Government For the Rest of Us
The peculiarity of government in Hawaii is that it has become government of government workers, by government workers and for government workers -- represented by their friends and relatives, as a public service to the rest of us -- which they are tireless at self-promoting.
Unfortunately, the people of the press see nothing wrong with it because they are overwhelmed with the same kind of corrupting nepotism -- that seems to run rampant through all the “venerable” institutions, in which the main qualification for job openings and advancement, is to have the same last name of people already employed there, “who know how to play the game.” It is known locally as well as around the world, as the “Pay to Play,” system of government, that usually exists only in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, where ALL the members of the ruling government are also relatives of Saddam or the Sheik.
At the Hawaii state legislature, such a form of totalitarian government would receive a high approval rating, as a model of admiration and emulation, worthy of sending kudos and Aloha, for such unquestionable dominance and control, as well as unquestioning loyalty and obedience.
Government and its leaders are a reflection of who the people are and how they regard themselves.
Early on in my campaign, a very cynical longtime legislative aide who aspires to be a political pundit instead, expressed a desire to see me elected just so they could see me corrupted by the system -- as they felt confident everybody in their circles were, which is a sad statement of the regard for themselves and those they are surrounded by. (That to them, was being politically sophisticated.)
They probably belong to, and are going to the wrong parties -- in which everybody of repute, seems to spend the entire evening avoiding every other person of repute. It’s really interesting to see a lot of these principals -- that one will not encounter anywhere in life, under normal conditions.
Most of the people one will encounter out in public are fairly normal-looking; being out in public makes them look that way -- as they interact with others giving and receiving cues that make them responsive to others.
Occasionally one sees people one has never seen before -- as kind of an anomaly that is fairly shocking. One is the person whose face seems to be being pulled in a thousand different directions simultaneously -- and one wonders, what are the thoughts and experiences tugging on that person’s soul and visage to so grotesquely distort them in that way.
So I do think one should read the body language -- as well as hear the words, which these days, are just triggers for preconditioned knee-jerk responses. For unfortunately too many, the leading symbol of this country has been taught by many who should know better (or perhaps they do), to evoke great self-loathing as a citizen. Such self-hatred becomes a fertile ground for self-contempt that leads to undermining one’s better judgment.
posted by Mike Hu @ 7:06 AM
13 comments
13 Comments:
In my many talks with people on the campaign trail, I just try to get them to avoid the instinctive, preconditioned (prejudicial), expected response -- and cause them to think from a dead stop, what is possible without the momentum of tradition and habit.
Many have obviously not been encountered in that manner before -- and realized that was an option, a choice, a different possiblity of life, because they were taught throughout life, that their only goal and objecitve in life was to conform to what The Boss told them was right for them.
That tradition of society is dying with the old -- but is not a matter of age as it is attitudes and perceptions that keep one alive and vital. That is the surprise -- in never knowing when one will encounter that attitude, waiting for that message and exposure -- never having seen it before in their own lives and especially the mainstream media.
Then about 1 or 2 out of 50, will be these types who are greatly offended that everybody else in life isn't conforming to their expectations of what everybody else should be doing to please them -- as though that should be the meaning and purpose of everybody else in the world.
They are usually shocked that I DON'T want their vote, their approval, or anything further to do with them. I figure that's my opponent's constituency.
What the rest of the world is saying:
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles.php?article_id=6004
The Big Loser in the Election: Old Media
November 3rd, 2006
I almost fear for RA Baehr’s sanity as he sifts through all that polling data. I do not place that much stock in them.
Three decades of political activism has taught me to pay attention to four things in the final weeks of a campaign.
1) Who has had the best ads – those selling themselves, not just trashing the opponent.
2) Who got well designed mailings into the voters’ hands. The fancy analysts often forget that the USPS is still the only 100% reliable way to reach every voter, especially in this age of 200 channels on cable TV, Netflix, interactive video games and Internet downloads.
3) Who seems to be working the best GOTV effort.
4) Intangibles, such as are non political types talking about a candidate or are they more interested in the local sports team? Is there an issue that has truly resonated with local voters? Am I seeing what the media is spinning on the issue or am I seeing something else all together?
The fact is that the media has been so blatantly one-sided and frivolous in tone this year that we know next to nothing about the issues that have impacted with the voters in most races. Jay Cost at Real Clear Politics was on target yesterday when he noted that most of the mainstream political analysis on the House races
“has looked an awful lot like a circular track of footnotes. People who study for a living know what I am talking about. One author makes a claim about some such thing, and, in a footnote, cites another author. Because you are interested in the claim, you go look up that author, who then cites a third author. The third cites a fourth, and the fourth cites…a prior edition of the first!”
The polls have been little better. It isn’t just that a critical number of people have opted entirely out of land line service and telephone etiquette has changed dramatically since caller id and voice mail became widely available. I think the entire polling industry is suffering from a gaping self inflicted wound. The news media has increasingly commissioned polls as a basis for their political stories. There have been far too many of polls with results more clearly reflective of the agenda of the body that commissioned the poll than any true reading of public opinion.
Then there is the way people like Zogby became media talking heads. By making themselves just one more part of the liberal media spin machine, the pollsters’ once presumed objectivity is in tatters. We have a great deal of hard evidence that many political conservatives have canceled their subscriptions to much of the dead tree media and have stopped listening to the network news because of its persistent liberal bias.
I don’t think it is wrong to assume that these same people, believing that pollsters are merely another part of the biased mainstream media, not independent agents, now hang up rather than participate. Opting out of participation is the simplest answer to why pollsters have reported a large drop in callers identifying themselves as Republican given that historic evidence shows that party identification is usually slow to change.
What shall we believe on this final weekend? We hear that Bush and the war in Iraq are wildly unpopular, yet pro-war Lieberman is way ahead. It is a bad year for Republicans, but Steele is surging in blue state Maryland. Polls keep saying the Republicans are wrong on almost all the issues, yet Webb, Casey and a host of House candidates are running as old fashioned social conservative Democrats and San Francisco liberal Nancy Pelosi, who has been featured in many a Republican ad and flyer of late, has so lowered her profile I almost expect her picture to pop up on a milk carton.
There seems to have been an increasing media tendency to hype every election as a huge watershed. Part of this has to do with TV ad revenue as well as beating the drum for the Democrats. Unprecedented amounts are being spent on media in many House and Senate races this off-presidential year. Unfortunately a great deal of that media is for blatantly misleading mud that tends to alienate voters in the long run. I also suspect that prior off-year elections have not generated anywhere near this year’s coverage by the national print media and the network news.
What is perplexing is that none of this media heat has generated light. Usually I have a pretty good feel for what has been going on with the voting public right before an election. This year I feel more and more in the dark as to what the American public is really thinking as I try to search between Macaca, Mark Foley’s IMs , and Michael J. Fox’s endorsement of an amendment he hadn’t even read for some smidgeon of media coverage that even remotely jibes with my own observations about the mood of the voters.
In addition, many voters have been left to their own devices to try to figure out where many candidates truly stand on the issues or which ads are true, which false and which are true but entirely misleading. Just as important in this global age, based on the issues being played out in our media, the rest of the world has been led to think we are all simply nuts. Blind as I feel today, I still have faith that most voters have good innate skills at spotting phony claims and determining the real issues at stake.
After reading about the dramatic drop in newspaper circulation for the six months ending September 30, I suspect when the final story is written on election 2006, no matter which candidates prevail at the ballot box next Tuesday, the biggest loser will turn out to be our increasingly trivialized media.
Rosslyn Smith is an occasional contributor to American Thinker.
The mainstream media has to take a lot of credit for the bad government we get.
The more problems society has is their own job security reporting about it.
The alternative would be reporting useful information -- but nobody on their staffs know what that is.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/blog/index.asp
The lead story in the New York Times today exposes the biggest lie of the war, which is on the tip of every critic of the war's tongue -- that Saddam Hussein's WMD programs were not a threat. The Times story describes a website the US government put up containing captured Iraqi documents. Among them was a detailed plan for building an atomic bomb. When this was discovered, the government took it down because it might help the Iranians to build their bomb.
These documents were captured in the 1991 Gulf War. In other words, the only reason that Saddam did not succeed in building nukes is because under the truce agreements (UN resolutions 687 and 689 -- and fifteen others Saddam tried to circumvent) UN inspectors were able to thwart his designs. Saddam threw the inspectors out in 1998 (causing the Lewinsky handicapped President to fire 450 cruise missiles into Iraq). The only reason the UN inspectors were allowed back in in 2002 was because Bush had put 100,000 troops on Iraq's borders and threatened to take Saddam down. The only legitimate criticism of the war is the claim that we could have contained Saddam without it, which would have meant permanently stationing 100,000 troops in the Arab Middle East. The claims that Bush lied to get us into the war and there was no Iraqi threat are themselves the biggest lies of this sordid episode in American politics where a major political party has jeopardized American security and American troops in the field to advance its political ambitions and worse.
That seems to be the only thing the Democrats in Hawaii are basing their campaigns upon -- that President Bush acted senselessly and recklessly.
I think his decision and action changed the course of the world -- which is why Hawaii finally pulled out of its decade long recession/depression/malaise.
I've seen the propaganda that Cayetano and even Waihee had begun the recovery but anybody with a true sense of history, knows that it was the strong and firm response to 9/11/01 that changed the course of the world and reassured that there would be safety in air travel.
So for the Randy Iwases and the Mazie Hironos of the world to claim otherwise -- is really asking the rest of us to believe that they are credible leaders.
It's really important to be able to tell the truth of ANYTHING.
Because if one can't, one gets flim-flammed by all the con-artists of the world, demanding that you BELIEVE them just because they say so.
For all the proof they demand of the President, the amusing thing is that nobody, including their supporters, can actually document a single substantive achievement of Randall Iwase or Mazie Hirono despite lengthy political careers, which is why they run against the war in Iraq.
Even if you're a Democrat in Hawaii,that's not reason enough.
Candidates in Focus:
Looks like this may be the last of the chances to see my five-minute presentation.
A large part of my reason for running was to re-create the political dialogue and manner of these presentations -- which like many other forums, causes the apathy and indifference not only in politics, but I think towards all larger social and cultural issues, because they are so contentious and divisive.
I think politics is part of the social and cultural life rather than being the whole of it. That partisan point of view necessarily fragments life -- and what is needed is the big picture whole of life to attain any kind of comprehension, meaning and purpose.
All the eergy is going into the debating the opinions -- whie none of it goes into inquiring into the facts, especially of how it is we know what we think we know. Most of the time, it is because we hear it repeated often as though it were the "conventional (well-accepted) wisdom" -- instead of it is more likely to be these days, unfounded and unsubstantiated rumor and innuendo that the vested "professiona" interests want to propagate (propaganda).
Those who are skilled at seeing through the propaganda, are those like myself who have been in many different cultures and circmstances -- rather than knowing only one as the gospel truth.
In fact, much of my life has been about singlehandedly challenging the conventional wisdom -- against formidable opposition, and so being able to stand alone is a quality that most of the people dependent on other people's opinions, can never understand.
But I think that is what real leadership is all about -- not just for the purpose of being obstinate and difficult, but that is the nature of being the leader. To me a conformist, a "Mama's Boy," is very easy -- but one of these days, one has to stand alone to be worth anything.
CIF General: 4 Kaimuki to Waikiki to Moiliilo to Manoa to Makiki FOCUS
11/5/2006 8:00:00 PM New and incumbent candidates are provided an opportunity to tape a five minute message. Election
There might have been a time when "LIBERALISM" was a bold, new idea before its time -- but it was the emerging idea of the 19th century that led to the revolutions all around the world -- advancing "Liberty, fraternity, equality."
But quickly, like in France, the desire for dominance over all the others quickly reasserted themselves -- leading to the guillotine for all those found not to have the proper "political correctness."
In the 20th century, liberalism with the help of new mass media techniques, give rise to totalitarianism -- of the Socialist Democrats. All these clear distinctions are blurred in time.
The distinguishing characterisitcs of such movements is that they insist on crushing conformity to obedience even while they fancy themselves as coming upon these ideas on their own -- as though they were the leaders rather than the followers.
That is the great problem of the present crop of "liberalsim" that thinking people are aware and concerned about. That kind of self-righteousness is always the most dangerous power in the world -- that people presume to know what they really don't, and are encouraged not to be able to distinguish any differences by themselves -- but are increasingly dependent on a class of people to do their thinking FOR them.
That form in the past was called oligogarchy (the rule by a commercial few), but the danger these days is technocracy, or the rule by the experts (who claim to know what is best for the people beyond their own judgment) -- like the teachers, the lawyers, the city planners, the journalists, the "control freaks" of all ambitions.
It's very insidious but no less real. However, there is another strain of people who are truly egalitarian -- which may be the quality most significant to determine; they are the opposite of the elitists who have this tremendous desire to be better off than everybody else.
They are not necessarily the rich or the well-off but their personailities make it seem so. That's what I'd look for in great people and leaders -- that egalitarianism as opposed to the authoritarianism (autocracy) of even wannabe liberal leaders.
They seem to have this sense of entitlement to privileged status by which they alone feel confident to pronounce who is "Stupid" and who is not.
George Orwell, a journalist himself, noted this "political correctness" (conformity) in his time as "groupthink."
The works of Orwell used to be popular in the '60s before it was recognized to be an indictment of liberalism rather than fundamentalist conservatism.
Few people were aware of this purging of these timeless classics -- Babbitt, The Fountainhead, and in their stead, came the rise of the technocrats.
I happened to be pretty close to the inner circle when those who wanted to claim exercise and conditioning as their exclusive "professional jurisdiction," and witnessed these power grabs up-close and personal.
It was the beginning of the end -- of these self-proclaimed specialists -- who were dividing life into all their specialties so that they could be the experts.
What brought this trend to a crushing halt was the development of the technologies that enabled and empowered people to be whole, and wholly competent again. That wa of course, the personal computer, making specialized information a rather cehap and common commodity.
This is the world we now live in -- but the status quo doesn't want us to know about, because it levels the playing field -- and that's not what they want. That is the liberal elitists worst nightmare.
These liberal elitists are invariably mediocre people who work themselves into positions of permancence and then want to shut out all the competing talent.
Those are the familiar monopolies now created and perpetuated by government -- for which the original purpose of government, was actually to counter and break up.
It really helps to have this real knowledge of history rather than the just tuning into the fabrications of the day now practiced by the mainstream media.
It looks like Randy Iwase is going to commandeer the Honolulu Advertiser blogs for his final 72 hour push. It's one thing to add comments under one's own name but it's quite manipulative and deceptive to create all these multiple aliases attacking one's opponents and praising oneself.
Bu that is the nature of "liberal" blogs.
That's the difference between the "old" media and the "new" media mentality.
The former still sanctions anonymous sources and unattributed quotes -- which is unsubstantiated and unproven rumor and conjecture, while there is full accountability in the new.
I stand by what I say -- to the whole world as a peer review. What's surprising is that comments are on the level in which the blog is written.
If the objective is chatter or outrage (offense), one gets that level of response.
Otherwise, people will read and reflect thoughtfully -- without comment but not without thought. That is the tribute to thoughtful writing.
That is what the old media unfortunately does not understand and seems largely incapable of learning -- because of their training -- to produce mindless, knee-jerk responses.
Here is a listing of the 100 most influential bloggers in the world:
http://freedomkeys.com/blogs.htm
This is the new world of writing and thought the old media doesn't want you to know about -- preferring to provide pathetic examples of the genre as representive of what is killing them. Obviously, they are not the the paradigm shift that is eating their lunch.
The new world is already here; it's just a matter of whether one is aware of it or not. The old information sources are not going to let you know about them -- obviously.
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