Think of this as Volume 11, Number 42 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.
There are two sides to politics, science and art.
The science of politics uses data to show trends or identify change as it is happening. Data can either be a snapshot in time or a rear-view mirror.
The art of politics is based on ideas, and what rules exist are focused on how those ideas play off one another. It's inexact but more human. It's focused on the present but its study is the future.
This week Earl Black, the Herbert Autrey Professor of Political Science at Rice (and brother of Emory's Merle Black) came to Atlanta and plugged their new book, "Divided America," to the alums. It was a great chance to listen to a fine political scientist, and to see the old undergrads again.
The Blacks' book is based on hard data and clear trend lines. The most important trend is a transformation of the political parties into firm ideological coalitions, with the drift of white Christians to the Republicans balanced neatly against the move of "non-Christian whites" and minorities to the Democrats. Thus our political system is finely balanced, and increasingly resistant to consensus, he said.
One great piece of news Dr. Black handed me personally is that my
old poli sci teacher, Gilbert Cuthbertson (left), known on campus as "Doc C,"
is still hale, hearty, and working on campus.
Doc C's work is based on three simple words readers of this blog know well -- myth, power and value. (See the t-shirt he's wearing.)
Myths are the stories we tell each other about politics, values are the lessons we draw from those stories, and power is the result. Since MV=P, you can use this equation to find M and V, but it's not really math, but a work of art.
Most of my work on "political philosophy" here has dealt with applying Doc C's work to the concept of political cycles, generation-long ideological trends that flow through our political history. A crisis creates a myth which creates values. The result if a political thesis, a set of assumptions which are then validated, challenged, and validated again as the generation for whom the myth is important ages.
The point I've been making again-and-again is that the current Thesis, the Nixon Thesis of Conflict, is in the process of giving way to something entirely new and different. Those to whom that Thesis were vital are aging. The medium in which they learned this Thesis is becoming irrelevant. The tumult of our time is putting the lie to the political ideas resulting from the Thesis, which have been taken to extremes even as their irrelevance has become apparent.
What I have identified, through my work with the Netroots, is what that something new is. I call it the Internet Thesis of Consensus. While the Nixon Thesis lived best on TV, as the previous Roosevelt Thesis of Unity lived best on film, the Internet Thesis is based on the myths and values of the Internet. Specifically the idea that the Internet exists because of consensus.
Your browser and the server where this story sits share a consensus, written in software, over what the codes in this HTML file mean. This consensus is also written into the software used to write this post, and to point you to other locations on the Internet. The complexity of all this is hidden. We work out from this basic consensus to accept other files as objects. If your browser accepts a plug-in we have consensus and you can see a movie embedded here as an object.
We accept all this at face value, but great miracles have been required to bring it about, just as we accept TV at face value and ignore the technology behind it. More important is that we internalize the medium's lessons, in this case the need for consensus, for openness, for moving outward from where we agree rather than inward from where we disagree. Just as we earlier internalized TV's lesson, that stories are driven by conflict and character.
The politics of Barack Obama embody this understanding. He does not
dehumanize those who disagree with him. In fact, he goes out of his way
to find agreement with them. He tells us we need to do the same in
order to meet the crises of our time -- war, economic collapse, climate
change. We have to find ways to agree, rather than seeking
disagreement. That, in summary, is the Internet Thesis, distilled to
its essence.
The work of Doc B is great for explaining how a Thesis is filtered down through the people it's aimed at, over the course of time. So long as a Thesis is intact, his work is great. Doc C's work helps explain how the ideas which govern us come to power, and how people use ideas to create power. The generational thesis, which is a study unto itself, is also not original to me.
All I have done, over the last five years, is try to weave these ideas into a mosaic that will help show you where we're going, why our course is changing, and what the new direction means. Perhaps that makes me your Doc D. I prefer to just call myself a journalist, a self-educated tradesman whose work is made possible by the medium you are now using.
Journalists are witnesses. We are not professors. Our conclusions are tentative and ephemeral at best, almost always backed by insufficient evidence. But sometimes we are worth listening to, and the work we do is rewarding in itself.
Thanks for listening. Now go vote. Change America.
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