The Creation Of Our “Permanent Record”

Authored by David Barnhizer via The Brownstone Institute,

There is no longer an American democracy, and the American Republic is disintegrating as those in control of what is generally referred to as “The Left” aggressively pursue the elimination of the Constitutionally-created Electoral College, a process created specifically to diffuse power and prevent a single group from gaining total and permanent control of America’s federal government. America was a vast, sprawling, diverse, and complex nation at the time of its creation. That scale, diversity, and complexity have been multiplied exponentially since that point.

As Aristotle warned, one of the flaws of democracy was that even though such systems began with a sense of shared community, eventually a majority would emerge that understood its voting power essentially provided full power to dictate rules. The flaw that undermined the system was that the members of the controlling majority would come to realize they could help themselves by extracting from the minority a growing share of social goods and benefits. This would allow the controlling majority to impose higher costs on the minority that often disproportionately created greater returns. I guess we could think of this as imposing a “Wealth Tax” or even more a tax on “Unrealized Income” under the rubric of “Fair Share.”

America is changing by the moment into a new political form, the “Post-Democracy Electronic State.” It has “morphed” into competing fragments seeking power operating within the physical territory defined as the United States while tenuously holding on to a watered-down minimal list of the basic creeds that represent what we long considered an exceptional political experiment. The Rule of Law is significantly weakened and the institutions of law are being used politically by those in power. Freedom of speech and the press are increasingly corrupted to the point that you can’t be certain of the truth or intent of what we are seeing and reading.

Our “leaders” have morphed into cartoon characters who unfortunately have no real understanding of the challenges we face and potential solutions that could preserve the integrity of America. We are beset by various crises—economic, the effects of Artificial Intelligence, immigration, and much more—that are weakening and distorting the nation and appear incapable of understanding or coping. Our educational systems in too many instances have become instruments of propaganda over critical matters over which our “educators” are taking one side of issues with complex elements rather than methods for educating an advanced population in ways that provide them the knowledge and focus needed to deal with the challenges we face.

The post-democracy political order now in power paradoxically consists of a combination of fragmented special interests eager to punish anyone who challenges their desires and a central government that is consolidating its power to monitor, control, and intimidate its citizens. This set of anti-democratic actors also includes an insatiable coterie of Big Data/Big Tech information gathering businesses that are functioning as “enablers” by amassing an inconceivable amount of data on Americans and everyone else for that matter. In some ways they have become a sort of “quasi-government” that subtly and surreptitiously operates almost invisibly but wields incredible influence.

A flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.

– Alexis de Tocqueville

None of us can claim the quality of original insight achieved by Alexis de Tocqueville in his early 19th century classic Democracy in America when he observed that the “soft” repression of democracy was unlike that in any other political form. De Tocqueville explained:

[T]he supreme power [of government]…covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided…Such a power does not destroy…but it enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.

The US, the United Kingdom, and Western Europe are far along in experiencing a “gentle” drift of the kind Tocqueville describes and are rapidly losing their integrity to the point they are becoming “pretend” democracies. The technological power of the Internet, and here I am using that term as shorthand for the host of information and communication capabilities that have developed over the past 15 to 25 years, has come into national and global society with such overwhelming speed that a “social tsunami” has swept through our society in ways that have devastated existing institutions and corrupted the traditional order.

Linked with the psychological effects of what is certain to be a multi-generational (if mislabeled) “War on Terror,” the changes generated by this incredible “event” involve phenomena we are still struggling to understand. The result is that we have changed seemingly overnight from a world in which government and communications media moved at relatively slow speeds with highly controlled access to political decision-makers, data sharing, and investigation, to one in which everyone is endowed with the unprecedented ability to present their views, establish relationships, and organize networks and action groups for both good and bad purposes.

On the Internet, we have billions of voices resounding in an uncontrolled cacophony where 95 percent represent ignorance and malice and perhaps five percent useful insights. This “new normal” includes the strange effects of X.com (formerly Twitter) as an “instant public opinion poll” for political hacks who will do anything to remain in office. It can be used to stir up rage and indignation, make absurd accusations, and create false impressions of a non-existent groundswell of support for the agendas of interest groups that have organized to use the Internet’s capabilities to push for what they want and punish those who deny or otherwise threaten their overtures.

The impact of this still-evolving system on governments and other traditional institutions is profound. One element of what is taking place is a change in the basic nature of society into the “surveillance state.” That newly created system is one in which powerful governmental and private actors increasingly keep track of everything we do in the name of national security, social cohesion, and consumer preference.

Nor is it solely the fading democracies of the West that are experiencing the angst of uncontrollable communication and all-penetrating surveillance. China, Russia, Egypt, and other Middle Eastern nations are all trying to cope with the fact that they are no longer in control of information and the levers of propaganda. The solution of course is to censor, deny access to specific sites, monitor the communications of citizens and others, and take “legal” steps to punish those defined by the governmental monitors as violators of communications defined as harmful or offensive such as “misinformation” or “disinformation” as defined by the state. China has recently arrested its most prominent blogger and enacted harsh criminal laws that impose multi-year prison sentences for spreading rumors through the Internet.

The upshot in the West is that there has been a shift in the nature of government from a reasonably representative hybrid form of complex democracy to a strange mixture of George Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm along with William Golding’s Lord of the Flies. Perhaps one of the most ironic features is that as Internet-based communications systems and applications have come into use over the past two decades they have greatly enhanced the ability for widespread communication among a nation’s citizens. For the first time in our history, we have overcome physical distance and separation to the degree that it is possible to achieve face-to-face interchanges of the kind we always assumed were central to true democracy.

Unfortunately, the ability to communicate has been overwhelmed by numerous competing factors. This includes the discovery that we are a somewhat less than admirable species when provided a “voice”. The Internet has revealed an embarrassing level of ignorance, an increase in cynicism and distrust that has further weakened our views of others, and the loss of any sense of “civic virtue” or community. We no longer seek or achieve compromise in the interests of the larger common community because there is none.

The anonymous nature of many of our Internet communications is both cause and effect of the disintegration of the American community. Too many people hide behind masks while spewing venom and unfounded claims in a sort of “Urban Legend” syndrome circulated as fact. The cowardice and/or cynicism of anonymity is made even worse by the malice underlying much of the commentary as well as the over-hyped sensationalism of our mainstream media, and the disturbing desire for “fifteen minutes of fame” that characterizes many of our individual messages.

Along with these go abuses of power, illicit and criminal uses of Internet technology to harm and intimidate, and the inability of governments to know how to draw limits on their desire for information. At this point, we do not have the slightest clue about how to deal with the interacting forces of the new and still evolving forms of government and accompanying social order.

One thing that seems clear, however, is that much of it is not a positive evolution. The paradox is that the emerging system is in the process of becoming increasingly repressive at the same time it has expanded into a profoundly fragmented society. Each piece, whether representing an economic interest or one of political activism, is committed to relentlessly pursuing its particular agenda. This paradox disappears when we realize that fragmentation works well for the most powerful central political and economic organizations because it implements a “divide and conquer” strategy in which fragmented groups can always be set against each other while the core “power brokers” continue to consolidate power and reap the rewards of their “game.”

The threat from massive government surveillance of its citizens is psychological. The apprehension about what they “could” be doing and who might be looking at our profiles intimidate and “dumb us down.” We “think” without knowing that the National Security Agency (NSA), Department of Homeland Security, or FBI are building up something like our High School Permanent Record or our “social credit” record. Former Director of US National Intelligence James Clapper eventually was forced to admit he misstated (or lied) to Congress during testimony concerning the extent of his Agency’s illegal monitoring of US citizens’ telephonic communications.

Our “virtual” NSA Records could contain potentially bad things about us that we are not allowed to see or rebut, including the opinions of people who may have reasons to criticize us fairly or unfairly. Whether NSA or other actors we experience the fear of exposure of things we would prefer to remain hidden.

The fear exists even though we can never be certain of what “They” actually “know.” It is as if J. Edgar Hoover and his secret files have suddenly been brought back to life. Hoover was long thought to retain his enormous power over politicians in Washington due to possession of secret files detailing the “sins” of our leaders. Now the ability to control all of us by our “sins” if we “get out of line” has been moved to the corridors of the National Security Agency, Homeland Security, Google, Yahoo, and Facebook.

Republished from the author’s Substack