Rulers Should Unite?

The Unraveling of Government ... Frustrated over the inability of political leaders to find common ground on even the most pressing national issues, Americans have developed a long list of people or political practices to blame for the fact that government doesn't seem to work anymore. But the real problem is something that's not high on most such lists, something that's far more crucial. We're electing the wrong people, they complain ... Every observer has his or her own pet reason for the failure of the federal government to function. If any attempt is made to assess the problem as a whole, each side complains about "false equivalence" and doubles down on blaming the opposition. It's not that the villains they've identified don't share in the blame, because they've all played a part in the unraveling of government. The problem, however, is much deeper than any of these individual elements: it's the political system itself that is at fault. The problems with governance will never be solved until we turn that system upside down and start over. – New York Times

Dominant Social Theme: Democracy is not working well. We need better democracy!

Free-Market Analysis: Another article on the death of democracy. We just mentioned this might be an emergent elite meme in a recent article entitled "Death of Democracy Propagated on Purpose."

The article we commented on then in the UK Telegraph was entitled, "Another chapter in the slow death of politics."

We wondered aloud in the article why such negativity regarding the ruling paradigm was presented in a mainstream publication.

And we asked, "Are the larger powers behind the British Empire contemplating a new kind of government? Is this article idiosyncratic or is it part of a larger meme?"

Well ... now we see in this New York Times article the tentative re-emergence of the "one government" meme that circulates irregularly but that may perhaps assume a higher promotional profile.

Here's some more from the article:

While the United States is actually a Republic, with the attendant constitutional constraints on the powers of the majority, its political system is also based on a fundamental underlying democratic principle: that the people themselves will choose their leaders and thus indirectly determine the policies of their government.

Because the federal government's most important powers – to declare war, to establish tax policies, to create programs, to decide how much to spend on them, to approve treaties, to make the final decisions about who will head federal agencies or sit on the Supreme Court — are all Congressional powers, it is only by being able to select members of the Senate and the House of Representatives that the people are able to manage the levers of government.

Yet despite the repeated and urgent warnings of the Republic's founders, we have created a system that seriously undermines that democratic principle and gives us instead a government that is unable to deal with even the most urgent problems because the people have been shoved aside in the pursuit of partisan advantage.

In some ways our system has come to resemble those multi-party parliamentary systems in which the tail (relatively small groups of hard-liners) is able to wag the dog. What Washington, Adams, Jefferson and Madison all agreed on was the danger of creating political parties like the ones we have today, permanent factions that are engaged in a constant battle for advantage even if that means skewing election results, keeping candidates off the ballot, denying voters the right to true representation and "fixing" the outcome of legislative deliberations.

Our current system, with parties controlling who gets on the ballot, what districts they run in, and what happens to large amounts of potential campaigns funds, rewards incivility and discourages cooperation.

If we allow that system to continue, it is we who must share the blame for a government that can no longer function.

The article is written by Mickey Edwards, "who served in the House from 1977 to 1993 as the representative of Oklahoma's 5th Congressional District." Apparently, the editorial is part of a larger promotion for a book entitled The Parties Versus the People: How to Turn Republicans and Democrats into Americans.

In reviewing the archive we find yet another rehearsal of this same argument, entitled "Feel the Loathing on the Campaign Trail" by New York Times political correspondent Mark Leibovich. Leibovich also wants powerful people at the top of the US political system to just "get along." He writes ...

Sometime early last May, I began to have this goofy notion, which turned into a daydream and eventually became a recurring fantasy. It went like this: One morning, I would wake up to the news that the previous evening, with no advance warning to the media, Mitt and Ann Romney stopped by the White House at the invitation of Barack and Michelle Obama. No one was certain what happened while they were there or what they talked about or how it came together, though eventually some details would trickle out. The couples told funny stories from the campaign trail and shared pictures of their families. Mitt drank lemonade, and Michelle led a moonlit tour of her garden. Everyone ate hot dogs loaded with toppings, which inspired a cable christening of the "Sauerkraut Summit." − New York Times

You can see our article about that here: "Can't the Parties Just Get Along?"

New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg and other prominent politicos have voiced support for this approach to politics. Bloomberg, in fact, has floated the idea of trying to focus the political system generally on "technocracy."

What such folks want to do is substitute a narrative of competence for a narrative of solutions. If one accepts that politics usually causes the problems it then seeks to cure, the idea of a technocracy actually revolves around who is most competent to cause the most problems.

Beyond this, the technocratic idea is a fundamentally subversive one in the sense that it makes certain assumptions about the system. The biggest assumption is that the system as it is constructed is a viable one and just needs proper tending to make it work.

This, of course, ignores – in the US – the entire Jeffersonian, "small government" approach to politics and nation building. Bloomberg and others like him intend to provide a paradigm that excludes consideration of a different way. Going forward, the idea should not be what KIND of system, only how to make the existing one "better."

Being (increasingly) believers in directed history, we have no doubt that this is a meme that UK elite promotional powerhouse Tavistock will be honing over the next few years. As "democracy" falls to pieces, the meme of "transparency" and "better government" will be held up as antidotes to the current chaotic corruption.

This fits into the larger dominant social theme of technocracy that has been under construction for nearly a century now and is embodied by M. King Hubbert and other scientists who believed that white collar specialty professionals should be in control of decision making in their respective fields.

We have no doubt as the power elite attempts to push the world toward greater UN domination that the idea of one-world technocratic governance shall emerge with greater force. Technocrats are already in charge in Greece and Italy.

Conclusion: If we are correct in our analysis, this meme shall be ever more ubiquitous. It is a "comer."