Psychology for the Politically Concerned

As far as I have been taught until now, politics and psychology were barely related. Politics went the way they did because it was politics, and the human psyche was never introduce as a factor. Psychology only dealt with the person and close relations, with acquaintances mentioned and the relation to the world politics necessitates was never mentioned.  That is until while wandering through the library hoping to find a novel with action, romance, and a great evil to be overcome, I instead found a collection of articles in the interdisciplinary field of political psychology.

The concept seemed so obvious to me that I did not realize at first that the field was less refined and much newer than I expected.  For a scientific field it is very new, its official beginnings being slated to 1940. This means much of the information is not refined yet, but the field itself represents something I think anyone who is concerned with the nature of man and government, and could possibly lead to identifying the true causes of war, oppression, authoritarianism, prejudice of all kinds, which opens the door to eliminating them once and for all.

I am by no means an expert in the field after a week of study, but I write this in hopes it might convince someone to take a glance at it. We all have our ideas concerning politics and how people reason and think. Most of these ideas are based off personal experience that is limited in scope and warped by our own beliefs, no true monitoring of data, and subject to emotion. However, even with currently limited methodology and experimentation, political psychology could remedy the emotional side of politics that distorts even the explanations we give to ourselves out of fear or desire. Whether you are republican, democrat, independent, green, socialist, communist, or even an anarchist, you can agree understanding how and why people make the decisions they do politically is important for our world to take the next step in understanding the path to peace.

In short, google Political Psychology, check your library, and give it a look. Hopefully you’ll find it as intriguing as I do. But as always, think for yourself.

-Justin

Oh dear media

Worshipped in every home, heard and listened to…reaching far more people than any others…precious tool of the elite, supporter of Capitalism, lies and fear. Why oh why can’t you provide us with neutral information? Why is a protest against the mondialisation where the police beat people down and throw at them gas bombs is a good thing while a protest against Chavez who has been repeatedly democratically elected where the police use the same lethal forces against the protesters is not?

You wish to control our mind and I must admit that it works well on most but…but you will not have me. I will never be drinking your words as if they were the truth. Every word you say, I dare wonder if it is a fact, a formulation to corrupt my thoughts, or pure lies.

You went so far to disrupt, that I came to the point of taking everything you say during your “news”, as something wrong. The U.S. wants to get involved in Zimbabwe? It’s not because of inhuman treatment. I look up for independent newspaper from Zimbabwe to try to figure things out but oh so subtle…their website ends with .uk. Am I supposed to be that dumb? Am I not supposed to know that Zimbabwe was a colony of the United Kingdom and fought harshly for their freedom, led by Mugabe?

Why do you throw a fist when China provides Sudan with weapons against Darfur yet you don’t say anything when the U.S. finances the Israeli against the Palestinian? Why can’t you just say things as they are?

Oh dear media, you are doing a wonderful job in your disinformation. I can’t blame you…so much money in the game that it is hard to stick to principles. Don’t you feel dirty to do what you do? Oh, certainly not because I forgot that corporations don’t think about anything else than their pocket.

You have disgusted me, my friend…long time ago.

A brief look at HAARP

The HAARP (High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program), started in 1990, has been under scrutiny and criticism several times in its existence. While some claims are far fetched given current knowledge and come off as nothing more than paranoia (claims such as weather domination or mind control), the most plausible military utilization of the technology is just as frightening. The HAARP facility is designed to research the ionosphere, a turbulent region of the atmosphere that is difficult to study due to the density being too light for weather balloons, but too thick for satellites. The ionosphere is important to communications due to its effect on radio signals and its role in buildup of electricity within the atmosphere.

The HAARP facility was designed to project radio waves into the ionosphere to induce change and study the results. In its current form it certainly has little effect on the environment or electronic systems; however, the research could lead to the capability of world-wide electronics disruption capability in the plausible scheme of things, and possibly weather control (most likely in the form of lightning). The most immediate concern of this is the HAARP research could lead to a SDI replacement that could be slipped in through treaties, as it is not specifically a missile defense device.

The government seems to be fairly open about the facility, with an open house once a year and all documents being unclassified. Still, people should be aware of what their government is doing, even if it is not immediately a concern. By maintaining awareness for things like HAARP when possible, we can monitor our government and keep them to their word about the positive applications of research funded largely in part by two military branches.

Stay aware, and keep thinking for yourself.

-Justin.

Transparency

Since the beginning of ‘leadership’, those in charge have omitted or warped information. The reasonings are many, but one consistent is that they do it to preserve their own power. Especially in this day and age, knowledge and information are power. So when this power is stripped, we are left defenseless and at the mercy of those who wield it.

Just recently, a TSA leak revealed that only a very small percent of airline flights actually have U.S. Air Marshals on board. In response to this fact, the TSA launched an internal investigation to find the source of the leak. They might say the reasoning is that letting terrorists know that air flights are not as secure as we would like them to think.

In truth, there are likely a few more non-philanthropic reasonings behind the cover-up. Lying about the number of Air Marshals in the air allows them to not spend the money to actually hire them, saving the company (as even government is a company these days) money, and profiting the people at the top who manage the books. As long as the people believe they are safe, they are less prone to probe into the workings of the agency as well.

That is not to say there are certain instances were privacy and with-holding information are completely invalid. The exact identities of those marshals should not be revealed. Having detailed reports on spies and undercover officers would put them into harm’s way. However, the government has no right to suppress that they are paying for a thousand air marshals, when only a hundred are being employed, or that they are giving millions of taxpayer money to support a new bill, and hiding how it is spent and where it goes. It is bad enough to manipulate the power of money, but they compound their offense to the people they are meant to serve by manipulating information as well.

Government should be mandated to reveal all internal workings to the public, with very specific cases being allowed to be masked when safety for specific individuals is at risk. It is heinous that they hide from us, and then chide the idea of true democracy as foolish since people will make incorrect decisions, which is a certainty if the agencies serving the public hide information. They continue to take money and information, take the power of the people, increasing their own and lie to our faces and say it is for our own good. Of course government could always get worse, and it is a popular idea to not fix something that isn’t ‘broke’, but not searching for a way to make things better is complacency and foolish.

- Justin

1…2…3…democracy!

I’ve heard plenty of times that a one-party state isn’t a democracy, yet I wonder how a two or three party state is more democratic. How can one believe that the idea of millions of people can be summed up to two or three programs? It seems ridiculous to me.

Best example is the United States. You have the democrats and the republicans. Both are right-winged parties, yet democrats group an extensive board of beliefs and people. We can just look at the ideas of Mr. Obama, opposed to those of Mrs Clinton. At least the primaries gave a bit of a choice regarding the candidate, hence the beliefs and hopes the population wish to see carried to the White House.

Regardless, true Socialists, green, communists of the United States can’t really agree with the whole ideas of those candidates. While other parties exist, they just don’t matter enough to be elected, unable to reach a large portion of the population. In fact, it’s important to note that until this year, California had a law allowing employers to fire their employees for taking part or being part in the communist party.

In my opinion, the only way to reach a true democracy is to either have tons of political parties, or none. The reason is simple: you either have enough choices to join a party that truly represents you fully, or you get involved yourself. In Cuba for example, there are political parties but they are of no importance. The people elect those they believe in the most, who get involved in the community, who helps them. They choose the person who will truly mean to help them, not only an ideal that won’t lead anywhere in the end. I hear that in Venezuela, it’s a dominant-party system yet either way, it resumes in the population choosing and that’s what matters most. Their democratic system is way more advance than ours in North America.

Another thing that causes problem within the current way of doing things is the financing of political parties. In the U.S., there is no limit to the amount of money a party can get, and in fact, the state will even give money to the candidates if they didn’t raise enough (there’s a limit of 245 millions, if I’m not mistaken) That’s…a lot of money! It’s also hard to believe that a company that makes a donation of let’s say…3 millions to a candidate during the campaign, won’t expect a little something later on. The financing of the elections should be kept as low as possible, for both the tax-payers’, and democracy’s well-being. Also, there should be more regulations regarding how much can be given to a political party. In Quebec, I know that the limit as donation to a political party is of $3000 per person.

On a final note, I’d say that no matter the number of party involved, if the population doesn’t get involved fully in the process and this, from the start: there is no chance that democracy will truly be reached. It will remain nothing more than an illusion cherished by those who still believe in it…

A Redefiniton of Government and its Purpose

This should be a fairly simple article in scope. I simply wish to redefine what a government’s purpose is and should be. Several governments today have taken the liberty of overextending the powers given to them by the people, and scaring the people into allowing this to happen. The first step in fixing this problem is to define what exactly a government should be doing, and limit them to this role.

Purposes of a Government:

1. Protection of the people from outside control, including from the governmental body itself.
2. Protection of the people’s right to exist, including all things the people might need to exist.
3. Protection of the people’s right to free thought, expression, and education.

These things summarize most succinctly what a government’s purpose is. Anything further, including attempts to protect the government body from dissolution, is outside the right of the government as given by the people. When the government begins to act as an entity outside the control of the people, it has corrupted its purpose and should either be reformed or replaced.

I would be glad to hear arguments about further roles the government should fill, but at this time this is all I think they should be striving to achieve.

As always, think for yourself.

-Justin

The Illusion of the Outdated Representative Democracy

While my interest in communism, socialism, and economics in general is relatively new, I have always had an enthusiasm for governmental and legislative methods. Since an early age, I have held issue with representative democracy (specifically concerning legislation) and the illusion of democratic process it gives to the people. The initial reasoning behind the process is quite understandable: people were simply unable to devote the time to debate and vote on every issue when a journey to town might take half a day, and as landowners tended to be farmers they needed to work in order to subsist; however, today people have advanced transportation, communication, and access to information. Implementing a true democracy would take only an easily identifiable application of the technologies at hand.

Representative democracy’s placing of law making into the hands of the few results in a skewed representation of the people’s wishes. For example, in the United States the bicameral legislature consists of 100 senators (2 per state) and 435 representatives (a varying number, but at least one per state). Therefore, the ideas and opinions of over 300 million people concerning laws are decided by roughly .0000017% of the population. While executive and judicial matters are understandably concentrated in few hands, having the legislative process so limited is an outrage. Combined with voting systems that have skewed the people’s vote (3 instances of the US President elected without the popular vote), there is little reason to accept representative democracy as ‘democracy’.

The representatives do however play a crucial role, even if they should not be the sole voters on legislation and are elected poorly. By having people focused on the debate between different viewpoints, it would be key in a true democracy for these debates to be presented to the population as information to help the average person make an informed decision. A normal person might not understand why increasing the tax on a certain item .1% is good or bad, but the ‘legislative branch’ should focus on presenting the pros and cons of the issue to the voters. Essentially, in my ideal world, the legislation plays the role of debaters, and the voting populace the judges (if you are familiar with debate).

After defining the role of the legislative branch and giving the vote back to the people, several questions arise. How are the representatives elected? How and when do people vote on these laws? Won’t the legislative process slow to a crawl? Is it even possible to count this many votes consistently? While I won’t try to answer the questions concerning voter fraud since that is not something I feel qualified to discuss, I will answer the latter questions first. After having the legislative branch debate on a law, once the sides have presented their case, the law should be opened for voting. After this, permanent voting centers that are open all days and hours would accept votes for a specific interval. This spreads the voting congestion, and allows people to find a suitable time to vote, thereby encouraging turnout. All information concerning the issue should be available online and at the voting site. Once the bill has finished its voting time, the law would pass or fail, and be implemented as outlined in the bill. Americans will note this removes the Presidential veto, which would be unnecessary in a system that truly followed the will of the people

As for election of these officials, the current methodology is flawed. While speed of travel and communication made organizing districts to appoint national officials the best answer at the time, it is now unnecessary in elections that concern a national body. Term length and time of election are not in the scope of this article, but the method would involve deciding upon a reasonable number of debaters, and having candidates present their ideals to the populace. The voters would then place their support, and the candidates would be elected if they rank within the number of debaters needed. While this could lead to skewed debater representation, since the ability to put the laws into place is in the hands of the people it is not as much of a concern.

When taking my view into consideration, keep in mind that this assumes several conventions of the American governmental model, including a ‘constitution’ as a guideline and paper guaranteeing certain rights, and a judicial branch who can check the legislative branch with said constitution. It also specifically addresses national legislative branch elections, and not elections on any other scale or for other offices. It simply coincides with my ideal that the laws a population must live by should be decided on by the population, and not an insignificant minority elected through faulty systems. I will gladly accept thoughtful criticism in the comments section.

Always keep an open mind.

-Justin