Technology and politics, as opposed to tech for tech's sake: "That said, its worth noting that the folks on the left Erickson acknowledges as models actually tend to be people with political backgrounds who learned some tech, not the opposite. Joe Rospars, Eli Pariser, and Markos Moulistas all have degrees in political science, not computer science." (reply)
It was probably naivety on my part but I can recall being surprised when I learnt that the Republican Party in DC would manage meetings that met weekly which would hash over the media messages of the next week. I can understand Karl Rove doing it in the White House, but this meeting included the media - as opposed to political operatives. Producers from TV, radio and the researchers for op-ed writers would be present at the meeting. This was how the Republican Party managed media discipline and had Americans hearing the same thing over and over no matter what their preferred media for information.
So we have political pundits, or opinion makers, who are little more than performers. I do not know how they can just surrender their conscience in such a manner and say completely opposite things to what they may feel or believe. I don't have the personality to do that kind of thing. I have great difficulty not being me.
So I have issues understanding how political performers like in these videos can just do what they do.
First was the open mic video where Chuck Todd, Mike Murphy and Peggy Noonan gave their non-performed opinions. It was honest enough that Noonan decided she had to make a rebuttal to herself and that she didn't really mean what she said when the cameras and mics were supposedly off.
Then there is this video of Republican mouthpieces happily contradicting themselves over a period of time. The Daily Show first made this piece of breathless hypocrisy visible when they did the debate between Governor Bush and President Bush. I suspect to sleep straight in bed at night these people would either need to be amoral or treat it as a performance - and not real. Then again maybe they can surrender their ego, morality and conscience to a group dynamic where consistency and honesty no longer matter.
During World War II Germany and Japan were fighting against the production methodology of Ford and General Motors. This was the modern form of the economic corporation constructed by loosely tied and decentralised managerial units. Central to managerialism is accountability - something that politics, for its own selfish reasons, tries to step outside.
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