On Manufactured Consent

Intellectuals' ability to think of people in the abstract is a dangerous talent in a world where people differ in all the ways that make them people.
-- Thomas Sowell

Chomsky, he's got a point, but his point is not the point.

What Chomsky desires is a discrete and deterministic system of truth-in-politics. Politics doesn't work that way - politics are marketed and marketing information is the best way of dissemination. It's always imperfect. You simply cannot get a consistently high majority of people to consense for the same reasons on the same issues. It's because everyone is not, and cannot be exposed to the same facts and arguements and reach the same conclusions. So there are always imperfect decisions. If that were not the case, then everybody in the blogosphere would be redundant because the only 'valid' dialog going on about.. say wiretapping AQ would be the sealed information that Congress already has.

The fact of the matter of decision-making is that imperfect information is sufficient. In fact, the ability to make decisions with imperfect information is a survival trait of humans. If it were otherwise, we wouldn't run from deep growls in dark caves unless we were 73% certain it was a bear and not a dog. In other words, we would be lunch. So Chomsky has to get over his obsession to perfect. Everybody lives with lies and half-truths.

The way to think about this is not to go off the deep end of post-modernist regimes of truth. There are still useful decisions made by humans for human purposes that don't make sense for philosophers and logical purposes. This is a problem that computer scientists deal with fundamentally. If you can perfectly abstract a problem and get a computer to reason through it, is the application of perfect logic necessarily perfect for people? We all have a gut feeling that 'no' is the right answer, but we can't explain that gut feeling. That's exactly the point. Our rationality includes gut feelings, the kinds of feelings that computers, lacking guts, cannot make.

The way to think about it is to go towards the multiple-intelligences paradigm, knowing that everybody uses some unique balances of those intelligences to make decisions. Collective decision making is thus a series of compromises that are appropriate to the people making those compromises. We should also note abstentions, intended and implied, and this is very important in what I'm talking about vis a vis Chomsky. People who don't show up to make a particular decision are indeed always saying, it's not important enough for me to care, and that is a vote in absentia which essentially says what we used to say in the 'hood. "My name is Bennett and I'm not in it."

As an example of this consider the position of Kali Tal vis a vis the legitimacy of the decision making paradigm of the blogosphere itself:

Styles of discourse are not natural. They differ from culture to culture, and are a product of socialization. Socialization takes place through institutions--the family, schools, religious traditions, etc. Men and women are socialized to different styles of discourse in this culture (again, I refer you to the voluminous and oft-duplicated research on this question). When women adopt male discursive strategies, they're punished for it (again, see the research on conversational patterns and the disruption caused by women embracing "male" speech patterns, and see both my posts [and other women's posts] to this list). The mechanisms of punishment are engaged automatically, without deliberate or conscious effort on the part of the men in the conversation because that is simply the "normal" reaction to female speech that challenges the status quo. That's the very definition of institutionalized oppression--when enforcement mechanisms become diffuse, naturalized, and automatic, so that no individual needs to take responsibility for keeping another in her place. It just "happens."

That may or may not hew to anything other than theoretical femininity, but it's a realistic enough explanation as to why women our outnumbered in higher eschelon blogging circles. Common sense shows women and men argue differently. Whether or not it strictly applies to women, there are clearly some people who could but prefer not to blog in the discursive style we have come to know an love. Bottom line, some people are voting with their feet away from the blogosphere, which most everyone agrees is a very liberating and empowering force for democracy.

So as tired as everyone is of hearing conservatives talk about market solutions, it is indeed the reality of our democracy and all democracies that endure. We get the best politicians our votes can buy, and politicians get the best votes their money can buy. Call it attention, call it whuffie, call it the currency of memes, call it what you like. People get it, spend it, save it up, waste it, ignore it, and there is no way to perfect it. In an increasingly information literate society, there are economies of thought and a fair price is what that market will bear.

I want to expand for a moment on Chomsky's heartbreak. His presumption is very much like the presumption of those who lament the 'Digital Divide'. I have always made a point not to second guess those who decided that the internet was not their cup of tea. Simply because a 'superior' form of information exists, does not make it instantly useful to masses of people. Masses of people who might know but don't care, discount the value of that thing. You can't make them want it, even if it's objectively good for them. From Chomsky's left perspective then, the duplicity of those who manufacture consent, once exposed to the masses would be their undoing. But just as the failure of the stock market only directly hurts those most invested,  we have to start recognizing that everyone is not invested in 'superior' democracy. I'm not talking about those powerful cabals who would subvert it given the chance, but those who opt out for fear or distrust or whatever reason. They are making, by their own lights, the best decision.

So it is quite possible, romantic notions of equality in franchise notwithstanding, that we are indeed more Republic than democracy - that the rubber stamp of the biggest investors, call them the instituional investors in democracy, is all that is required to run a stable nation. If my science is correct, the Chomskys of the world will always and forever be trying to aggregate the Long Tail of democracy into a loyal opposition. While I agree that the Long Tail is of equal or greater value than the oxygen suckers of consensus with the unbeatable market share, my science says that by definition the Long Tail cannot and will not be aggregated. In other words, maybe the answer to the universe and everything is indeed 42, as in 42% - that is all you need.

Such a conclusion will always draw crocodile tears from those who make it their life's aim to combat Hegemony. Then again, aren't they also always 'alternative'? Heaven forbid their passions become mainstream, they'd abandon them in a heartbeat.