others here to try to develop better analytic
tools/understanding, using the ubiquitous access of the internet and the
leverage of computation is a good start. These questions here,
triggered by Friedman's article, brought to us by Owen and now being
bantered about, is a good start.
I take (minor) exception to Owen's original statement "a real
example of internet governance we've all discussed and by now dismissed
as impossible:" but forgive it as perhaps being *challenging rhetoric*
rather than truly claiming that "we have all dismissed it" literally.
Some things take time to Ripen... those of us (Owen included) who have
been part of the Interneterati for decades have seen the *potential* for
this practically from the start. I'm tempted to go back to the Usenet
archives from the eighties and dig up the discussions (even then) of how
the internet would save the world (politically) from itself.. And again
during the early public Internet years in the 90's. The internet (or
more aptly, global electronic communication... including cell
texting,etc) is now a part of the global backdrop, no longer merely a
playground for the elite. I don't believe it will fix our problems,
but it does change the nature of our problems or more importantly the
nature of the solutions we might find to them in some interesting ways.
This new crue, AmericansElect, are helping to stir that pot for us. At
the very least, I give them credit for that. I look forward to an
interesting discussion here (and elsewhere) in response to this new attempt.
- Steve
BTW for anyone who cares/follows my free-associative ramblings, we
retrieved only 2 of the 5 sheets of glass from California last week.
The failures did not become square marbles, but rather sharks teeth, now
filling a recycle dumpster in Mountain View. Nobody got hurt, and we
*did* install a 20ft x 8ft Plexiglass screen (from the same haul) in a
location at the Traditions Outlet Mall. If you have an idea for 2
10x10x5/8" glass panels (very fragile)... let me know... right now they
are a liability!
On Sun, Jul 24, 2011 at 9:35 AM, Jason Goodyear
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
I hope it's a joke.
???
I happen to believe that more than 2 parties is what this country
needs,
I can't agree more. I hate having to vote for what strikes me as a
poor choice, to prevent a much worse one from winning.
but to cite as proof of it's relevance the "successes"
I was distracted by the main body of Thomas Friedman's piece and did
not pay enough attention it's closing paragraph, and at first I was
puzzled by your next comments. I'm quoting that paragraph to
reestablish context.
Write it down: Americans Elect. What Amazon.com did to books, what
the blogosphere did to newspapers, what the iPod did to music,
what drugstore.com <http://drugstore.com/> did to pharmacies,
Americans Elect plans to do to the two-party duopoly that has
dominated American political life --- remove the barriers to real
competition, flatten the incumbents and let the people in. Watch out.
or driving local bookstores out of business,
To be fair, it was Barnes and Noble, and Borders that drove the local
bookstores out of business. And now Amazon, is driving the big box
bookstores out of business.
turning people away from local news sources,
It was Media Consolidation the killed (and is still killing) the local
news sources. The blogosphere is a newer phenomena, that is giving a
voice to alternatives to the media conglomerates.
and helping morph the music listening experience from a social one
to something that just exists between the headphones doesn't
exactly make a positive impression.
Once again I don't see the ipod and other music players in such stark
terms. For example, in New Mexico, we do have a vibrant music
performance scene. We have many local, national, and international
musicians performing at many local venues. Many more, and much more
diverse performances that we heard a decade ago.
And then there's this:
i"Any presidential nominee must conform to all the Constitutional
requirements, as well as be considered someone of similar stature
to our previous presidents. That means no Lady Gaga allowed."
This means what? Only rich white men, or perhaps anyone so long as
Elliot Ackerman approves them.
This quote did bother me, too. But I think we'll have to wait and see
how this plays out. I can understand the desire to only have
"serious" candidates, and I hope this is not really meant to limit the
field to "rich white men".
(don't stop here! more comments below.)
On Jul 24, 2011, at 9:08 AM, Owen Densmore wrote:
> I'm trying to figure out if Tom Friedman has been taken in by a
too-weird-to-believe stunt, or its a real example of internet
governance we've all discussed and by now dismissed as impossible:
http://goo.gl/bnvFM
>
> It appears to be a cross between a poll and a grass roots 3rd
party. I'm going to try it but I'd like other opinions on this:
whether its a goofy stunt, political pfishing, ineffective, or
maybe could be real. I'm upset enough about the off-the-charts
insanity of the current Debt crisis that just about anything looks
better than what I got.
I agree this is very interesting! And, I hope it turns out well and
provides us with a better, and viable candidate than the traditional
parties.
I am a bit skeptical about being to successfully narrow the choice to
a single candidate. I suspect the process may only go so far before a
schism forms in the community.
I'll be taking a much closer look.
--
Drew Einhorn
"You can see a lot by just looking."
-- Yogi Berra
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I'm trying to figure out if Tom Friedman has been taken in by a
too-weird-to-believe stunt, or its a real example of internet
governance we've all discussed and by now dismissed as impossible:
http://goo.gl/bnvFM
It appears to be a cross between a poll and a grass roots 3rd party.
I'm going to try it but I'd like other opinions on this: whether its
a goofy stunt, political pfishing, ineffective, or maybe could be
real. I'm upset enough about the off-the-charts insanity of the
current Debt crisis that just about anything looks better than what I got.
-- Owen
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============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
