Well, we already knew that, but still...
YAHOO TOP 10 OVERALL SEARCHES FOR 2008
• 1. Britney Spears
• 2. WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment)
• 3. Barack Obama
• 4. Miley Cyrus
• 5. "RuneScape"
• 6. Jessica Alba
• 7. "Naruto"
• 8. Lindsay Lohan
• 9. Angelina Jolie
• 10. American Idol
He is treated like a god by many on the web. A independent-minded Republican representative from Texas, Ron Paul is thought to be a potential wonder candidate of the 2008 presidential election. I have crowned Paul 'the web candidate' due to the fact that most of his support comes from the internet, and most of his supporters spend much of their lives in cyperspace.
Ron Paul is better than Bush (but that's not a very high standard, now is it?). However, he is an inexperienced paleo-conservative libertarian who wants to abolish everything from the IRS to FEMA — that's just not practical! He and his supporters seem to be living in their own dream world impervious to the reality that that kind of libertarianism doesn't work, especially in today's modern world. You cannot just shut yourself off from everything because of some bad experiences.
If you thought the response to Hurricane Katrina was bad, how would getting rid of FEMA help? Sure thanks to incompetence and a slew of negative traits associated with the Bush administration FEMA did a terrible job in the Gulf Coast, but getting rid of the organization all together is not the answer. Imagine: under Ron Paul's ridiculous vision for America there would be no federal response to something like Katrina, many more would suffer and the conditions there would be far more abysmal as they were following Katrina in 2005.
SO for all those praising Paul as the answer to America's political woes — he's not.
What's so special about Ron Paul? Well, according to this Salon article...
[Paul's] the only Republican candidate who wants to end U.S. involvement in Iraq and withdraw the U.S. Navy from the waters off the Iranian coast. He wants America to pull out of the United Nations, NATO, the International Criminal Court, and most international trade agreements. He wants to abolish FEMA, end the federal war on drugs, get rid of the Department of Homeland Security, send the U.S. military to guard the Mexican border, stop federal prosecutions of obscenity, eliminate the IRS, end most foreign aid, overturn the Patriot Act, phase out Social Security, revoke public services for illegal immigrants, repeal No Child Left Behind, and reestablish gold and silver as legal tender.
Several days ago I watched Barack Obama inspire a crowd in Fairfield, a town in Iowa, a so-called bell weather state, on C-SPAN. Iowa serves not only as the site of one of the first party primaries, but also is seen as a measure or standard of support. The role it will play in the 2008 presidential election remains to be seen. It is amazing, though, that a state with such a small population, carrying little significance (sorry Iowa) can attract some of the biggest names in US politics.
Truth be told this special day-before the 4th of July (Independence Day) event was the first time I watched or heard a full Obama speech. What was more covered was Obama's complementing Bill Clinton — which made headlines, tons of them. The junior senator from Illinois is known for his fantastic speeches, after all his claim to fame was his moving address at the 2004 Democratic Convention. That one speech shot him up the ladder of political stardom.
Obama's policies and charisma seemed great... until he started talking about our "globalized economy" — not that I disagree with that point itself — and his Democratic protectionist trade populism (yuck!) set in. (The Dems have their protectionism from trade, the Republicans have theirs in the area of immigration.) Nonetheless that succeeded a few policy winners like the idea of putting solar panels "on every roof"; the globalization talk was followed by Iraq and national security. He is already talking like he is the Democratic choice for president. Obama is a great orator, plain and simple. Here are some more quotes from his 3 July Fairfield speech:
"There is no military solution in Iraq."
"The world still needs America, just like America still needs the world" (sounding somewhat like Madeline Albright, Bill Clinton, Ann-Marie Slaughter, etc.)
He says he can see from the perspective, "viewpoint" of a foreigner.
"This campaign has to become the vehicle for your hopes."
Then Obama — after talking more on foreign policy, which I'll touch upon in a later post (Foreign Affairs is publishing an array of essays from all the candidates on their pledged foreign policy), with power and energy in every syllable — spews into talk of a people-powered candidacy (see last quote). "We want something new", he is really plugging at the progressive-minded members of the audience, as well as those just fed up with the status quo, i.e. Bush. He, however, talks little of drastic reform, keeping with his earlier precedent of a belief in moderate reform [scroll down to February]. He doesn't want to alienate voters more cautious of great change.
After that he talks about civil rights and the Selma march for black voting rights at the height of the civil rights era in the 1960s, further tying in how his African immigrant plus native American (note: not Native American/American Indian) heritage makes him a symbol of America: with it's goods like openness and rights, and it's bads like xenophobia and repressiveness.
More on Obama:
technorati tags: Barack+Obama, Obama, politics, democrats, republicans, 2008+election, presidential+election, america, united+states, news, iowa, populism, trade, foreign+policy
Finally one Israeli-Palestinian story that does not result in blaming both sides?
BBC News:
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has told Arab leaders he plans to seize a new opportunity to promote peace.
He said Israel would free 250 prisoners from the Fatah group led by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
The meeting in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh brings together Mr Olmert, Mr Abbas, Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak and King Abdullah of Jordan.
...
On Sunday the Israeli cabinet decided to release the frozen tax funds to the Palestinian emergency government based in the West Bank.
Not until last year did the Islamists feel ready to challenge Fatah in parliamentary elections. It meant, after all, tacitly accepting the Oslo accords, which had created the PA. But Fatah was by then in such a mess that it could not even unify its lists of candidates. Using its network of cells as a grassroots campaign organisation, Hamas won nearly twice as many seats as Fatah (though a small majority of votes).
Fatah, however, never fully relinquished control. On the eve of the new parliament's swearing-in, Mr Abbas brought some of the PA's dozen-odd security forces under his own command by decree. Other forces, notionally under the new Hamas government's orders, stayed largely loyal to their Fatah commanders.
Its power curtailed, Hamas created its own force in Gaza. America, which before Hamas's election had been helping reform the PA forces as a whole, switched to beefing up Mr Abbas's presidential guard. Hamas-Fatah clashes, exacerbated by feuds between Gaza's powerful clans, grew more frequent. Attacks by militants on Gaza's border crossings prompted frequent closures of these trade lifelines by Israel, tightening the economic chokehold imposed by the West's embargo of the PA. When the militants raided Israel and kidnapped a soldier, Israel launched an offensive that killed some 400 Gazans.
After some arm-twisting from Saudi Arabia, Fatah and Hamas at last formed a unity government at a meeting in Mecca in February. But they could not agree on who would control the security forces.
...
And when election day dawns at last, Hamas will still be there. Many Palestinians feel that for all its faults, it was robbed of the chance to govern properly. Fatah, to become electable again, needs to end its infighting and corruption.
The first post in my Ideas about Democracy series, "A voter intelligence test", dealt with the uneducated voter and how best to fix what can best be described as the stupidity of the masses. Mind you I am a bit cynical about the voting public's ability to make good decisions, but after seeing what has happened historically — and even recently: see the reelection of George W. Bush in 2004 — I think I have a right to be that way.
A fairly new book, "The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies", written by economics professor Bryan Caplan, analyses the ignorance of the electorate and puts forward some interesting solutions from an economic perspective. I learned about this book from a recent issue of The Economist, and it's now at the top of my Amazon.com Wish List. The Economist article brought up some interesting points of its own.
The world is a complex place. Most people are inevitably ignorant about most things, which is why shows like “Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader?” are funny. Politics is no exception. Only 15% of Americans know who Harry Reid (the Senate majority leader) is, for example. True, more than 90% can identify Arnold Schwarzenegger. But that has a lot to do with the governor of California's previous job pretending to be a killer robot.
Many political scientists think this does not matter because of a phenomenon called the “miracle of aggregation” or, more poetically, the “wisdom of crowds”. If ignorant voters vote randomly, the candidate who wins a majority of well-informed voters will win. The principle yields good results in other fields. On “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?”, another quiz show, the answer most popular with the studio audience is correct 91% of the time. Financial markets, too, show how a huge number of guesses, aggregated, can value a stock or bond more accurately than any individual expert could. But Mr Caplan says that politics is different because ignorant voters do not vote randomly.
Instead, he identifies four biases that prompt voters systematically to demand policies that make them worse off. First, people do not understand how the pursuit of private profits often yields public benefits: they have an anti-market bias. Second, they underestimate the benefits of interactions with foreigners: they have an anti-foreign bias. Third, they equate prosperity with employment rather than production: Mr Caplan calls this the “make-work bias”. Finally, they tend to think economic conditions are worse than they are, a bias towards pessimism.
Mr Caplan gives a sense of how strong these biases are by comparing the general public's views on economic questions with those of economists and with those of highly educated non-economists. For example, asked why petrol prices have risen, the public mostly blames the greed of oil firms. Economists nearly all blame the law of supply and demand. ... But since everyone's vote counts equally, politicians merrily denounce ExxonMobil and pass laws against “price-gouging”.
...
The public's anti-foreign bias is equally pronounced. Most Americans think the economy is seriously damaged by companies sending jobs overseas. Few economists do. ... Hence the reluctance of Democratic presidential candidates to defend free trade, even when they know it will make most voters better off, and the reluctance of their Republican counterparts to defend George Bush's liberal line on immigration.
The make-work bias is best illustrated by a story, perhaps apocryphal, of an economist who visits China under Mao Zedong. He sees hundreds of workers building a dam with shovels. He asks: “Why don't they use a mechanical digger?” “That would put people out of work,” replies the foreman. “Oh,” says the economist, “I thought you were making a dam. If it's jobs you want, take away their shovels and give them spoons.” ... Economists, recalling that before the industrial revolution 95% of Americans were farmers, worry far less about downsizing than ordinary people do. Politicians, however, follow the lead of ordinary people. Hence, to take a more frivolous example, Oregon's ban on self-service petrol stations.
Finally, the public's pessimism is evident in its belief that most new jobs tend to be low-paying, that our children will be worse off than we are and that society is going to hell in a variety of ways. Economists, despite their dismal reputation, tend to be cheerier. Politicians have to strike a balance. They often find it useful to inflame public fears, but they have to sound confident that things will get better if they are elected.
I'm amazed that the public is as rational and smart as it is. Few people demand that our leaders resort, say, to the tools of superstition, even though many people believe in astrology. Our political irrationality is highly selective and self-serving in a "feel good about ourselves" way, rather than indiscriminate. I don't understand what, in Bryan's theory, prevents voters from satiating in irrationality, with truly dire social consequences.
...
Voters are less irrational in many northern European countries. ... What accounts for such a difference?
This book develops an alternative story of how democracy fails. The central idea is that voters are worse than ignorant; they are, in a word, irrational—and vote accordingly. Economists and cognitive psychologists usually presume that everyone “processes information” to the best of his ability.6 Yet common sense tells us that emotion and ideology—not just the facts or their “processing”—powerfully sway human judgment. Protectionist thinking is hard to uproot because it feels good. When people vote under the influence of false beliefs that feel good, democracy persistently delivers bad policies. As an old computer programming slogan goes, GIGO—Garbage in, garbage out.
...
This book has three conjoined themes. The first: Doubts about the rationality of voters are empirically justified. The second: Voter irrationality is precisely what economic theory implies once we adopt introspectively plausible assumptions about human motivation. The third: Voter irrationality is the key to a realistic picture of democracy.
...
In democracies the main alternative to majority rule is not dictatorship, but markets.
...while the general public underestimates how well markets work, even economists underestimate markets’ virtues relative to the democratic alternative.
This post is part of my new blog post series, Ideas about Democracy.
Since I am likely to raise more questions than I answer in this post, let me just throw some out before hand...
Would education for voters be found against democracy — the right to vote — or for it? Would it help or hurt? It would allow voters to make educated decisions, thus helping themselves, their government, and the system. On the other hand the education could run the possibility of being politically-charged by whomever is in power; plus might it impede with the central 'one man, one vote' pillar of democratic voting? We don't let children (people under 18, or various other ages) vote, isn't that blocking democracy as much as voter education would? There are plenty of under-18s more educated on the issues and who is running in an election or what's on the ballot than those who can vote. How do we measure who can and cannot vote? Could the voter intelligence test, if created, become the next poll tax? Could it be a tool easily manipulated by politicians against their enemies, or to help themselves? How could the change in the voting system come about? I'm sure new and future voters would be OK with it, but couldn't current voters feel oppressed in one way or another? Could the campaign for voter education turn into one of those blind-patriotism kind of programs? Could the campaign result in a nasty political battle taking the attention away from real, pressing political issues?
Although I support the democratic system of government as the finest and most efficient form of government in this modern age, I do have a problem with the stupidity of the masses. One of the fundamental flaws of a democratic society is the voters.
How best can we solve the problem of voter (in)education? Much of the solution is simple: education in history, civics, politics, etc., which is why American schools, for example, should teach politics — comparative, theoretical, United States, and overall historical — in secondary school especially. Here are an outline of some of the steps I've thought of so far:
From the early origins of rock and roll, to the age of rebellion, to modern fads...
Popular culture and entertainment have always served something people could copy — whether that thing is a lifestyle, a drink, or a hair style. The Beatles were idolized and modeled by Western youth in the 1960s. Fonzie in the American TV show Happy Days provided a role model for many of that generation. He was cool; people wanted to be like him. Jennifer Aniston's character's hairstyle in Friends was copied enough for it to earn its own place in American fashion: "The Rachel". American pop culture has served as a promoter of turning points in American culture.
Pop culture — the widespread appeal of modern or radical cultural elements in a society — seemed to flourish in the 1960s in the form of art, just as being a rebel (i.e. counterculture) seemed like the cool thing to do. It's important to note that like many phrases, pop culture has various definitions believed by various people. A pop culture reader, Common Culture, defines pop culture as
the shared knowledge and practices of a specific group at a specific time...pop culture both reflects and influences people's way of life...pop culture is transitory, subject to change, and often an initiator of change.
Alternative pop/rock is essentially a catch-all term for post-punk bands from the mid-'80s to the mid-'90s. There is a multitude of musical styles within alternative rock, from the sweet melodies of jangle-pop to the disturbing metallic grind of industrial, yet are all tied together by a similar aesthetic -- they all existed and operated outside [sic] of the mainstream.
Throughout this month, I will be posting excerpts of my lengthy paper "The War on Terror and the Fire Paradox", as mentioned in this post. Here is one such excerpt...
This is a mock obituary lamenting the loss of sense in America. However, as blogged about here, there seems to be more of a loss of sense in those who take part in politics; the general population in America is fairly politically apathetic, and are actually gaining rationality in some instances. However political intelligence is not up too much.
I must have a fancy for fake or fictional obituaries — a while back I mourned the loss of habeas corpus with a song.
Obituary
In memoriam: American rationality
Born ?, died 11 September 2001 in Washington DC, United States. Rationality, RIP.
In between the Cold War — when so-called communists were threatened and persecuted under a blanket of pseudo-security and patriotism by the government — and the 'war on terror', America enjoyed a relatively good dose of rationality. Whenever wartime came around, the government's ears perked up; the powers and freedoms of the people dumbed down.
Whenever those in the corridors of American power declared some type of war against a largely undefined enemy for the sake of some undeclared goal, rationality was on the scene, defending sense and sensibility — and freedom. Rationality stood for that freedom, and she was violently attacked by politicians who's only duty was to themselves and their false premises for their actions.
Why was she persecuted so? Rationality allowed people to think clearly, even about hyped-up matters. Special interests, inflamed causes, strong powers limiting freedom, lies, and especially fear were her worst enemies. She hated the 'us against them', 'with us or against us' mentality that often surrounded her, but fought until the end for the principles that defined her. Her friends — some of which died, in part, when she did — remember her hopes for governmental transparency, her clear, fluid, logic, and the spirit of common sense she carried with her wherever she went.
Rationality was the ultimate patriot; she stood up for her country, even if that meant standing up against her countrymen. The George W. Bush administration is suspected of her murder. International Islamic extremist terrorists are wanted in connection of conspiracy of her murder. No matter how hard they try, however, she will live on.
Terrorism, and often the fallout of terrorism, is the enemy of rationality. Fear presents as an adversary of rationality. At the time of her death, she was uttering the lyrics of "Won't Get Fooled Again" by The Who, and fighting, intellectually of course, the hordes of ignorant pawns praying for her demise. Rationality was and is like a phoenix. She may die out, but some day she will come back. Let's hope that day comes soon.
The sociopolitical fabric of a nation, as charted through a Pew study...
The following is a summary of the findings of a Pew Research Center report on American public opinion and political trends, with my own insight of course. I skimmed the full 112-page report (the last 30 or so pages are just raw numbers), which you can find in PDF form.
American public is changing for the better. However, the changing demographic and much of the population, is politically apathetic. The still-widespread apathy explains why more polarized thinkers take action; there are more conservatives than there are liberals when one gets to either side. The middle is the section that is shifting towards a less traditional, more secular, more rational mindset. The middle is also unsure of itself and is losing confidence over what power they can exercise over their own government. The solution is simple: actually do something. Instead of complaining about your unrepresentative government, elect a different one or push your current one. At the moment, the special interests or polarized politicos dominate Washington. It doesn’t need to stay that way.
This latest Pew study is very informative and lays down some notions that most Americans — including the younger generations — are becoming more conservative, more intuitional, more religious, in a nutshell everything people like Rush Limbaugh, Sam Brownback, Dick Cheney, and James Dobson want them to be.
Americans still have a long way to go. They need to regain confidence in the power of the people instead of just lamenting their poor government, which, inevitably, always happens in a developed democracy.
Overall, this report projects good news and bad news about the course America and its people are taking and their views on such a course — for me at least. I've heard some say this poll is good news for Democrats; some say its good news for moderate Republicans.
The study also points out that Republicans are largely more conservative than Democrats are liberal; and that there are more conservatives interested in politics than liberals. Still, roughly half (Democrats and Republicans averaged) of those polled think `immigrants threaten American customs`, only emphasizing a need for proper education, especially in politics and history. People must have forgotten that their grandparents or their parents or their parents were immigrants. For example, a large number of Americans are of Irish or German heritage, and have ancestors who immigrated to the US only relatively recently (late 1800s, early 1900s). More on the immigration issue here, and more coming soon.
The government should help people in need and take responsibility of the needy, a good majority say. A lesser majority hold the above view, even to the point where debt is incurred from the government programs to help the needy (e.g. welfare, public health). In addition, many think a public health system is in order.
In foreign policy topics, Americans now finally view "getting even", i.e. employing 'an eye for an eye' strategy just isn’t a good idea. This complements the downward trend in the number of Americans who think peace is best achieved through military force — another slightly counter-intuitive notion.
There is also a decent dip in the overall percentage of people who think the US should remain active in world affairs, though the number is still in the 80s. The number who completely agree that America should keep active internationally has dropped from 50 percent in 2003 to 42 percent now. Bad news does come with that statistic: more and more Americans are developing isolationist sentiments.
The falloff in strong support for an active U.S. role
in global affairs is consistent with other Pew surveys over the past two years showing a decline in support for internationalism among the public. In “America’s Place in the World,” conducted in the fall of 2005, 42% said they believed the U.S. should “mind its own business” internationally – the highest percentage expressing that sentiment since the mid-1990s, after the Cold War, and the mid-1970s, following the Vietnam War.
That survey found that the growth in isolationist sentiment was largely concentrated
among Democrats. However, the values survey shows that both Democrats and Republicans are less likely to completely agree that the U.S. should take an active role on the world stage than they did four years ago. Similarly, the percentage of conservatives – regardless of party – who strongly favor an active U.S. stance in world affairs has fallen from 53% to 39% since 2003; this is comparable to the decline in strong support among self-described liberals (11 points).
The survey also finds steady – if slow – declining support for traditional or conservative social values, in such areas as homosexuality and the role of women in society. This movement has been apparent on most of the six different measures of attitudes on social values, but is more evident when looking at the questions collectively (these values measures do not include opinions about abortion).
In 1987, about half of the survey’s respondents (49%) gave conservative answers to at least four of the six questions. In 2007, just 30% did so.
