The Audacity of Audacity
Michael Yon has an interesting piece referring to a story he wrote in one of his earlier books.
Go read it - it's hilarious. I'll see you back in a couple minutes.
Welcome back. Maybe that's the breakthrough in this past election. It's not about shady funding and massive spending after all. The thing that Changed Everything this year was that we discovered the concept of Election by Meme.
It doesn't matter who you are, or what your past is, or what you will be. All that matters is that you have some concept that's sufficiently vague - say, "Change" - and the audacity to turn that concept into a magic mirror, showing everyone what they want to see.
The internet was hailed as an achievement of and monument to Reason. Instead it's become a better propagator of memes and hysteria. For example, it doesn't matter if Rickrolling is dumb and pointless - it's still funny, and therefore it must go on. It was well-documented that no one could really describe or explain "Change," but it didn't matter. It doesn't matter if "Change" as a policy is stupid and pointless. They saw in it what they wanted to see, even if they couldn't put it into words. Reason cannot penetrate either.
Of course, all of this proves why democracy becomes a crude and cruel system, and why the Founding Fathers did all they could to dampen its influences. Otherwise, we all find ourselves voting for Bill Gurley. I mean, he's a good guy, and I guess we like him, but who's in charge when he gets elected?
Go read it - it's hilarious. I'll see you back in a couple minutes.
Welcome back. Maybe that's the breakthrough in this past election. It's not about shady funding and massive spending after all. The thing that Changed Everything this year was that we discovered the concept of Election by Meme.
It doesn't matter who you are, or what your past is, or what you will be. All that matters is that you have some concept that's sufficiently vague - say, "Change" - and the audacity to turn that concept into a magic mirror, showing everyone what they want to see.
The internet was hailed as an achievement of and monument to Reason. Instead it's become a better propagator of memes and hysteria. For example, it doesn't matter if Rickrolling is dumb and pointless - it's still funny, and therefore it must go on. It was well-documented that no one could really describe or explain "Change," but it didn't matter. It doesn't matter if "Change" as a policy is stupid and pointless. They saw in it what they wanted to see, even if they couldn't put it into words. Reason cannot penetrate either.
Of course, all of this proves why democracy becomes a crude and cruel system, and why the Founding Fathers did all they could to dampen its influences. Otherwise, we all find ourselves voting for Bill Gurley. I mean, he's a good guy, and I guess we like him, but who's in charge when he gets elected?
posted by Jon Kl @ 11/16/2008 12:35:00 AM
1 Comments:
At 12:53 PM ,
Anonymous said...
I hate blaming the media for things because people ultimately make the choice of the puppeteers, however, there definitely is something to be said about this election if you get your news from CNN or Fox News.
I rarely watch CNN. Last night, I was flipping through and they were talking about Prop. 8 in CA. They had a woman on discussing her view as a kudos to CA for restoring the sanctity of marriage as man and woman. The CNN host actually replied, "Not all men and women marriages result in procreating, so should be not allow non-procreating couples to marry?" Then, I flipped to Fox where they were talking about it and instead of battling the same-sex issue of the law, they brought up that it was 4 judges and the govenor (Arnold) who allowed homosexuals to marry in the first place after a vote had initially been taken. That to me was such a smarter response than bringing up that not all marriages results in children.
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