I'm going to take you to task for a couple of things. One is
bear-baiting. I'm referring to phoning aspiring politicians and junior
public servants and making life difficult for them! This may be good
medicine for the politicians, but a little hard on the public servants.
They already have a hard time of it, and you make it even tougher for
them. It's awfully difficult to cover your ass when somebody's climbing
your back!
But the other thing is historic error. If I read you right, you
suggest that contending sides, such as young protestors on the one hand, and the
establishment on the other, will somehow achieve a balance, a new reality
transcending the old that everyone can live with until they find the next
thing to fight about. I wouldn't totally disagree with this, but I would
ask balance in whose favour? Your appear to assume, if I read you right,
that what is achieved will be satisfactory to both contending parties.
This has sometimes happened in history, where both parties were of equal
strength ("stalemate"), but it has very much been the exception. More
often than not, in the new situation, it's the winning side that crows about
balance and accommodation, leaving the losing side with little to say - if it is
still able to speak at all.
I'm really quite serious in proposing that many people currently feel that
they are in the process of losing something vital and beyond recovery. The
problem would seem to be that they're not really clear on what it is, or how to
go about defending it.
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Friday, September 29, 2000 1:32
PM
Subject: Re: Price or policy?
Come on guys, you're missing the fun of politics. It is
as much fun, to call the local campaign headquarters, threaten them (to get
their attention) and then point out their lies, half-truths and demagogery, as
typing on the internet. You should get off the net for a few
minutes and use the phone. Don't go for the top, go for the little guy,
or girl and try to stir them up. Make them doubt their prejudices and
work to change the candidates from the ground up.
As for bureaucrats, times change. The constant up and down of
government and private sectors is creative and information that made sense in
one context becomes out of date in another, although the underlying systems
tend to be reborn in new linguistic contexts.
I've found that many on this list don't speak the language of the Fine Arts
when applied to economics or politics. Both Ed and Keith
have had, at times, difficulty understanding my musical bureaucrateeze,
when I spoke in my profession's tongue, but that doesn't mean that our
thought is not complimentary.
Keith believes new music is dead while I believe that it is simply an issue
of complexity just like the learning curve in the information age.
I know some very complicated world class composers who feel about e-mail the
same way Keith does about modern music. But I support Keith's and
their efforts and pleasure in the art and literary tools that they
enjoy. On the other hand I believe that being able to do it with ease
and expressivity makes initial negative reactions disappear just as in a
new language. I believe the same is true with the rebirth of
a governmental cycle. The Secret Service used to complain about
every new President and probably still does. Their cycles were out
of sync and that made for a patronizing attitude, towards the most powerful
elected man in the world, from some pretty prejudiced senior workers who
should have known better. Presidential enemies used
such personal complaints in the Monica caper but they should have heard
what the Secret Service individuals had to say about their new
Presidents.
So I guess you could say that I don't think that the local government
worker is dying off or decaying, but changing and eventually
rediscovering old truths, just as the elder or ex government workers did
on their early shift.
What the rest of the world needs, IMHO is something like the AARP because
the youth in their boundless energy and extravagant belief in their rightness,
would cut off everybody else as non-productive and irrelevant. We need
to protect them in their ignorance, because they are the future, and to
protect our benefits because we know more than they do and deserve a future
for what we have and will contribute from our experience.
America has always been a country built on avoidance of responsibility and
often downright genocide with new immigrants diffusing the immorality with
their struggle with English and desire to walk the Yellow Brick
Road. Hence "English Only" movements (on the right) and protect
the immigrant flow at all costs on the left.
Both Right and Left balance each other and retain a lack of culture and a
destruction of community values through physical change and the
necessity of constant economic growth. The status quo is
maintained and everyone escapes jail for their crimes, except for
minorities. To blame this on privitization is wrong IMHO as
much as to blame socialism for communism's poor destribution
systems. America "exists" based on both sides being healthy and
holding each other at bay. When that collapses America will either
give up its addiction to victimhood and mature or disappear.
REH
Edward R Weick wrote:
A few comments on Keith Hudson's comments:
> I refer to Ed Weick's contribution of 19:58 27/09/00 -0400:
>
> In a way, yes. I would not dispense with politicians because they
are
> necessary. By "they" I mean the civil service. Far more
intelligent and
> far better politicians than the those we vote for,
they are the real
> power-holders in the modern nation-state. They
are well-nigh invisible and
> unaccountable, yet they are the people
who actually carry out the
policies.
Keith is onto something here, though I'm not quite sure of what it
is. As a
one time bureaucrat, I would agree that there is
tremendous power lodged in
the bureaucracy, power to promote, power to
distort and power to thwart. At
one time, as a young civil
servant, I used to think of the bureaucracy as
something rather evil -
as something which took good ideas from both the top
and the bottom and
so muffled and twisted them that what finally came out
was anything but
what was intended. I'm much older now, though perhaps not
much
wiser, and now see the bureaucracy as something that takes wild ideas
from both the top and the bottom and filters them into something
balanced
and sensible. Aging does wonderful things!
> The state (civil service) cannot be relied upon to lay out all the
> information to the public. Nor do I see the public, en masse, as
somehow
> able to produce the answers, particularly on complex
issues. What we need
> are specialist forums that are open to the
public, so that all those
> individuals who wish to take part in
policy discussion and formulation can
> do so. Mind you, they would
have to prove their commitment by attending
> meetings and by being
able to argue their case.
I have at times gone back to the Canadian federal department I worked
with
just before I retired (well over a decade ago now) as a consultant.
Initially the experience was positive, but then it became less and less
so.
The department has been "downsized" and many of the things it once
did have
been moved out or are simply no longer done. Many of the
people who really
knew the issues and who could provide sensible policy
advice that the
politicians and public could then consider are long gone
and have not been
replaced. Friends who worked with other
departments tell me the same thing
has happened there. What this
suggests is a bureaucracy of declining
competence and a growing
inability to deal with significant public issues.
I do hope that this is
not the case, but I fear it is.
> I think we see two signs of this happening in the advanced countries
--
one
> of them a very strong sign. This is the growth of
single-issue pressure
> groups and societies. The other (in the UK,
anyway) is the relatively
> recent introduction of House of Commons
Select Committees. These are
> specialist committees and meet and
cross-examine experts in their own
> field. There are also the
American Congress Committees, but I don;t know
> much about them. The
problem with the UK Select Committees is that MPs who
> are
specialists do not have the right to join the Select Committee of
their
> choice. They are selected by the Whips, and the Whips are in
the service
> of the Prime Minister. So they are not always as
objective as they might
be.
>
> I see these two signs, one
from the bottom and one from the top as being
> glimpses of the sort
of direct democaracy of the future. However, even if
I
> am
right, they will take generations to develop to the extent that they
> need to.
I'm a little more cynical than you are, Keith. I see a weakening of
public
power, and a growing concentration of power in private hands, and
not only
in private hands, but in the hands of very large agglomerations
which are
able to operate entirely out of self-interest beyond the rules
and
boundaries of nation states. What I fear is that democracy
will become a
sham in the sense that people will continue to go to the
polls, will
continue to mark their ballots, but that very little will
happen because of
it. Less and less will happen and fewer and
fewer people will go to the
polls. As you point out below, this is
already happening in the US.
With less and less public power, and less and less meaning in democracy
as
now institutionalized, people will feel they have little recourse but
to
take to the streets, as they have already done in Seattle, Washington
and
most recently Prague. I don't agree with their tactics, but I
recognize
they are doing it out of a sense of something ominous on the
horizon.
> But, really, the present political system has had its day. Fewer and
fewer
> people are turning out to vote. This particularly applies to
younger
> people. The latest survey in America shows that only
61% of people aged
> between 18 and 24 have not bothered to register
to vote, and 83% didn't
> vote in the last Presidential election.
This trend is seriously wrrying
> politicians in all countries.
Campaigns are being linked to basketball
> tournaments in America. In
the UK, compulsory Political Education will be
> on the syllabus in
schools in 2003. (Of course, that will make politicas
> even more
unpopular!)
I rather hope that your last sentence (in parenthesis) does not turn out
to
be true, but it probably will. Much will depend on what is
taught and how
it is taught, and here I'm pessimistic. But that's
for a posting another
time.
Ed
Ed Weick
(613) 728-4630
Visit my website: http://members.eisa.com/~ec086636
