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rodbender wrote:
That will give them the excuse to call for confiscation of all arms and replace our Constitutional Republic with a dictatorship, with none other thanObama at the helm. He just happens to be the guy in charge at the time, or so they hope. And this man is the epitome of Marxism.
I think you may be overestimating their ability to think in multiple steps. The emergence of the police state is entirely stigmergic in nature.
Instead ofconceptualizing world affairs as though it were a giant chessboard (with the obvious implication that there is a chess master manipulating the pieces), you should instead view it as a flock of pigeons. Hundreds (or thousands, or millions) of individual actors, all consumed with self-interest and taking cues from their neighbors in the flock. The result is an huge flock of birds that all turn and rise and fall in unison, despite the lack of leadership beyond the immediate needs of the individual. It is a self-organizing construct.
The most likely scenario is that the lawmakers (who only want to protect their own asses) caved to the banking industry lobbyists (who only want to protect their own asses) who were acting under pressure from their shareholders and creditors (who only want to protect their own asses). Are we seeing the trend?
For most people, strategic thinking rarely extends beyond step 1 "What is the immediate result?". Congress is no different.
Make no mistake here. There may be actors within the flock who can think beyond step 1. They are capable of influencing the consensus, sometimes greatly. But they cannot direct it. Again, consider the flock. If an individual detects a predator and veers away from the flock, he risks exposing himself to the predator. The rest of the flock will not follow. If however he gently invades the space of the surrounding flock members, he can influence the flight path of his neighbors, who then invade the flight space of their neighbors, until consensus spreads throughout the flock and a change in flight path is achieved.
This is why politics are often dominated by the fringe. Governance from within the consensus is isolated from external stimuli, and ultimately unable to affect the consensus. Fringe members however, are likened to the fringe members of a flock. They can see the predators or food, and are able to guide the flock.
This is also why "grassroots" movements tend to be so effective. Rather than focusing on flock consensus, individuals focus on nearby neighbors.A successful grassroots campaign will create a positive feedback loop, whereby influence is perpetuated through the flock in small incriments.
Of course, if you really want to understand stigmergy, you should consider the work of Pierre-Paul Grosse. He was a French zoologist who first introduced the world to the concept in his 2400 page work on termites, "Termitologia".
An editor has expressed concern that this article may be documenting a neologism.