Reflections on the previous post
Feb. 23rd, 2006 09:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pecuniumThere were tangents I wanted to follow when I was writing the last one. Things which were relevant, but to a larger issue, and so would probably have detracted from the issue I started with (and to be honest I think I got distracted, or at least less clear, in the later illustrations).
Eric Muller (Is that legal) pointed to an intriguing chapter in a book yesterday. Like him I am going to excerpt a couple of paragraphs, because they seem painfully relevant.
"What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could not understand it, it could not be released because of national security. And their sense of identification with Hitler, their trust in him, made it easier to widen this gap and reassured those who would otherwise have worried about it.
"This separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes. And all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter....
To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice it—please try to believe me—unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us had ever had occasion to develop. Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, ‘regretted,’ that, unless one were detached from the whole process from the beginning, unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these ‘little measures’ that no ‘patriotic person' could resent must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. One day it is over his head.
I can see that happening on here, The speaker goes on.
"You will understand me when I say that my Middle High German was my life. It was all I cared about. I was a scholar, a specialist. Then, suddenly, I was plunged into all the new activity, as the university was drawn into the new situation; meetings, conferences, interviews, ceremonies, and, above all, papers to be filled out, reports, bibliographies, lists, questionnaires. And on top of that were the demands in the community, the things in which one had to, was ‘expected to’ participate that had not been there or had not been important before. It was all rigmarole, of course, but it consumed all one’s energies, coming on top of the work one really wanted to do. You can see how easy it was, then, not to think about fundamental things. One had no time."
One had no time. Life presses in, and the demands of the day are added to all the other worries of the times.
Me, I happen to think the "War on Terror" is overblown. Even the worst day of attacks was just that, one day. World War 2 saw more more deaths, in a given day, more than once. We also had the combined effort of milllions of people being focused on us (and our allies, who bore the brunt of it, harder, and longer, than we did). We aren't facing that now. A small (but growing, and whose fault is that?) group of people hate us. Big whoop.
They aren't a nation. They can only engage in the asymetric. Probably the best thing we can do is treat them as criminals. Ignore them and make them into jokes. But I digress.
We, as a people, need to remember what we are. We need to hold our government accountable. It has to be kept close to our bosom. There is an earlier part of that chapter, and it probably means more than the rest, which is sort of a warning. The earlier part is a guide.
You know, it doesn’t make people close to their government to be told that this is a people’s government, a true democracy, or to be enrolled in civilian defense, or even to vote. All this has little, really nothing, to do with knowing one is governing.
If we are to govern ourselves (rather than appoint an elite to do it for us) we have to do it. We have to be active. Become the squeaking wheel.
Silence is death. If no one else knows how you feel, they will make assumptions. If they speak out, and you fail to disagree, they will assume you share their sentiments. So speak out, and publically. Write to your local paper. Write to those papers and magazines which transcend locale (the NYT, the WaPo, Time, Newsweek, US News and World Reports). Write to the television stations.
If you don't know where the local outlets are to be found, try Congress.org which will let you put in your zipcode and tell you the papers which serve your area. If you want to cast a wider net tryOnline NewspapersNewspapers Online which is searchable.
The blogoshpere is nice, but it's insular. There are, so far as I can tell, about 300 people who take the time to read my little corner of the net. It's gratifying. I read a few hundred. A lot of them are saying the same sorts of things I say. That's swell, but we're saying them to each other. The polite way to describe that is preaching to the choir.
I can assume a few of them repeat what I've said in conversation, but I doubt they are taking my points and using them in public debates, no most are probably used to illustrate a point when venting to someone else of like mind.
Write a letter. You can write one letter and send it to a few publications, overlap is probably not so great as you think (some of the readers of the Argus Leader are probably read the NY Times, on a regular basus; the reverse probably isn't true). The smaller papers are better bets. One, they are more likely to print your letter, two the people who read it are going to feel more connected, and so be more persuaded (if not to agree, at least to ponder and argue). An idiot from New York can be ignored. An idiot in your town has to be dealt with.
If we want a responsive gov't, we have to take the reins in hand.
Eric Muller (Is that legal) pointed to an intriguing chapter in a book yesterday. Like him I am going to excerpt a couple of paragraphs, because they seem painfully relevant.
"What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could not understand it, it could not be released because of national security. And their sense of identification with Hitler, their trust in him, made it easier to widen this gap and reassured those who would otherwise have worried about it.
"This separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes. And all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter....
To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice it—please try to believe me—unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us had ever had occasion to develop. Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, ‘regretted,’ that, unless one were detached from the whole process from the beginning, unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these ‘little measures’ that no ‘patriotic person' could resent must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. One day it is over his head.
I can see that happening on here, The speaker goes on.
"You will understand me when I say that my Middle High German was my life. It was all I cared about. I was a scholar, a specialist. Then, suddenly, I was plunged into all the new activity, as the university was drawn into the new situation; meetings, conferences, interviews, ceremonies, and, above all, papers to be filled out, reports, bibliographies, lists, questionnaires. And on top of that were the demands in the community, the things in which one had to, was ‘expected to’ participate that had not been there or had not been important before. It was all rigmarole, of course, but it consumed all one’s energies, coming on top of the work one really wanted to do. You can see how easy it was, then, not to think about fundamental things. One had no time."
One had no time. Life presses in, and the demands of the day are added to all the other worries of the times.
Me, I happen to think the "War on Terror" is overblown. Even the worst day of attacks was just that, one day. World War 2 saw more more deaths, in a given day, more than once. We also had the combined effort of milllions of people being focused on us (and our allies, who bore the brunt of it, harder, and longer, than we did). We aren't facing that now. A small (but growing, and whose fault is that?) group of people hate us. Big whoop.
They aren't a nation. They can only engage in the asymetric. Probably the best thing we can do is treat them as criminals. Ignore them and make them into jokes. But I digress.
We, as a people, need to remember what we are. We need to hold our government accountable. It has to be kept close to our bosom. There is an earlier part of that chapter, and it probably means more than the rest, which is sort of a warning. The earlier part is a guide.
You know, it doesn’t make people close to their government to be told that this is a people’s government, a true democracy, or to be enrolled in civilian defense, or even to vote. All this has little, really nothing, to do with knowing one is governing.
If we are to govern ourselves (rather than appoint an elite to do it for us) we have to do it. We have to be active. Become the squeaking wheel.
Silence is death. If no one else knows how you feel, they will make assumptions. If they speak out, and you fail to disagree, they will assume you share their sentiments. So speak out, and publically. Write to your local paper. Write to those papers and magazines which transcend locale (the NYT, the WaPo, Time, Newsweek, US News and World Reports). Write to the television stations.
If you don't know where the local outlets are to be found, try Congress.org which will let you put in your zipcode and tell you the papers which serve your area. If you want to cast a wider net tryOnline NewspapersNewspapers Online which is searchable.
The blogoshpere is nice, but it's insular. There are, so far as I can tell, about 300 people who take the time to read my little corner of the net. It's gratifying. I read a few hundred. A lot of them are saying the same sorts of things I say. That's swell, but we're saying them to each other. The polite way to describe that is preaching to the choir.
I can assume a few of them repeat what I've said in conversation, but I doubt they are taking my points and using them in public debates, no most are probably used to illustrate a point when venting to someone else of like mind.
Write a letter. You can write one letter and send it to a few publications, overlap is probably not so great as you think (some of the readers of the Argus Leader are probably read the NY Times, on a regular basus; the reverse probably isn't true). The smaller papers are better bets. One, they are more likely to print your letter, two the people who read it are going to feel more connected, and so be more persuaded (if not to agree, at least to ponder and argue). An idiot from New York can be ignored. An idiot in your town has to be dealt with.
If we want a responsive gov't, we have to take the reins in hand.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-02-23 10:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-23 10:46 pm (UTC)I would be a hypocrite to be annoyed at someone for sharing my thoughts on being more visible in public discourse.
I write here for public consumption (what I don't want to be such, I am more than capable of locking away from the world), so feel free to quote me. I only ask for links back, so context can be maintained (I can also hope more people decide to read me regularly).
TK
no subject
Date: 2006-02-24 01:44 am (UTC)You're right. Thank you for the advice, and the links.