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Tuesday, March 12, 2019

How To Identify The Despotic Minority - 9

Got signs?
I. Identify The Source of Power

Today, let's talk about the source of power that feeds the tyranny of the despotic minority (How To Identify The Despotic Minority, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8).

The main power source of the despotic minority is the lack of, or absence of, accountability; which is another way of saying a lack of competent law enforcement.

I say that because accountability is a critical part of the foundation of freedom and democracy (When Accountability Is A Plague, 2, 3, 4).

Dredd Blog first brought this up about a decade ago:
"Accountability is the missing conceptual link in the current debate over how best to advance democracy. Democracy affirms the need to justify decisions made by citizens and their representatives: it is a system that connects the values of the individual with the decisions of the collective. The preferences of citizens revealed by fair elections (representation) or organized and definitive discussion (deliberation) are the starting points of democratic legitimacy.
...
A clearly defined accountability system is crucial to any system of representative democracy because citizens, through their vote, legitimize or give authority to leaders to act."
(When Accountability Is A Plague). In addition to that quote I also wrote:
"We have seen the emergence of a new type of 'accountability' during the past decade.

We could describe it as stealth accountability, which is being framed and presented as 'policy differences'.

Instead of political wrongs, crimes, or sources for proper retribution, the worst of governance is accepted simply as bad policy for which impeachment is off the table.

The official story line designed to launder egregious and treaty violating government behaviour is composed of a one liner something like 'one administration cannot punish a prior administration for what that prior administration did based on policy differences between the two administrations'.

Having declared that premise, the official exercise then becomes one of describing everything the prior administration and everyone in it did as 'policy', even to the degree of calling war crimes a policy of government.

When such a position is unleashed and promulgated, each current administration is then relieved of the dirty, hard, and painful work of applying the principles of accountability to any previous administration, and instead, can focus on re-election.

This evaporation of accountability is one of the primary signs of a or the decline of the U.S. Republic."
(ibid). Let's now look into a group of the despotic minority which recognizes the dog whistle words used to cover up a lack of accountability (The Shapeshifters of Bullshitistan, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17).

The key word I want to focus on today is "immunity" (Follow The Immunity, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7).

II. Identify The Use of Power

One of the terms of art used by financial plunderers in the current Plutocracy (The Homeland: Big Brother Plutonomy, 2, 3, 4, 8) is "other people's money" or OPM.

That is an elementary school level tactic compared to the use of "other people's power", or OPP.

The despotic minority operatives use other people's power as if it was their own, and thereby they are able to exercise more power than the majority.

III. Identify Those Whose Power
Has Been Usurped By The Despotic Minority

I asked in a previous post "does Nancy 'impeachment is off the table' Pelosi get it yet?" because impeachment is the source of accountability built solidly into the U.S. Constitution (What Does The Word "Whoever" Mean?).

"Houston we have a problem" and we also have the answer to my question: "Pelosi says Democrats should not move to impeach Trump" (Roll Call).

Using The Speaker as another OPP source, the despotic minority has accomplished a major metastasis.

This cultural disease will now be able to spread like California wildfires (The Authoritarianism of Climate Change).

Pelosi's photo will appear along with other Queens of Stalingrad now (The Queens of Stalingrad, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8).

That is because she has created an additional immunity for the despotic minority, that is, Nancy Pelosi provided another way for enemies of the people to avoid accountability (Bush II Eradicated The Robber Barons).

So, Nancy, how are you going to stop Trump Voting machines in your district (China Gives Ivanka Trademark On Voting Machines) ?

IV. Where Freud Left Off

As regular readers know, I do not see this issue in terms of individual disease.

Instead, I see it as a cultural cognitive disease which Freud warned us to take deadly serious note of:
"If the evolution of civilization has such a far reaching similarity with the development of an individual, and if the same methods are employed in both, would not the diagnosis be justified that many systems of civilization——or epochs of it——possibly even the whole of humanity——have become neurotic under the pressure of the civilizing trends? To analytic dissection of these neuroses, therapeutic recommendations might follow which could claim a great practical interest. I would not say that such an attempt to apply psychoanalysis to civilized society would be fanciful or doomed to fruitlessness. But it behooves us to be very careful, not to forget that after all we are dealing only with analogies, and that it is dangerous, not only with men but also with concepts, to drag them out of the region where they originated and have matured. The diagnosis of collective neuroses, moreover, will be confronted by a special difficulty. In the neurosis of an individual we can use as a starting point the contrast presented to us between the patient and his environment which we assume to be normal. No such background as this would be available for any society similarly affected; it would have to be supplied in some other way. And with regard to any therapeutic application of our knowledge, what would be the use of the most acute analysis of social neuroses, since no one possesses power to compel the community to adopt the therapy? In spite of all these difficulties, we may expect that one day someone will venture upon this research into the pathology of civilized communities. [p. 39] 
...
Men have brought their powers of subduing the forces of nature
to such a pitch that by using them they could now very easily exterminate one another to the last man. They know this——hence arises a great part of their current unrest, their dejection, their mood of apprehension. [p. 40]"
(Civilization and Its Discontents, S. Freud, 1929, emphasis added). In the nine decades since that was written, the dynamics of brain science have borne him out:
"Beyond such internal mechanisms of variation, environment-driven plasticity lends yet another layer of complexity to the brain. The brain is capable of remarkable remodeling in response to experience. Signals originating from the environment can cause both widespread and localized adaptations. At the level of individual cells, structure and function are continually changing with the environment in a dance of lifelong brain plasticity, and some experiences, such as stress or physical exercise, affect the growth, survival, and fate of newborn neurons in neurogenic regions of the brain.
...
Traditionally, cells are defined by the tissue to which they belong as well as their particular functional role or morphology. This classification represents a developmental trajectory that begins early in embryogenesis and is hardwired into each cell. But other differences among cells are more subtle. Multi-dimensional analyses of gene expression and other metrics have revealed remarkable heterogeneity among cells of the same traditional “type.” Cells exist in different degrees of maturation, activation,plasticity, and morphology. Once we begin to consider all of the subtle cell-to-cell variations, it becomes clear that the number of cell types is much greater than ever imagined. In fact, it may be more appropriate to place some cells along a continuum rather than into categories at all.
...
Brain cells in particular may be as unique as the people to which they belong. This genetic, molecular, and morphological diversity of the brain leads to functional variation that is likely necessary for the higher-order cognitive processes that are unique to humans. Such mosaicism may have a dark side, however. Although neuronal diversification is normal, it is possible that there is an optimal extent of diversity for brain function and that anything outside those bounds—too low or too high—may be pathological. For example, if neurons fail to function optimally in their particular role or environment, deficits could arise. Similarly, if neurons diversify and become too specialized to a given role, they may lose the plasticity required to change and function normally within a larger circuit. As researchers continue to probe the enormous complexity of the brain at the single-cell level, they will likely begin to uncover the answers to these questions—as well as those we haven’t even thought to ask yet."
(Advancing Techniques Reveal the Brain’s Impressive Diversity). Remember the reality that cognitive ugly is not skin deep, it is all the way to the neurons.

V. Closing Comments

Like an ecosystem without habitat, any culture, society, nation, or civilization without accountability is doomed.

Any such entity becomes more and more temporary as the cancer of a despotic minority of any type exercises more power than the majority does, changing the very nature of the entity being infected.

The resulting damaged entity is ensnared by a life-changing reality.

Like when bratty kids control or infect the life of clueless parents (Permissive Parenting: 7 Signs Your Kid Is a Brat, How to Brat-Proof Your Child).

The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.

Let It Ride?



Dumbo Baby Mine?



5 comments:

  1. The threat is existential for yet another branch (link).

    ReplyDelete
  2. Little despots get educated into tyranny (cruelty).

    "The plot involved students who attended or were seeking to attend Georgetown University, Stanford University, UCLA, the University of San Diego, USC, University of Texas, Wake Forest, and Yale, according to federal prosecutors" (NBC News).

    ReplyDelete
  3. The judge in the Manafort case is an example of doing the proper thing, which is understanding that accountability and freedom are related. Nancy Pelosi does not get it, and as a result America will suffer for it.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Even Paul Ryan, a Trump lackey, allowed a House vote on impeaching the president when he was Speaker of the House.

    The Nancy does not want to.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Strayan sarcaustic humour! Kids 'striking', climate change, Rupert Murdoch, entrenched lobbyists and a very very corrupt A Gov't.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OL8a1YEhk_o

    ReplyDelete