Legan Vangardians

Let me pose a thought that would be considered very reactionary, even among self-proclaimed reactionaries. (It would only be discussed behind closed doors.) This is the idea that "smart people know better". To wit:

Assume that the running of a modern government requires either information or political knowledge that it would be difficult for the masses to obtain or understand. Since leaving the government in the hands of the ignorant would be a disaster, this must never come to pass. Therefore, for the benefit of the people decision-making power should come to rest in the hands of a political elite.

This theory is illustrated in scenes from two different media: in the film The Remains of the Day and in the television series Boardwalk Empire. The scenes are so similar that I can only conclude that Empire flat-out stole its scene from Remains, a movie that few people are likely to have seen. (I only remember the scene because the rest of the movie was so dull.)

Reactionary and non-reactionary are arguing about political points. The non-reactionary implies that people have to be given what they want, or that the views of the average citizen need to be considered.

The reactionary calls a servant into the room : in the case of Remains the servant is an English butler in the 1930s and in Empire the servant is a black maid in the 1920s. The servant is queried about a series of abstract political debates relevant to the era? (Was the Hawley-Smoot tariff a good idea? What should be American trade policy? Should we go off the gold standard?) In both cases, the servant is unfamiliar with the political issues, having had no time to watch The McLaughlin Group on television between ten hours of peeling potatoes. The servant not only has no answers to the questions, but he/she doesn't even know what the questions mean.

The conclusion of the reactionary: "See? And that's the kind of person you want to give the vote to."

Would the world be better off if scientific decisions were placed in the hands of the (unelected) Grand Council of Scientists? Or economic decisions placed in the hands of the (unelected) Grand Council of Economists? Or even the (unelected) Grand Council of Computer Information Specialists? My only answer is a famous quote previously applied to economics, namely that democracy is the worst political system of Earth - with the exception of all of the other political systems ever devised.

This problem has me thinking about things due to the self-awareness reached in the fact that like most people, I don't know much about science, or economics, or computers, or health care, or religion or anything except that which I've been able to cobble together from a set of (probably very biased) sources on the internet. I couldn't make an argument about whether or not Obama's proposed health care plan is good or bad because not only do I not understand how it works, the sheer effort of understanding it could put you to sleep - and I like to consider myself intelligent enough to understand such things given enough time and effort. The problem is that I'm too busy peeling potatoes to understand it. And yet, millions of people think that they know how this thing works and how it's going to affect their lives:



Combine that with the fact that most of the very loud people out there appear to be the most ignorant, and combined with the pact that we are swamped with political commercials in the United States as the Congressional mid-term elections are coming up, I'm more angry about the electoral process and democracy than ever before. (Don't worry, I'm not going to become a fascist.) Last night, someone who I have friended on Twitter asked "how much would you pay your cable company for an option that removed all political commercials?" My wife and I pondered the question.

Our conclusion: we'd pay $100 for the privilege of not watching political commercials. Political commercials are no more than intellectual junk mail, most of the level of the spam e-mail you get for secret medicines that make your dick grow four inches longer - and in both cases, only fools fall for them.

We might both be contributing to the death of American democracy, but for any radical capitalist out there we've presented a money-making opportunity. Let the Invisible Hand rule!