V: The Evolution of The Vaccime

Or perhaps the subtitle: "a good leek or broccoli vaccime can cure what ails your political system."

The word "vaccime" originated within "Memetics", a struggling discipline within the halls of research at the edge of science.

As an emerging discipline, originally designed to equate thought evolution with genetic evolution, Memetics did not do so well, at least in terms of broad-based popularity.

But there is still hope that it could do better if it changed direction by focusing its application toward the future thereby changing its original focus away from an exercise of merely cloning ancient biological evolution by using "new words" but little else.

The hypothesis is that it would do better if it became a vehicle for talking about the future, beginning from a perspective of the here and now.

The purpose of this post is to talk about elections in the context of the evolution of democracy, within the framework of Memetics, but specifically in the context of the evolution of the vaccime and its application as a cure for political diseases.

So first, before we discuss the notion of the vaccime in more detail, lets take a look at the Lexicon of Memetics for a definition of the word vaccime:

vaccime

(pron. vak-seem) Any meta-meme which confers resistance or immunity to one or more memes, allowing that person to be exposed without acquiring an active infection ... Common [vaccimes] are "Faith", "Loyalty", "Skepticism", and "tolerance" ... Every [meme complex] includes a vaccime to protect against rival memes.

(Memetic Lexicon). To tie this to democratic elections, remember that Dredd Blog has always argued that accountability is the vaccime (the antidote)

Ye olde 'middle finger'

to politicians who do not do what they told the voters they were going to do when they campaigned for the votes of those voters.

The voters therefore hold them accountable by voting them out of office at the first opportunity.

Long time readers know that not only does Dredd Blog consider the primary method of applying accountability to be elections, but that Dredd Blog also knows that accountability vanishes when the political system is infected with the toxins of power.

The recent election evolution in the middle east was described as "revolution", which is nothing more than the morph of the application of a vaccime into a progressively stronger dosage, because the political disease has become acute.

For example, in Egypt elections had degenerated into a hollow mockery because those elections were as phony as an election in Russia under Stalin.

Or as phony as an election in Kentucky before the vaccime had been generously applied there to stop the election judges from the peddling of election results to the highest bidder.

In Egypt the people were forced to vote with their feet, i.e. street protests, because the useless paper ballot became a symbol of Mubarak's oppression.

In Libya the people are said to have voted with their guns because when they peacefully assembled to vote with their feet they were shot down.

So, historically the election vaccime is the vote, the protest, or the armed revolution, depending on the type of election disease that must be dealt with.

The bottom line for the future is that one type of therapy or vaccime sometimes fails, mandating a switch to another therapy in order to avoid insanity.