Re: Lunacy from Brussels


zwsdotcom@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
> bill.sloman@xxxxxxxx wrote:
>
> > Bad as it is, the Republican administration in the U.S. is worse -
> > before you get too rude about Brussells, you have the review the
> > existing alternatives, which are remarkably unattractive.
>
> ALL the existing options are unattractive, because lobbying technology
> is now too sophisticated - technology for disseminating propaganda is
> orders of magnitude better than it once was, but average intelligence
> is at best increasing linearly.
>
> Anyone with money and a crazed idea can create a movement around it,
> and through television and other media convince the average Joe Sixpack
> on his couch that the most pressing issue facing the world today is
> gun-grabbing, or saving the rare albino ocelot, or legalizing marriage
> between homosexual cheesemakers. Governments merely have to determine
> statistically how many people belong to each movement, decide how many
> votes they need, and hence calculate which idiotic ideas they must
> support in order to be voted in.
>
> A Democratic administration would be no different. Worse, in fact.
> There would be even more bull*** doomed social programs stealing from
> my pocket.

Since the "bull*** doomed social programs" actually make you richer in
the long term - none of us make money from a sick and ill-educated
underclass that spends most of its adult life in a prison paid for with
your taxes - you are presenting an instructive example of how effective
lobbying technology can be.

Read Will Hutton's "The World We're In" (ISBN: 0349114714). My copy
dates from 2002 but it is still available from stock at
www.amazon.co.uk. You can now buy via www.amazon.com, but only from
associated sellers - Amazon presumably can't be seen to endorse a book
that suggests that the U.S. is in any way less than perfect (though
Hutton's criticisms amount to littel more than "could do better") which
is itself says something about "effective lobbying technology" aka
brain-washing.

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Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

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