The Idiot's Guide to World Domination

Political power, then, I take to be a right of making laws with penalties of death, and consequently all less penalties for the regulating and preserving of property, and of employing the force of the community in the execution of such laws, and in the defence of the commonwealth from foreign injury, and all this only for the public good.

--John Locke

Memo to Superman:

If Luther wants to rule the world so badly. Give it to him. In a month he'll be sick of it and leave you alone forever.

A great deal of the character of American political communication rests on the foundation of our existence as a "super-power." We seldom refer to the President without calling him "the most powerful man in the world", and while we seldom make explicit reference to the "first" and "second" worlds, our constant reference to the "third world" strongly implies their existence. In fact, probably nothing in American popular and/or political life is so taken-for-granted yet so misunderstood as the nature of political "power."

Power defined:

The common definition of power as represented by S.P. Huntington, suits our discussion well:

"power is the ability of one person or group to change the behavior of another person or group . . . . The power of a state or group is hence normally estimated by measuring the resources it has at its disposal against those of the other states or groups it is trying to influence."

The categories of resource correspond to the kinds of power one can exert:

Coercion

the capacity to force others to behave as you wish or be visited by extremely negative outcomes.

Persuasion

the capacity to provide for others a compelling argument that "voluntary" capitulation to your wishes benefits them.

Seduction

the capacity to influence others' perceptions of their interests to the degree that they do what you want without even having to be asked.

By the simple calculus of this measurement, America would be the undisputed king-of-the-global-hill.

Coercion

Our military might is second to none. Depending on who one asks, the U.S. military has the wherewithal to mount from 1-1/2 to 2-1/2 full-scale wartime theaters of conventional weapons. And even taking into account the ratcheting down of nuclear arms since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, we have the capability of destroying the entire planet at least three time. The Gulf War clearly established that the United States military can travel halfway around the world quickly and efficiently and decimate an established armed force with relative ease.

Persuasion

There are many ways to audit persuasability, but the simplest is to consider the ready availability to the tools of rhetoric. We have mastered stylistic presentation in virtually every medium. We have the economic means to mount and sustain first class campaigns. We have a wealth of goods and services to put up for trade. We have a culture rich in the tradition of negotiation and competition. And of course underlying every negotiation is the veiled threat of consequences posed by the military power discussed above.

Seduction

Few cultures on Earth can portray the ultimate rewards of their value systems as overtly as can we. Our apparent combination of political freedom and material well-being provide compelling testimony regarding our way of life for many people who suffer in less "advanced" conditions.

So we do indeeed seem to be in an enviable position.

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But then, as Huntington is well aware (see Resources), this calculus is not as simple as it seems.

Coercion

Our military staged a significant tactical defeat of the Iraqi forces in the Gulf War, but what if any lasting effect did that exercise of military might have on the balance of power in the region? American forces won almost every sustained military campaign in the Vietnam war, and people can now go to Ho Chi Min City (formerly Saigon) to see what influence those victories had. We forcibly removed Noreiga from Panama, but the drug trade from that part of the world has increased dramatically. Almost every time we have invested ourselves militarily in the affairs of Africans, Eastern Europeans, Central Americans, and Asians, our efforts have been inconclusive where they have not been outright failures.

Persuasion

We have done a significant job of getting other countries to agree to do things our way, but our capacity to enforce that compliance has been less impressive. We stand virtually alone in our embargo of Cuba, Mexico routinely violates the environmental accords expressed in NAFTA, independent "watchdog" groups report that or diplomatic attempts to manage work conditions, treatment of dissidents, trade practices and other internal behaviors of our international neighbors have met with limited if any success.

Seduction

You could put Mike Ditka in a mini-skirt and stiletto heels in front of your filling station, and people would stop if they needed gas, but would that constitute seduction on his part? While it is true that many people in need covet our material abundance, there is no evidence that they have any affection for our "way of life." The world is well aware that we have the greatest disparity between rich and poor on the planet, our ratio of earnings between managers and workers is an international scandal (In 1975 it was 40 : 1. In 1995, although the real standard of living had been relatively static it was 190 : 1.) , and our levels of debt, infant mortality, poverty and crime put us more in common with nations that we call "under-developed" than with the supposedly envious populations of Sweden, Denmark, Japan, and Australia.

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Four as yet unproven presumptions about western standards:

1. The real economic growth on which our affluence depends is sustainable.
2. Our long term problems can be mediated or alleviated by technology.
3. Personal freedom is a universal ideal.
4. Tolerance of others is a universal ideal.

Three generally ignored dynamics of power:

1. Power, especially force, is primarily defensive. Our military might has made the United States and its close allies unlikely targets of invasion, but is useful in the long term-the occasional rescue mission aside--for little else.
2. Power is a productive cycle and as such creates "waste." The collateral effects to the impression of influence often put one in a worse agregate position than before the power was expended.
• Labor unions.
• Saudi tourist industry.
• Presidents Johnson and Nixon.
3. Power is expressive; it use and interpretation as culturally bound.

One if by Land; Two if Bicameral: The Federal Government as Narration. Constitution as Narrative.

I.R. MacNeil uses the somewhat ponderous term "non-promissory exchange projector" to refer to any contextual information that informs the individual's perception of a contract into which he or she has entered (e.g. status, habit, self-esteem). His point is that no simple agreement for the exchange of goods and services can exist without a social context wherein certain realities can be assumed pre-existing it.

Most of these exchange projectors are what we would commonly refer to as beliefs and values. Those beliefs and values propagate and spread through cultures not as empirically tested concepts or as logical axia, but as stories--themes tested in human action.

The U.S. Constitution contains very few specific rules and proscriptions. What it contains is a compact--a system of authority that demonstrates through its organization (see above) the values and beliefs that its adherents consider important and the means for allowing communities to work the particulars out for themselves.

In other words, The Constitution is made up of instituted themes--contexts for testing human action (specifically in the form of government action)--story forms. It is in this sense that the Constitution can be considered a narrative. Like the rules of a game (e.g. chess, basketball, Animal Twister), it provides the specific material requirements for a type of interaction--republican society--using which a virtually limitless set of specific events can be constructed. It provides information about what constitutes relevant "action", the set of "roles" that can be embodied by "actors" in the form and flexible rules for judging what constitutes heroic, villainous and other types of behavior. It even contains a device so that when history finds its structures insufficiently flexible--as in the case of what constitutes a "citizen"--it can be "amended" to make its structures more specific.

Reference to the Constitution by the public almost always employs it in this way (as a warrant for action) as opposed to in its strictly legal sense.

Authority : Narration

The Constitution of the United States of America

The "Founding Fathers" (note to revisionists: Sorry, they were fathers.) recognized that "democracy" was a form of amelioration best left to communities, while they had been given the task of building an institution. The rather brilliant plan they devised provided for a system of authority that could allow the democratic ethic to assert itself in daily/local action without the system falling victim to democracy's less enticing tendencies.

Specifically:

• Democracy does not provide well for the liberty and safety of the minority.
• Democratic decision-making rarely exhibits the painstaking collection of evidence and thoughtful consideration. Instead, it is too often biased by emotion.
• Democratic decision-makers have trouble focusing on the long term at the expense of the immediate.
• Democratic bodies tend to the extremes of flexibility--revisiting decisions either too often or not enough.

The philosophical problem was where in the system to invest authority.

Their answer to the problem was to create a compact to which the populations of the various colonies could commit themselves. Authority would reside in the Compact itself. In essence, the promise the people made to themselves would supercede the people in matters of social comportment. That compact was the Constitution.

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Hacker, Parenti and others argue that the Founding Fathers actually intended to form a nation that could be run by and for an economic aristocracy.

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Constitutional Authority.

The Constitution calls for a three headed system of government:

• The Congress--a public policy decision-making body.
• The President--an executive to oversee the administration of the Congress's decisions.
• The Court--a group of legal experts who could review various actions of the other two bodies.

The system is weighted in favor of the majority in that they get to populate it. The Congress and the President would be chosen through devices that prioritize the will of the majority of the people in the state that the winners would represent. Hence the two bodies would have to answer to those people. In addition, the system weighted itself toward the majority by guaranteeing that many daily decisions would be free of governmental interference (e.g. church membership, speech, assembly, etc) allowing for the machinations of public pressure (the marketplace, community standards, etc) to prevail.

At the same time, the rights of the minority are protected. To this end, two kinds of minority were recognized--individuals and minor segments (smaller states and protectorates). The President could veto Congressional action that threatened individual rights (although that was by no means the original purpose of the veto power), the court could vacate any action by the other two bodies that infringed on individual liberties, and the document iterated a specific "Bill of Rights" out of which precedents of personal freedom could be crafted.

Smaller populations of the federation would be protected by the "bicameral" to two-sided organization of the Congress. The House of Representatives, was populated according to the relative sizes of the states, so that states containing larger numbers of people would have greater influence. The Senate gave each state the same number of representatives--two. For the most part, Congressional action must be considered by both groups, so that each type of influence can be visited on the decision-making process.

In addition, the President would be chosen by an Electoral College. A group of people who would represent the mandates of the people in ratio to the size of their states.

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The American Constitution has been called "the best bad idea in human history." It does as much as can reasonably be expected to manage the majority-minority conundrum, but practice, as usual, falls short of theory. As we have seen:

• representatives do not always "represent" the interests of their constituencies.
• Representatives, especially in the House of Representatives which only has a two-year term, find themselves in what Boorstin called the permanent campaign. That is, they are always scrambling for money to get re-elected. Out of this need for funding arises what is sometimes called a shadow constituency--an unnamed population of interests "represented" by the office holder in tacit exchange for their support. Hedrick Smith quotes one lobbyist as saying, "Democracy is not a spectator sport . . . it's a hands-on sport to help those that help us."
• the marketplace only arguably caters to the "majority."
• the electoral college is an extremely controversial instrument which could theoretically put into office an individual decisively lost the popular vote (see the discussion in the EC link above).

Dr. Jekyll and Henry Hyde: The "Chemistry" of Being Political.

In order to understand the political talk of a given collectivity one must comprehend:

1. The institutional structure of that collectivity.
2. The forces that shape and regulate the interests of individuals within the collectivity.
3. The mechanisms through which conflicts of interest are ameliorated.

The most facile grammar with which to discuss the chemistry of politics (and probably the most accurate, though that is not a philosophical issue that needs to be broached at present) is that of economics.

Despite the implications of Ayn Rand and other strict determinists, Economics is a human invention; it is not a law of nature. Economies arise from circumstances of need. As stated previously, an individual needs to enhance his or her interests . . . which almost inevitably results in cooperative action . . .which at any relevant level of complexity (combinations larger than small groups) inevitably results in divisions of labor and the necessity for some form of contract (since the agreement by which we cooperate in the enhancement of one another's interests will have to be enforced). The physical and emotional proximity of the bearers of these contracts results in a community--which creates communal artifacts (e.g. narrations--history, art and religion--communal identity and role-development). The collection of individual contracts will be contextualized into a broad form generally called a compact--a social contract in which individuals "voluntarily" agree to limit their natural freedoms in exchange for the benefits of communal living.

When communities become sufficiently developed and complex (which doesn't take long. See Hobbes, Leviathan ), they evolve societies--more rigid structures of social organizations, cognizant of but not dependent on the individuals who comprise the community. Societies also generate artifacts (e.g. extra-personal abstractions--justice as opposed to fairness, systems of authority, role-instantiations--memberships, initiations, elites) all of which comprise what comes to be known as the public domain).

To simplify:

Community = Collectivity of Need.

Society = Collectivity of Authority.

From this discussion we can assemble our "periodic table" of political elements:

On the left side, we have "fields" of action (note that the term "society" has been replaced by the less all-inclusive term "institution." To better comprehend why, think of institution as a verb instead of as a noun.). On the right, we have means of creating political artifacts within the contexts of those stations. The ratios of field : means provide examples of political action .

Institution : Amelioration Tort Law.

Authority : Economy Import Tariffs.

Community : Narration George Washington and the Cherry Tree.

Homo PoliticU.S.: An Introduction to American Political Communication.

We anthropomorphize various animal kingdoms by referring to them as "communities." We assign to them divisions of labor, management tables and other "human" attributes. These animal kingdoms are not likely however to become"political" in any more than a metaphorical sense because (as far as we know) they lack certain attributes that render humankind what Aristotle called "Homo Politicus."

The Attributes That Make Us Political:

1. Consciousness--The awareness of and capacity to reflect on our surroundings.
2. Self-Consciousness--The ability to "externalize our perceptions of ourselves . . .to consider our actions . . . To refer to ourselves in the abstract.
3. Historicality--The capacity to deliberately pattern behavior and to modify that pattern based on consideration of the past behavior of ourselves and others.
4. Symbolicity--The ability to represent reality with a structure of relatively arbitrary abstractions. The ability to learn through metaphor.

We define Individual interests, but very little reflection is necessary to see that some of our interests are maximized by cooperation. Cooperation in turn creates interests of its own.

Interests become "prioritized" as we learn that:

• Original Interests create or influence the creation of "offspring" interests.
• The acts of engaging in and sustaining patterns of cooperation create their own interests.
• The social organizations that we "join" become interests in themselves that influence our agendas with regard to other interests.

In short, we become Agents of Interest and engage in actions that promote those that we believe benefit us and/or institutions to which we feel allegiance.

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In the abstract the above considerations make sense; they explain our motivations to political action. In reality, though, it has been thousands of years since any "human" has actually perceived what could accurately call an "individual" interest. As soon as people became social animals, we began to "socialize" our offspring to accept as givens the interests and allegiances that we had come to accept before them. By now all humans are so enculturated that they can very likely no longer perceive of any individual interest that has not been instantiated and reinforced by some group or institution.

While we will discuss socialization as a relevant issue, it is far too cumbersome to incorporate it into every day discussion, so we will continue to speak freely of "individual" and "personal" interests.

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We are being Political when the interests we promote relate to our roles as "public" (as opposed to private or interpersonal) beings or "citizens."

These interests generally take the form of what John Locke referred to as "inconveniences"--the inevitable conflicts that arise from too many people having to much self-determination in too limited a space.

"I easily grant that civil government is the proper remedy for the inconveniences of the state of Nature, which must certainly be great where men may be judges in their own case, since it is easy to be imagined that he who was so unjust as to do his brother an injury will scarce be so just as to condemn himself for it."

Basically it comes down to the ration of one's right to exercise his or her freedoms against one's responsibility to limit such expression in order to safeguard the freedom of others.

Individual Liberty : Social Order

Hence, Political Communication need not be about politics. I can have a personal conversation with you with the strategic goal of influencing your or enhancing my public station, and that conversation can be viewed as political. Likewise, the President of the United States can schedule a meeting with . . . oh let's say one of the interns of his executive staff in the Oval Office of the White House, and that meeting may not be "political" at all.

Remember, as always, categorizations are for the purpose of illumination. Whether something is or is not "political communication" is less important than what we learn about the content and/or ourselves by viewing it as political communication.