Realpolitik
Nick Szabo
>...going to an
>acitivist group meeting, or whatever, is not against the law.
>...Have you run for any office to make sure your
>paranoid opinions are heard and responded to by our leaders?
George McGovern did try to run in '72. Nixon and his law
enforcers had an interesting interpretation of what was "against
the law", taking advantage of the vast differences between
perceived law (law as promoted and communicated by politicians),
written law (the libraries full of writings determining what they are
"supposed" to do as interpreted by judges and juries), and practiced law
(what they want to do and can get away with). Nixon had a vision of
the "reasonable" and "fair" use of law enforcement, and who the "bad
guys" were that "we" should be protected from. Nixon's
goons made use of snooping technology to ruin McGovern's campaign and
damage the early 70's New Left in general, including the use
of private psychiatric records to trash the reputation of McGovern's
first VP candidate, wiretapping (Nixon would have loved Clipper),
breakins, etc. Gary Hart and Robert Bork and Zoe Baird and thousands
of other decent citizens have tried to make a difference...
and got knocked out of the ring by petty invasions of their privacy.
Look at the Thomas nomination, all the slanderous accusations flying
back and forth. Real politics is a greedy, nasty business that makes
Milken & co. look like pacifist angels. Furthermore, real politics
doesn't happen in voting booths. It happens in the structure of
businesses and unelected bureaucracies, how they organize, how they
communicate, who controls what information, who controls what tech.
Who can or cannot snoop on whom, who controls the crypto keys, the
marketing dossiers, the medical records, etc. is much more important
than who votes for whom. Information control is Realpolitik, and
control of cybertech is vastly more important the mathematically
illiterate pap about how political action equals our vote that we were
taught in Civics 101 in our sad socialist excuses for high schools.
Deploying tech that alters the control of information is a vastly
more effective form of political activism than marching in the
streets or pulling levers in hidden booths, giving ourselves that
warm fuzzy delusion that we've made some sort of difference by
punching out holes in front of the names of strangers we only know
through their advertising hype, and who have already been bought off by
other strangers. Or by making one-bit decisions on big issues we
have practically no idea how to solve, compared to the people
(businessmen, unelected bureaucrats, etc.) out there solving them, or
creating them, for whatever their reasons. You want to make
a difference? You can make a big difference. Make major, real changes
in an area you do know how to solve, for example in your own
business, your line of work, and your own personal life.
Change who controls what information about you by changing the way
you live, and by influencing the way your freinds, neighbors, coworkers
and relatives live. This Realpolitik can be vastly more effective than
worshipping the notion that we can pull levers for strangers, whine
at them to force everybody to behave the way we want, and thereby
magically make the world a nice place for everybody.
--
Nick Szabo sz...@netcom.com