Democracy and the Media--Marshaling the Mob

Via Tumblr

Several months ago, I commented on Steve Sailer's blog (regarding Patton Oswalt's reference to him), "Louis CK? There's no hope for that guy. He's friendzoned the dark side."

For a time, I thought he was the best comic working but he's assumed the role of Righteous Speaker of Truth, and revealed himself to be just another idiot savant able to make the audience laugh despite having a head full of received wisdom. The above is applause-bait, a "clever" turn of phrase that relies on a shallow knowledge of history and a loose understanding of democracy.

But the sentiment itself is indicative of more. Earlier this week, 28 Sherman asked the question, "Who Pushed Women's Suffrage 100 Years Ago?"

Son of Brock Landers puts this cartoon circa 1912, four years before the issue made the Democratic platform. The answer to the question, "Who pushed it?," is, of course, the media.

Which brings me to Bruce Charlton's theory of the mass media being the very center of the left. And to my thoughts about the left being the inextricable degenerative force within democracy. 

The enfranchised is a smaller set within the total population. The mass media's audience is the total population. The trend, unless directly opposed (similar to Derbyshire's Second Law of Conquest/John Sullivan's First Law), is for the set of enfranchised individuals to approach the number of the total population.

So, who doesn't have the right to vote? Felons? "Felons Deserve the Right to Vote" Illegals? "Immigration Bill Gives Illegal Immigrants Full Voting Rights!" Children? "Why It's Time To Give Children The Right To Vote"

We could ponder why democracy pushes toward greater and greater enfranchisement. We could ask why the mass media is eternally shuffling the populace into newer and angrier mobs. John C. Wright has diagnosed the paradoxes in his Unified Theory of Madness.

But maybe it's better to view democracy and mass media as metaphysical objects. Why does democratic enfranchisement expand? Why do wolves howl at the moon? That's what it does, whether you want it to or not. 

The Tumblr comments are very much as one would expect, more righteous than even Righteous Louie himself. The Voting Rights Act didn't pass until 1965. Native Americans couldn't vote until 1924.

We could engage such thinkers with arguments, pointing out that the original democratic proponents were open about their contempt for mob rule. We could argue that there isn't a compelling reason for those that don't contribute to the state to have a voice in it, especially if their only contact with it is cashing the government's checks and being restrained by the police.

(The progression, by the way, goes from, "Why should those powdered aristocrats tell me, an educated and affluent man, what taxes to pay when I can't even argue?" to, "Why should those non-inebriated job-holders tell me, an ostensible human being, not to perform any act that pops into my head?" Is John Adams' indignation all that different from your average drunken "rebel?")

There's no point in convincing them, though. They believe in democracy. Instead, we should shrug when they rage at the government for corruption or at the press for being divisive. "That's democracy," we should say. "When you let a monkey in your house, you can't get mad at it for shitting on the floor."