Beck: On The Spot Fail

From Billy Beck:

"We've got un-educated people voting. We've got people voting who're brainwashed... with ignorance!"

That was my old friend George G., just now, haranguing my ear on the phone. Bent all out of shape, he is. The electrical engineering firm he works for -- a sole proprietorship -- has announced drastic economic changes since The Disaster, and George is going to take an amazing whack in the Changed marketplace.

Listening to him without even a nap since Jo'burg is just shattering. Every word of his lands like a whip and they're all important, all while I know where they're all coming from and what they're all about and what's caused them, running back generations.

"George?" I'm trying to calm him and also claim some of my own grated nerves: "I've been pissed-off about this as long as you've known me. Remember?"

The damned firehose of the internet has been pouring in for hours now, and now this bloody torrent ringing down. Bless his heart; the guy's getting killed already, "...and He's not even in the office yet!"

I wish I had something righteously and stoutly ratifying to say for my old friend but it's just not one of those moments. You see, it's a lot, lot bigger than that. This calls for deep philosophical breaths when we can think to take them. The time horizons of events will now compress: the progress of Amsoc* will be more easily observable than at any time since FDR. I expect this to be very different in breadth and depth (naturally, because of premises laid generations ago) but also in dynamics. For instance, we are approaching real-time democracy more and faster than ever before.

The internet is the most obvious vehicle, of course, and it is very early on in its bearing on America electoral politics. Expect regimes like Obama's to naturally begin to exploit the flow of propaganda. Real-time polling of discrete legislation -- direct digital democracy -- is probably not more than twenty years away. In the meantime, however, Obamid regimes will develop ways of integrating street-level opinion with administration and legislation through every available technical and social avenue. If left as presently constituted, the Web will always offer fairly good cultural barometrics, and all of that is political data now.

It's all on its way like never before.

I'd give almost anything if me mate George didn't have to go through this.

If those of us who would, could ransom our ways out of having to go though this folly mounting so that even some blind will see, I wonder how many would sign that deal on the spot. I think I would have to think about it.

It is what it is, man.

This afternoon, I quoted something attributed to the great Bob Hoover: "Keep flying the airplane as far into the crash as you possibly can."

~~~~~

* American Socialism

Tu ne cede malis, sed contra audentior ito.

Do not give in to evil, but proceed ever more boldly against it.