The US presidential elections, and most elections in the “democracies”, have long been flawed, as democratic processes, for reasons which are generally not explained with the psychological and historical depth they require.
In a nutshell, one cannot have democracy without ISEGORIA… Isegoria is the right of all to address equally the public space. Classical media and social networks are subsets of the public space.
Isegoria is violated by the monopoly power the plutocracy, as a class, exerts on the media, by its literal ownership of it. One also needs another concept, PARRHESIA… “to speak candidly or to ask forgiveness for so speaking“. Oligarchic ownership or control of media works in the interest of the oligarchy, not in the interest of truth, and especially not of truth pertaining to We The People. Hence the importance of so-called “social media”… an attempt to bring back isegoria and parrheisia… and the only one possible… at this crucial stage of civilization.
The lack of isegoria and parrhesia were long used by the Global Deep Plutocracy to increase its power, and now more than ever. Not a good harbinger of a rosy future.
The media owning plutocratic class was able to steer the debate about the suitability of Joe Biden as President by avoiding all the subjects which could have hindered him seriously, and, first of all his role in engineering wars, and the supremacy of the financial plutocracy. This was achieved by denying isegoria in a way which should be illegal (but is not).
An example: I sent dozens of comments to the New York Times mentioning the role of Biden in the invasion of Iraq (I have been a subscriber of the NYT for decades). All my comments were all censored, because no US citizen should be exposed to such reality, the connection of Biden with the destruction of Iraq. Now this sort of steering of public opinion should be completely unlawful. This is not a question of Biden versus Trump, but of propaganda versus reality. By hiding Biden’s role in unjust war and unjust financial architecture, it is the latter which are been hidden… If Biden had not been around, the establishment would have found an alter ego.
Besides the question of guilt (of Biden) there is the question of character (of Biden). Why did Biden get involved in the death of millions of people, and what does it say about his proclivities? And why is the US citizenry averting its eyes, especially the self-declared “progressives” from the subject?
Exposed to a situation where war could be a solution, why should not Biden jump on it, when he was involved in wars of choice for no good reason but pleasing his hyper wealthy friends and sponsors?
The answer, that news outlets can do with the public as they please, because they are private, is philosophically incorrect. Monopolies are not private, they are imposed on the public. Overall, less than a dozen legal persons control national US news feed. They can mind mold all, and did!
The New York Times is the “newspaper of report” in the USA, it has plenty of prerogatives, including being the biggest information source in the USA. So when the New York Times decided Stalin was cuddly and Hitler did not kill Jews, so it was, and the US public came to esteem both fascist dictators… enough to refuse to get involved in a timely manner.
The US public was taught to become intolerant of those who, like the French, wanted to do something about Stalin and Hitler. The USA refused to provide help to France and Britain in a timely manner, even when the two representative democracies declared war to Hitler. This US attitude came to be called “isolationism“… But it was not that, it was isolationism from hurting fascism… While US plutocrats were amking crucial deals with fascist regimes all over the world, for example, providing them with fuel And that impudently called “isolationism” had been cognitively imposed by the New York Times and its ilk… because, first of all, Wall Street had organized Germany (in the 1920s and 1930s), and the assets it was invested in were doing great there.
Think of it: if the US President had declared that the USA would provide help as needed by the French Republic, Hitler’s own military would have staged a coup against him. We know this, because said military informed the US and UK authorities as early as 1937. But then both the US and the UK were happy that the French Republic was the only determined enemy of the Nazis. France had everything to lose, the US, everything to gain, and Britain was confused (Britain stopped being confused after Madrid fell to the Nazis, with Franco and Mussolini in tow)…
To this day, none of this is over the cognition horizon, let alone debate in the social space. However, it had major social implications, worldwide… then in the 1940s, but also now in the Twenty-first Century. Because it shows how much the ruling oligarchy can rule the cognition space. For example, this is why the energy crisis causing climate change has not been solved: ruling media deliberately steered the debate into fake considerations…
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The Global Deep Plutocracy hates Trump: Trump damaged their “Free Trade”, which is neither free, nor a trade, and their grip on the world, and minds which leaves no space for democracy. If EVIL-POWER (Plutocracy) has all the power, DEMOS-KRATIA (Democracy) has none. It’s very simple. That’s why those who did not learn to lie to themselves in academia, understand that plutocracy, the self-declared “elite”, is incompatible with democracy: they are simple, not contrived minds. And this is why those whose salaries are paid by the plutocrats (employees of the top universities) do not. Academia is a prostitute (that means that academia is for sale… and was actually bought, and is now owned). Why do you think that the wealthiest prostitutes (Harvard, etc.) are the most esteemed? Since when is thinking coincident with wealth?
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THE FORMS OF SPEECH DEMOCRACY CANNOT DO WITHOUT:
There are several completely different, yet related concepts in speaking publicly: free speech, rhetoric, isegoria, parrhesia. One should not confuse isegoria with parrhesia… The former is the right to address assemblies equally, the second is closely related to what the French call “franc-parler“… To speak frankly. Without franc-parler, there cannot be parrhesia. Parrhesia is the royal road to higher philosophy.
Isegoria is an abbreviation for: all having the SAME speech capability in any PUBLIC PLACE. It is a different notion from free, sincere, open speech… Parrhesia. Democracy is pretty much impossible without having both. Michel Foucault gives a good description of the latter (Berkeley, 1983)
Etymologically, “parrhesiazesthai” means “to say everything — from “pan” (everything) and “rhema” (that which is said). The one who uses parrhesia, the parrhesiastes, is someone who says everything he has in mind: he does not hide anything, but opens his heart and mind completely to other people through his discourse. In parrhesia, the speaker is supposed to give a complete and exact account of what he has in mind so that the audience is able to comprehend exactly what the speaker thinks. The word “parrhesia” then, refers to a type of relationship between the speaker and what he says. For in parrhesia, the speaker makes it manifestly clear and obvious that what he says is his own opinion. And he does this by avoiding any kind of rhetorical form which would veil what he thinks. Instead, the parrhesiastes uses the most direct words and forms of expression he can find. Whereas rhetoric provides the speaker with technical devices to help him prevail upon the minds of his audience (regardless of the rhetorician’s own opinion concerning what he says), in parrhesia, the parrhesiastes acts on other people’s mind by showing them as directly as possible what he actually believes.
https://foucault.info/parrhesia/foucault.DT1.wordParrhesia.en/
Real philosophers are inclined to practice parrhesia… And it is frequently used against those who practice it, by using rhetoric, to some extent its adversary… we saw a bit of that in the Trump against Global Deep Plutocracy duel. Trump practiced parrhesia, and it was used against him, thanks to lack of isegoria and colossally vicious, misleading and disinforming rhetoric.
Patrice Ayme
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Patrice Ayme's Thoughts 
November 8, 2020 at 9:10 pm |
Nobody talks about Biden wanting to invade Iraq. What was his reason?
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November 8, 2020 at 9:25 pm |
Hmmm… I say: FRACKING. He said WMDs at the time… although he admitted that this was a lie… But he expressed his hatred for Hussein as early as 1998, calling Hussein a “son of a bitch” and recommending his removal by the US Army
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November 8, 2020 at 9:22 pm |
“The lack of isegoria and parrhesia were long used by the Global Deep Plutocracy to increase its power, and now more than ever. Not a good harbinger of a rosy future.”
Corey Tufts: Would you say that the global deep plutocracy is an intentional organization or a emergent one? It seems to me to be a decentralized organization without a coherent intentional individual structure.
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November 8, 2020 at 9:22 pm |
Intentionality, consciousness are already baffling concepts at the level of the individual brain, which is itself decentralized and emergent. So within the collective mind, or the individual mind, we encounter the same problem. But it is not necessary to solve it for mitigation!
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November 8, 2020 at 9:29 pm |
“Academia is a prostitute (that means that academia is for sale… and was actually bought, and is now owned). Why do you think that the wealthiest prostitutes (Harvard, etc.) are the most esteemed? Since when is thinking coincident with wealth?”
Thinking may not be coincident with wealth but wealth is coincident with education and education greatly contributed to thinking. But not always.
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November 20, 2022 at 11:29 pm |
The plutocratic, debate controlling establishment of financial, tax scam, and political influence peddling artists decides which venues are proper for debate, and who can participate.
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January 20, 2023 at 6:33 am |
I would argue that the Roman Republic fell because the armies were raised by Generals who paid for them out of their own pocket, and kept all the loot. Effectively, the army was a means for some, like Caesar, to get really rich. Inevitably people like Sulla Felix decided to take over anyway.
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January 20, 2023 at 6:50 am |
Fall of the Roman Republic:
A confluence of factors.
Generals who paid for them out of their own pocket, and kept all the loot. Effectively, the army was a means for some, like Caesar, to get really rich. That indeed aggravated matters. It was an indirect consequence of marius’ reform of the military. We can’t know what he really intended to do about it: he died of pneumonia, a few weeks into his seventh Consultship, when he was getting ready to fight Sulla.
However, the crisis of Republican decay started 60 years prior.
Marius partially adressed the problem of no more middle class soldiers, which the Gracchi had found, and that invading Germans had tried to exploit.
What Sulla wanted is not clear (to me).
What Caesar wanted was clearer: he wanted to to conquer Germania and Persia. He clearly thought that was mission number one. He had also rammed earlier, in 59 BCE, a reform of the type the Gracchi had tried. That made him the chief of the Populares.Caesar got assassinated because it didn’t cross his mind that many vicious Senators had no idea whatsoever of the danger Rome was in.
After Caesar was assassinated, the situation could only be retrieved by his grand nephew… But Augustus was neither as smart nor as moral, nor as superman as Caesar. So Moreover, the professional army wanted power, and instrumentalized Augustus. Augustus instituted a traditional dictatorship, like Sulla, but with no respect for the Republic.
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