Seed Con

There is an artificiality to representative government that doesn't make it the worst, because of all systems of government the potential of representative government to responsibly steward the public trust is realizable,

more so than autocracies characterized by oligarchic governments.  

But.

Not being the worst is a low bar for potential. Notwithstanding, not being the worst is not an acceptable justification for leaning into broadly autocratic posturing in defense of increasingly oligarchic positions loudly and proudly welcomed by every branch of a representative government.

Seed Con

The 'seeds of the ruin of representative governments' are neither the idea of representative government itself nor the vulnerability of 'the people' to widespread manipulative programming nor the fragility of institutions that are 'stress-tested'.

Please.

It is far simpler than that.

The so-called 'seeds of the ruin of representative governments' are individuals (a) who either aspire to ruin representative governments or (b) whose aspirations tolerate the ruin of representative governments as acceptable collateral damage.

I

Such that there's much ado about 'the idea' of representative government. 

Is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people serving us? Would an absolute sovereign serve us better? If we elect a public servant whose campaign boldly promises a reign that rules by decree, does this not prove the public's popular approval of a dictator-elect?

But this ado is a conceit.

That confuses an individual's aspiration with a public's false choice. If this choice is a public's only legitimate choice, then any vote for such choice cannot be understood as a wholesale approval for every campaign promise issued by such individual and nothing less.

I mean, really?

*

Likewise, there's much ado about the vulnerability of 'the people' to widespread manipulative programming.

Where are people getting their information? How many purveyors of information lean into engagement and virality at the expense of robust fidelity to a factual reality? What if a de-facto state-media amplifies half-truths, lies-by-omission, unfounded-conspiracies, and baseless-alternate-facts?

But this ado is arrogant.

That assumes a people's credible interest in a factual-reality-based worldview. Such that if a people welcomes a fictional-narrative-based prism of experience, this cannot be understood as a meaningful 'middle ground' for information disseminating.

Seriously?

*

Moreover, there's much ado about the fragility of institutions that are 'stress-tested'.

When a branch of representative government - condones explicitly criminal actions or revokes constitutional safeguards or issues dictatorial orders, for example - these are not acts of God. 

These are acts of mortal public servants answerable to the people they serve.

While this ado demands a citizenry not fall asleep at the wheel,

with respect to the 'seeds of the ruin of representative governments', this ado invokes panic the way bulls are motivated to go along with a planned plot, without being in on their planned self-sacrifice. 

In other words, when stress-tested institutions are criticized, this cannot be understood as a provocation that unleashes suffocating illiberal inflexibility.

I mean, come on.

II

A representative government does not need to be a paragon of democracy or the ideal republic, to mindfully preside over a flourishing nation.

It does not need to grimly quash unseen cabals, vicious algorithms, or lost causes of dominating purpose, for a people to appreciate the difference between being reasonably informed and being sold a hill to die on behind a line in the sand.

No more than it needs to harden institutions in order to safeguard them from us. 

*

Because the 'seeds of the ruin of representative governments', 

which is to say, the problem

is not whether a government is not serving us, or how misinformation influences an electorate, or who or what institutions enrich and empower at the expense of a democracy or a republic.

*

The problem is individuals who wreck representative governments when they would rather a representative government be corrupted - or hog-tied to the whims of powerful interested parties - or exploded into smoking rubble -

than steward the public trust.

Because individuals whose aspirations tolerate the ruin of representative governments as acceptable collateral damage - do not care 

that the price, the cost, and the consequences of what they believe and who they follow -

harm

III

It is easy to know you are right and everybody else be damned. To harbor screeds of sanctimonious rage against diabolical fools. To be confident in the unqualified conviction that to the venal and mercenary, go the victories and spoils.

*

It is inconceivable to know you are wrong.

*

When a representative government becomes corrupted - when a democracy is hog-tied to the whims of powerful interested parties - when a republic is exploded into smoking rubble - this is not the will of a citizenry.

Instead, this is the will of individuals emboldened by the knowledge that their theft of the public trust is met by cooperation and appeasement by those for whom victories and spoils are for the taking.

One and all, these individuals dissemble and deceive and distort and disinform, so as to clothe themselves in a narrative of being the will of the people represented fairly and obediently. Never mind the transparent fiction of pretense and imposture.

*

When pretense and imposture are - through amplified half-truths, lies-by-omission, unfounded-conspiracies, and baseless-alternate-facts - championed as decisively popular - this is not the voice of an electorate.

Instead, this is the voice of individuals emboldened by the knowledge that their theft of the public trust is predictably met by silence, performative inaction, indifference, and exhausted overwhelm.

Because who would dare challenge the will and voice of the people?

*

Who?

The people

from whom is exacted the price, the cost, and the consequences of what such individuals believe and who such individuals follow.

Because the welcoming of broadly autocratic posturing in defense of increasingly oligarchic positions by every branch of a representative government

is no more harmless to real people living real lives in the real world than it safeguards democracies and republics from seeds that birth the poisonous fruit of ruin in the name of the will of the people.

 

More or Being Better Angels

Sure. It's a little weird. To choose somebody.

To 'run' a representative government of people, by people, for people.

I mean.

How many of you really know what it takes to 'run' such a representative government. So actual few of you that many of you think millionaires and billionaires are 'exceptionally' and 'inherently' qualified to do the job.

As if having millions and billions of dollars to 'show' for themselves, means they have 'what it takes'.

Jesus.

*

It's more than a little weird. To trust somebody.

Not only to be your voice and your will - but also to be their voice and their will.

I mean.

A representative government of all, by all, for all is not of few, by few, for few.

But. A few is who decides a lot. With respect to 'political parties' or 'partisan factions', for example, from the tickets to the platforms to the allocation of funds for down ballot races to the public appearances at traditional and nontraditional circuses, here, there, but not everywhere, for example.

Never mind that everywhere is where all of us are.

*

So, there is an artificiality, a being better angels, to the potential of representative government to responsibly steward the public trust being realizable.

But autocracies characterized by oligarchic governments that responsibly steward the public trust?

That is not weird.

That is a con.

M

*

Annotation and Further Reading

To the extent that this topic is impossible to thoroughly address, I've included a few notable, but not exhaustive, annotations, below.

M

*

(i) "unseen cabals", "vicious algorithms", "lost causes of dominating purposes"

are not without influence but when any influence is "grimly [quashed]" per "provocation that unleashes suffocating illiberal inflexibility"

this is less to do with "being the will of the people represented fairy and obediently" than with control;

etc.

see ex. Annotation (vi) from Imaginary Guardrails (December 4, 2024, tvfs);

(ii) "whether a government is not serving us, or how misinformation influences an electorate, or who or what institutions enrich and empower at the expense of a democracy or a republic"

are often what are grandiosely decried: "the problem"

such that "[corrupting]" government, "[hog-tying it] to the whims of powerful interested parties", "[exploding it] into smoking rubble" are "loudly and proudly welcomed"

as solutions;

via and as if "amplified half-truths, lies-by-omission, unfounded-conspiracies, and baseless-alternate-facts - championed as decisively popular" are not concomitantly "[invoked]"

"the way bulls are motivated to go along with a planned plot, without being in on their planned self-sacrifice";

etc.

see Dear Reader, A Word (April 20, 2024, tvfs);

(iii) "what they believe and who they follow"

as to "what they believe",

see ex. The Keys to the Kingdom and Other Nonsense (September 27, 2024, tvfs), etc.;

as to "who they follow",

see ex. The Hypothetical Parrot King (April 20, 2020, tvfs), etc.;

etc.  

(iv) "by cooperation and appeasement by those for whom victories and spoils are for the taking" and "by silence, performative inaction, indifference, and exhausted overwhelm"

in the end, "individuals who wreck representative governments" do not do so alone; they do so with the "cooperation and appeasement" of the "you are right and everybody else be damned";

see ex. When Democracy for Coin (November 11, 2020, tvfs);

with the "confident in the unqualified conviction that to the venal and mercenary, go the victories and spoils";

see ex. The Quiet Part Aloud (September 29, 2023, tvfs);

with "a citizenry... asleep at the wheel";

see ex. Addendum from Whose Deciding Opinion Is Just (January 4, 2022, tca);

with "much ado"; 

etc.

(v) "Who? The People"

as to "who would dare challenge the will and voice of the people?"

see The Backbone Estate (November 24, 2024, tvfs);

etc.

M

Clarifying a 'Right' to Life

Everybody thinks everybody should know what a 'right' to life means as defined by opinions espoused by everybody who opines.

Clarifying a 'Right' to Life

Preface

To be clear, I don't subscribe to any assumption that all opinions are 'equally right' regardless of the content of such opinions or because of the platform of such opinions or blah blathering blah. 

Rather, I subscribe to a rational discourse as a participant in governed society.

*

I. Existing Life

The first thing to know is: ova-bearers are born with ova. Yet to equivalize ova-bearers and ova, especially with respect to a 'right' to life, reduces ova-bearers to ova-bearers.

Such that it bears iterating: a 'right' to live is neither secondary to ova bearing nor is superseded by ova existing.

To proclaim otherwise, is to nullify the personal agency and independence of girls and women. To proclaim otherwise, is to mandate reproduction at the expense of the personhood of daughters and mothers.

*

II. The 'Piety' Façade

The second thing to know is: who decides what is 'precious'. That is, what is 'sacred'.

To equivalize a right to personally define 'sanctity' and a law that institutes compulsory obedience to evangelized 'truths' - which is to say, to equivalize a personal exercise of 'faith' and a submission to theocracy prominently codified - is

to unequivocally reject democracy.

For all that loyalists to ideology define this as a freedom guaranteed by democracy, this is an infringement on girls and women and a shackle on daughters and mothers.

To wit: robbing ova-bearers of their autonomy and inviolate dignity is not an entitlement safeguarded by democracy professedly because an undemocratic principle adopts a façade of 'piety'. 

*

III. The 'Justice' Twofer

The third thing to know is: the 'status' of personhood is fabulated to retribute and vainglory. In other words, to exact vengeance and satisfy ego, jurisprudence has validated a 'status' for unborn cells.

Such cells, no bigger than dust and ash, lacking intentional and competent devotion to a moral belief system, upon achieving 'legal personhood', have become 'lives' lost. Such cells, no more substantial than a few centimeters or ounces, fabulated into fully formed persons, have become 'victims' that demand pounds of flesh from their accused.

Finally, adversaries have become avengers who notch the unborn among the avenged for ambition. Never mind a dictate for justice from such cells being thoroughly imaginary

fiction.

*

 

IV. The 'Care' Charade

The fourth thing to know is: care is tangible. Words alone are not evidence of actual care.

Proof of care is free accessible medical services for ova-bearers; child care for ova-bearers' dependents; and financial assistance for food and housing for ova-bearers and their dependents. Because bona fide care is paramount, measurable, and consequential.

Such that a question begs to be asked: why is actual care, ostensibly heartfelt yet passionately denied, by speakers of wall to wall words, unambiguously abhorrent?

*

V. Real Life

The fifth thing to know is: real life is neither an outlier nor hypothetical. Which is to say, real world aftermaths of calculable magnitude are neither irrelevant nor unknowable.

After all, the risk of injury and violence towards girls and women is quantifiably higher when girls and women are ova-bearing. And there are few conditions more matter of factly lethal to daughters and mothers, than ova-bearing.

To restrict a public dialogue on abortion, to villainous caricatures and fantastical improbabilities, is to conspicuously ignore:

that minimally gainful employment rarely accommodates pre-natal and post-natal ova-bearers; that parenthood materially alters lives charged with child-bearing, child-rearing, and child-supporting; that families in poverty disproportionally bear the brunt of policies that restrict, limit, and/or ban family planning; and much more. 

Participants in a representative democracy who elect whether or not to ova-bear, as an entitlement part and parcel to being free, are neither deserving of condemnation nor invisibility.

*

Postface

To be clear, I don't subscribe to any expectation that one's platform, be it lectern or broadcast or blog; or one's opines, be they reasoned or believed or pretended; or blah blathering blah, dictates or informs.

Rather, I subscribe to upholding real persons with real experiences, in the real world.

I don't live in a kingdom or paradise, that indwells as a feature or condition of a system of belief. Nor am I judged by an absolute deity or all-forgiving all-father, that delivers damnation or salvation, per a practice or observation of a system of belief.

Rather, I live in the real world, where I am subject to real laws divined by real persons, that impact everybody. Here, I subscribe to upholding what's real.

Addendum

Let's talk about COVID-19 for a minute.

*

In the first twelve months that a novel coronavirus plagued so many, there were a sizeable many that insisted: the pandemic was 'fake' and nothing should change for a 'fake pandemic'. They declared: 'I don't care you, do you?' They bellyached: their hardships were 'indisputably extraordinary' and mitigation measures were 'irrefutably to blame'. They caviled: this alternate 'reality' was 'their truth'.

Never mind in staggering sum, bodies were interred and loved ones mourned. Fever, diarrhea, fatigue, and so on, debilitated swaths of the unwell across transport and transit hubs, residential care homes, prisons and jails, and so on. Because a novel coronavirus circulated everywhere everybody wasn't 'sheltering in place'.

To wit: intentional and competent devotion to a moral belief system, inspired a sizeable many to live by a 'truth' that was a fiction.

*

You see, how COVID-19 is an object lesson...

in condemnation and invisibility?

*

There are many good reasons good people seek safe health care that includes abortions. Such that 'rape and incest' are hardly the only 'legitimate conditions' for such care. Notwithstanding, such 'exceptions' stipulate evidentiary justification to safeguard the liability of care providers and their eligibility for insurance coverage 'for exceptions'. Which is to say, to state the obvious,

exceptions are never rules.

Case in point: 'exceptions' on the basis of 'conscience', for example, professed by care providers who imperiously oppose care that includes abortions, nullify 'exceptions' affirmed by care seekers, every day of the week everywhere care seekers seek care. Including 'exceptions' on the basis of saving a life. 

Because maternal mortality is an acceptable outcome for a sizeable many who practice or observe a system of belief that reduces ova-bearers to ova-bearers.

*

Tell me I'm wrong.

Tell me

that nullifying the personal agency and independence of girls and women and mandating reproduction at the expense of the personhood of daughters and mothers, is not

a cavalier and hostile indifference to the autonomy and inviolate dignity of ova-bearers.

M

*

Author's Note

Should I speak on the topic of abortion... only to cede a 'right' to my voice

to everybody who opines? including a sizeable many whose personal exercise of 'conscience' imprisons 'we the ova-bearers'... to reproductive potential?

Should I speak on the topic of abortion... only with permission? And

not at all if I decline to beatify the florid self-induced rage that miscarriage, infertility, surrogacy, and adoption smugly self-indulges... because abortion?

Should I speak on the topic of abortion... only if, say,

I'm a mother who's endured an indescribably miserable expectancy that culminated in a life-saving C-section? Or I've suffered the issue of a secret severed by legal disposition and profiteering inhumanity? Or divested of bodily autonomy, I've performed... child-bearing?

Should I speak on the topic of abortion... if the gift of health care that includes abortion was never my portion?

*

A 'right' to life is

to be a clinical resident at a hospital, waiting until the requirements of an exceptional medical education are undoubtedly past, to thoughtfully grow a family... or to be on a critical mission on foreign soil, unconcerned that an expectancy shall derail a meaningful dedication to duty... or to be a widow, plunged into unexpected single parenthood, considerately terminating an unviable future...

A 'right' to life is to be, a parent or not, per self-determined election. Thus it isn't me in the end; it isn't you or your personal exercise of 'conscience'; it isn't everybody who opines that decides the last opinion on the topic of abortion

for everybody.

M

Whose Deciding Opinion Is Just

 Why do we think it's a terrible idea to reform justice?

*

Is it because it's working as intended?

Really?

For whom?

*

Is it because no one is qualified to criticize justice except justice's own?

As if, institutions that police their own, (i) by charter, never serve and protect their own, (ii) through oversight, never guarantee their own immunity, (iii) by deed, never ignore their own manifest dishonesty and corruption. Not a single board. Not a single association. Not a single organization or body or authority.

Because amateurs are unfit at best and incompetent at worst, but

professionals are above reproach?

*

Is it because it's as it should be?

For "receivers" of justice:

The imprisoned should be dispossessed of liberty, forever? Because the "right" of victims, principal or incidental, is the "right" of vengeance?

The formerly incarcerated should be denied dignified employment, forever? Because the "right" of communities, of the decent and good, is the "right" of retribution? 

The adjudicated should be disenfranchised of the right to vote, forever? Because the "right" of the people, (yours or mine or theirs?), is the "right" of reprisal?

As for "functionaries" of justice:

Prosecutors should be bloodthirsty? Because the law exacts retaliation?

Judges should be callous? Because the law promises indifference?

Surrogates should be pitiless? Because the law suffers clemency never?

*

Is it because no one is as faultless as justice's own?

As if, (i) there has never existed a surrogate who erred, (ii) there has never existed a judge who abandoned neutrality, (iii) there has never existed a prosecutor who misrepresented. Not a single fact. Not a single truth.

Because sympathetic interests are illiterate at best and delusional at worst, but

functionaries of justice are honorable to a fault?

 *

What if this isn't about opposition or reform?

What if this is about loyalties?

And self-preservation?

And winning?

*

Because, in the end, what if this isn't about justice at all?

What if this is about narratives?

About:

the decency and goodness of the loyal? the constant threat of treachery by the policed? the indispensable courage that wins the war for peace? and

what's right and what's wrong?

*

Moreover, what if opposition to reform justice, is therefore, a proxy?

Like so:

(i) an imminent existential danger by reform and its proponents, is publicly pitched as the brave heart of opposition,

(ii) while such heart's shadow campaign executes with purpose, a laundry list of objectives that secure loyalties and indulge narratives

(iii) advantageous to hiring, electing, and appointing its own functionaries of justice

(iv) whose power to decide what's right and what's wrong, every decade past, present, and future, 

(v) is what opposition to reform is the proxy for.

*

Thus, opposition is a proxy for control.

From narratives to laws.

Such that a message the public believes about winning the war for peace, for example, is nothing more than a tool of tools.

Venal and mercenary.

To pave paths without obstacles.

To be the law.

*

Until every functionary who opposes judicial reform, law reform, police reform, prison reform, leniency reform, and so on,

is the law.

From the bench, book, badge, and so on,

every servant of the people.

As if,

after all is said and done, to be hired, elected, or appointed to serve,

is to self-serve.

Because it is so and so it is. And never mind any and every opposing opinion on the matter. Because the deciding opinion

is the law of the land.

 

More

Because the deciding opinion is the law,

let's acknowledge:

(i) judges are hired, elected, or appointed to be deciding opinions;

(ii) and insofar as supreme courts choose the cases that appear before them, these too are deciding opinions;

(iii) likewise, offices of prosecution choose the cases they present, the charges they file, the cases they drop, the convictions they review, and so on;

(iv) and insofar as sheriffs and police chiefs, whether hired, elected, or appointed, lead their institutions, they also exercise deciding opinions; 

(v) and insofar as each and every cog in the justice system, performs a role as a functionary of justice, each and every cog in the justice system, exercises deciding opinions, too;

(vi) including elected officials who pardon wrongdoers of wrongdoing, as a matter of prerogative and opinion, that is, divine right cum partisan conviction.

- M.

*

Addendum

When a citizenry falls asleep at the wheel, with respect to civic participation in civic discourse, the course that is championed and reinforced, is, too often, neither "decent" nor "good."

Such that when "a noble cause" or "a just war" sucks all the oxygen from civic discourse, the "conversation" that ensues is a sham. 

In other words:

when we're oblivious and we couldn't give less of a shit; or when we're overwhelmed by sufferance and disillusion; or when we're howlers of absurdities, idle and incoherent; or so forth,

what fills the void in the absence of a citizenry's whole and hale engagement, is a discourse calculated to further that which is venal and mercenary.

Such that the "conversation" that follows isn't that of a real cause or a real war, so much as a created fiction.

Because amplifying and echoing calculated discourse is part and parcel to a laundry list of objectives that secure loyalties and indulge narratives advantageous to exercising power without opposition.

For to the asleep at the wheel, go neither what's decent nor what's good.

- M.

*

Note

When a whiff of maybe there's room for fairness here, begets death threats, what excites such rage?

Likewise, when a whiff of maybe there's room for scrutiny here too, evokes ireful pique, what excites such performative hostility?

Whether the audience flame-soaking is for, is "in on the joke" or not,

it's not decency or goodness.

Please.

Furthermore, when, for example, originalists for divine right, endlessly campaign for justice to be both aped with a wink and enforced with an unyielding inhumanity,

it's not decency or goodness whose deciding opinion has been, is, and would be the law.

As if, "what's right" and moreover "what's just," is the created fiction that a vote for pique and an act of partisan conviction, has been, is, and would be a vote for "dignity" and an act of "grace."

*

Case in point:

The recent use of one phrase to represent another, from an explicit revelry at a sporting event, to a lit representation of a Christmas spirit, to a parting salvo on a Christmas Eve, for example.

Insofar as what's obvious must be decrypted: decency and goodness are not what, say, flame-soaking is for. 

When a citizenry asleep at the wheel, roars and applauds

conduct defended as "acts of free speech" that "should not only be condoned, but honored" in a free and fair democracy, such that any criticism of, say, flame-soaking and its concomitant revelation of "unimpeachable heroism," "should not only be shamed, but reviled" as a hypocrisy,

none the wiser that tools make tools of a citizenry, 

what's lionized isn't what's right and what's just.

Please.

- M.

*

A brief annotation

(i) "Because amateurs are unfit at best and incompetent at worst, but professionals are above reproach?" is not my opinion, per se,

so much as a rationalization, popularly circulated in opposition to reform, that anyone who criticizes is an "amateur," "unfit at best and incompetent at worst."

Likewise, "Because sympathetic interests are illiterate at best and delusional at worst, but functionaries of justice are honorable to a fault?" is not my opinion, per se,

so much as a mockery, popularly circulated in opposition to reform, that to find fault signifies a "sympathetic interest," "illiterate at best and delusional at worst."

(ii) "Because the law exacts retaliation," "Because the law promises indifference," "Because the law suffers clemency never."

are not only meant to convey "it is what it is" and "therefore it is done;"

these are also meant to convey that the law is a person, who is "objectivity personified," instead of a tool, crafted to be "interpreted" by deciding opinions, including, divine right.

(iii) "the decency and goodness of the loyal? the constant threat of treachery by the policed? the indispensable courage that wins the war for peace? and what's right and what's wrong."

Obviously, these are examples of "narratives," as aforementioned by "What if this is about narratives?" and not my opinion, per se.

Likewise, "an imminent existential danger by reform and its proponents, is publicly pitched as the brave heart of opposition" is not my opinion, per se,

so much as an objective of objectives executed with purpose that secures loyalties and indulges narratives.

(iv) "decent," "good," "a noble cause," "a just war," and "conversation" from Addendum (above)

are further examples of aforementioned "narratives," coded with meaning beyond literal, including created fiction, and executed with purpose, including as tools that make tools of a citizenry;

see also Note (above).

(v) "The recent use of one phrase to represent another, from an explicit revelry at a sporting event, to a lit representation of a Christmas spirit, to a parting salvo on a Christmas Eve, for example."

refer to conduct not limited to a backdrop of audible spectators to an interview with an auto race winner, a theme of a lighted boat parade entrant, an amended holiday greeting during a Santa tracking livestream, and so on;

etc.

- M.