borders in a post-border economy

The 2008 United States presidential elections have a certain air of queerness about them. I do not invoke that adjective as if I am somehow entitled to it as a student at one of the queerest (in the other sense of that word) college communities in the world.

As with any subject that is given almost 24-hours-a-day news coverage, the best way to gain a fruitful and yielding perspective on an important topic is actually to engage in a sort of foreplay in willful ignorance. Without bandying about with more words I think the aim of this post is to try and gain a perspective not so much on the various candidates that compose this electoral cycle but the forces that give them their poise. I think that what makes this election cycle important is not so much the candidates themselves (they are, with the exception of Barack Obama, expendable). What these candidates symbolize is a sea change within the architecture of the American economic and political apparatus. The forces that are lining up behind each candidate choose their side not because they believe any specific candidate will be particularly generous towards them. Instead this election is dictated by the 'bunker' mentality that has grown pervasive in the American consciousness. A cursory look at the supporters of Jon McCain, for example, will yield a list of people who do not look upon McCain as a friend but more as an enemy of an enemy.

There are roughly three groups of people and lobbyists who have the most to gain and to lose in this election. They are (roughly): The Military-Industrial complex, commerce, and the internet. It does not take much thought to see just how much these groups overlap, but I think that they are useful insofar as they provide a decent enough benchmark of just what a particular candidate stands for (especially considering how similar the policies and proposals of Obama and Clinton are). Additionally, I think that the criterion for a candidate's victory in the general election will be decided upon just how unified two of these groups will be around any one particular candidate.

To give an example in hindsight, George bush had the unified support of the military-industrial complex and commerce behind him in both the 2000 and 2004 elections. I do not think that the internet had yet come to realize its own potential in that election, which is why the 2008 election is so different: many groups that were considered essential to a coalition (religious groups, steel workers unions, etc.) are being cast by the wayside or have been supplanted by these three massive interest groupings that will determine the outcome of the election in 2008.

Commerce
Commerce has dominated any election in the relevant past; I think that the reason behind this was the gradual privatization and greater integration of the nation's media into the greater structures of corporate America. Because of the (until recent) monopoly that American corporations enjoyed on the dissemination of news and opinions, it was relatively easy for them to tilt the outcomes of any given election, especially elections on a nation-wide scale. in the 1996, 2000, and 2004 elections, the interests of commerce were closely aligned with those of the military-industrial complex. This however has changed in recent months, and I myself trace the cause of this to the Fed's recent creation of a lending vehicle which allows large-scale commercial banks to borrow large amounts of cash with shaky assets as collateral. This is not a root cause in itself; instead it is the outcome of the vast monopolization of available capital and monetary assets by the United States' military apparatus. Realizing that the pools of credit have all dried up, American commercial interests have slowly come to oppose the political clout that military contractors hold (in a few words, when the Fed prints money, most of it goes to the military contractors. this is not good for Commerce as inflation has already devalued this cash as it reaches their coffers).

Why do I think that commerce will side with Barack Obama?
Clinton is out of the primary (or will be presently). There has been a lot of cooing, from even the strangest corners of Corporate America, over the presumptive democratic nominee, Barack Obama. Where McCain has a demonstrably small brain for commercial manners, Obama seems to have taken a tempered, if a bit populist approach to the American economy, which most commercial interests like. The big losers inside of the "Commerce" bracket if Obama wins? Pharma (though not as much as it would have been with Clinton, which is why I think she will not be elected), News corporations (which makes the link above all the more ironic), and most of all manufacturing Unions. Service industry laborers are rabidly supporting Obama chiefly because he stands to be the catalyst for the last great shift in the American economy: namely an elimination of manufacturing-sector labor and a shift towards a mainly service-industry economy (this can be a good or a bad thing depending on how you look at it).

The Military-Industrial Complex
Not much needs to be said here about this one except that it is in a bit of a hard position during this election. On the one hand it has nothing to worry about from any candidate because none seek to dislodge it from its central position within the American economy (this would require someone absolutely crazy like Ron Paul). They of course are throwing their support behind Jon McCain but I think in the end they are seeing the boundaries of their ability to influence world affairs and what McCain promises does not seem to bode well in the minds of many military movers and shakers (war with Iran).

Who will they go for?
McCain, assuredly. However the military-industrial complex, contrary to its almost pervasive influence on the American economy, has very little voice for itself. On the one hand it is beholden to the interests of the Pentagon (which will be a force to reckoned with itself once the new president takes power) and also has its own system of rigid morals that prevent it from acting in the devious ways that Commerce and Unions have done in the past. Their support for McCain will in the end backfire for both McCain and the military-industrial complex, and at least the latter seems to recognize this possibility (which is why their support is so muted).

Finally this brings us to the Internet, the position I am most able to expound upon (I hope the writing above was a little more than drivel and was able to benefit those with a passing interest in this blog).

The Internet
Firstly, why am I choosing to represent the Internet on the same level as Commerce and the Military-Industrial Complex? Simply put, I think the Internet has come to represent free enterprise in the American economy--and given the threatened position in which free enterprise now sits (dried-up money supply, difficulty getting credit, etc.), this bloc of voters and campaigners has the most to gain and lose during the 2008 election cycle. I think that the Internet has come to replace the Media as America's 'fourth estate'. This is mainly due to the commercialization of traditional mediums of news. But also it is due to the simple fact that people who before could not find their voice in traditional media, commerce, or even the military see the internet as a truly functional staging ground for a public offensive against the current state of affairs (both political and economic). The Internet has enabled even the least savvy user to gain a perspective on the United States and the world that is forbidden to someone working in Government or in the Military who is beholden to national interests. Barack Obama, in his commitments to negotiate with enemy states like Iran and North Korea, is creating a thinly-veiled promise to surrender the United States' sovereignty to the wider international currents of diplomacy and commerce.

Years ago this would have been a bad thing, but with the internet the vast majority of influential people in the world are peeking beyond their own national borders. Instead of seeing a murky world that is on the whole antagonistic, they see a world that would stand to be benefited from as well as beneficial to the United States' admission of its previous faults and engagement with the international community as a whole. Obama will sign into the Kyoto protocols and meet with Iran.

The biggest remaining question, however, is who stands to win out from an Obama presidency?

This question will not be answered until 2012. Barack Obama is something of an unknown, but if I were to put the problem in an abbreviated fashion, I think that the problem that Obama will create will be a world of rampant corporatism with little oversight from any governing body (we saw this with the credit crisis). If Obama can successfully bring international corporations under heel, we may see the dawn of a new era of global prosperity, with the Internet (and its beholden interests) at the helm of a new global economy and political apparatus. If he fails we will see something akin to late 19th-century American fiefdom-economics. Needless to say, the next 8 years are going to be interesting.

Why I support Barack Obama

The cult-like following that surrounds Barack Obama (converts to which are second only in fervor to those followers of Ron Paul who I affectionately deem 'Paultards') serves mainly to obscure the man himself, and his vision. Network news is not to be relied on for any accurate depiction of world events themselves, much less what is going on in the mind of any given presidential candidate (though since I consider McCain to be so vapid that any fair comparison between him and another sentient organism would probably only be fair if the object of comparison were a nematode--but I digress).

The video above is a visit that Barack Obama made to the Google campus in Mountain View, CA; anyone who is interested in Obama's policies with regard to US technology would do well to watch this video (and its accompanying Q&A, available on youtube). I think that where Barack Obama succeeds in seeing a viable vision for the future of this country is in his understanding of just how essential technology will be towards the future economic viability of the United States.

Now, I could go into a further diatribe about what bothers me about the other candidates in the race, but I think that it would fall outside the confines of this Blog; and in any case those who would be in any way interested in seeing me rail against Hilary Clinton have probably already seen me do it in real life. The internet, in any case, has no lack of polemics, and I hope to subtract from the vitriol with this blog, not add to it.

The Internet's case against Democracy

With so much ado about the presidential nomination process going on in the states presently, I feel some commentary on this matter from a more technologically-inclined view might merit my attentions. The greatest question raised by these elections is not which of the three possible nominees are going to best serve the ideals of the nation. It is quite simply this: is the current methodology by which we determine our leadership at all adequate for solving the problems that our country currently faces?

First a bit of an ahistorical preface: I do not here intend to concern myself with facts and a politically correct (read: moralistic) account of the current state of affairs. It is possible that my current diet of Nietzsche and Schopenhauer has motivated me along this course; the important thing is that those who read this article must withhold judgment if it is based upon some petty disagreement with the facts I invoke. If you can see the ideas and processes with which I am struggling then the value of this essay will not be lost on you. If, however, you choose to assume a reactionary, moralistic stance towards me and deny my views a priori on account of their seeming to be politically incorrect, then I encourage you to visit a more palatable website.

The American electoral system has its roots in the founding father's desire for a sort of 'landed aristocracy' (or as close as possible in the then just-conceived USA) to make most of the political decisions. I believe that it is from this viewpoint that women and African-Americans were excluded by the constitution from the voting process, not because of any virulent racism (though it of course did exist and was jockeying for this state of affairs as well). The electoral college as such comes into being as a way to limit the ability for the popular vote to determine who holds power in a country. This is obvious to most people: it is for this reason that our political system is so inhospitable to 3rd-party candidates. Instead of getting into this fertile topic however, let us simply concede that the electoral college as such functions as a way to remove and diffuse the power of the popular vote. If an electorate votes in a 'winner-takes-all' local election for the right to decide who their representative will nominate as president, it logically follows that a candidate with popular appeal--that is, a candidate who wins the popular vote--may not and in fact will not necessarily win the election (2000 is the most recent example of this phenomenon; there are other instances as well).

How has this system gone wrong? For several reasons. First of all, the 17th amendment (changing the election of senators to a popular vote instead of being nominated by a state's assembly) and universal suffrage are two glaring examples of "just" or "virtuous" democratization that has had a detrimental effect on the country's election system. Now before I get into the meat of my argument I would like to preface that some of the views (indeed even the one just mentioned) I do not in any way espouse; I am undergoing an exercise to see just how viable our current electoral system remains in this hyper-technological world.

Now, the result of this diffusion of voting power has been beneficial in recent years. Indeed as a fully-liberal democrat I can only be happy that women and minorities are allowed to vote; these demographic groups form the backbone of the Democratic election effort. But what has happened as a consequence is that most people who vote today do not have the slightest knowledge about who they are voting for. Indeed the current state of American democracy is a paradox of epic proportions: presently the widest number of people exercise power over the election process (we are second-only to India in this regard), but also the centralization of both power and the media has induced a process of stultification amongst this country's electorate that is staggering.

And this is the crux of my argument: the internet and its associated de-centralization of media distribution has been a boon to those members of society who have the time to learn about those men and women who stand for election. But at the same time, the people who really do know about what is happening in this country are effectively silenced by the great mass of people who are either too busy or too ignorant to bother with learning about the calamities that stand on our collective doorstep.

So we must grapple with the democratization of information but the necessary limiting of power. Can you not see why this is necessary? The only alternative is to work towards the education of everyone so that they are not so ignorant of our situation. But this is impossible with the current politics in play. The republicans are of course aware of this and have successfully neutered our public education system. So what does a Democrat of good conscience do? Hope for the best and assume that somewhere down the line people will be educated enough to make decisions that are based upon informed opinions and rational debate?

It is saddening for me to have to say this, but if you asked me my political views today I would say that I am a fascist. Not in the antiquated 20th-century use of the term. Global Warming, the war in Iraq, the coming conflict with Iran, and the economic crisis cannot be adequately dealt with by any of the candidates that stand for election (though a cursory glance to the left will show you where the realist inside of me places his hopes and hard-earned cash). What is most necessitated by the internet revolution is a de-democratization of the political process; one that does not allow the current farce to continue. What I refer to as the 'current farce' is the fact-of-the-matter situation in which a select group of people are elected regardless--this is the same situation as the one I am advocating--but for one major distinction: We must realize the pervasive corruption that has taken hold of Washington and destroy it by replacing not the people who hold office but the people who decide who stands for office.

It remains to be determined just who will retain the power to decide elections (and I suppose in that sense this article is most lacking). In this sense my ignorance of history does not pay off: I haven't the slightest idea of how to create a meritocracy that on the one hand keeps the best interests of the nation as a whole in mind but on the other keeps complete fucking tossers such as Jon McCain and George Bush out of the political process. Because indeed our current political situation is the result of a perversion of the existing meritocracy. Where previously distinguished military service or an Ivy-league education were beneficial requisites for holding office, the administration of George Bush has proven this state of affairs to be woefully inadequate.

I do not propose any solutions but I think that it is the job of this generation (my own) to come up with a solution to this problem that can be summed up as: "disenfranchisement, but disenfranchisement of the right people". More later.