Chris Brauer Media Project [BLOG]

According to Plato the best form of government is a "benign dictator" who is appointed by the educated elites and serves to the end of his life for the betterment of society. All his decisions would be made based on the best long term outcomes for his society and he would not be accountable to the short term interests of fickle media, industry, special interests or even public. In the modern era how does this compare to vaunted democracy? Democracy filled to the brim with condescending fickle. A flip through a single edition of the New York Times doesn't flatter the current democratic process with low turnouts and massive complex efforts at manipulation from special interests on all sides. Here's a few examples. A Democratic ad campaign that highlights the Bush connections with the Saudis build on poll indications of "deep-seated distrust by Americans of the Saudis". A Republican ad campaign from the infamous Swiftvets draws tenuous links between "Hanoi Jane" Fonda and John Kerry as unpatriotic protestors during Vietnam. A Kerry speech tries to relate rising Medicare costs to the bill for the war in Iraq as if the money going to Iraq would otherwise have gone to Medicare. A clever letter to the editor laments the "Orwellian" use of US Government programs like the "Healthy Forests" initiative that environmentalists hate and the "Patriot Act" that libertarians despise. Another letter gets it, coming in from a young Californian voter calling out the "baseless character assasinations" in the campaigns and blasting the current political discourse as obscene. Basically human beings will master any system if given enough time. Democracy has grown up in places like the US and the power brokers, like poker players with a couple years of texas hold-em experience, have learned the system. Communication Planning dominates the agenda. Maybe we need a little benign dictator to shake the system loose and create new pop culture energy around the cult of personality. Nothing could be worse than a barrage of reality tv and political stump speeches. Give us a break.

Labels: politics