Obama: Trust, but verify

Meanwhile, the two party system is an embarassment and a humiliation to America. "The way the game works" around here is a joke that should make America a laughingstock around the world.

My own life was profoundly changed in 1978 when I got my first home computer as a 12 year old boy. The microprocessor is a different thing in comparison to any figure of authority in the social world. It has been said that it is democratizing, and levels the playing field. True enough, it took instructions from me, a budding programmer of 12 years old. It didn't ask my age. It didn't look for any degree or social expression of credentials or status. I didn't need permission to program. I didn't have to campaign for an election; I didn't even have to apply for a job. Unimpacted by any social process of competitive selection, I simply gave instructions and it followed. Perhaps at the age of 12, the microprocessor was my first follower or subordinate.

No one can understate the changes, still rippling through society, that were brought by computerization and the information revolution that accompanied the growth of microprocessor technology. It's possible to say that the world was changed by that, and to be closer to the truth than when Rob Kall says that the world was changed by electing President Sly. Changes have come to the world, and we saw some of that in Election 2008. For instance, there were CNN-YouTube debates. Facebook and MySpace became campaign battlegrounds.

But, these changes have not reached their logical conclusion. "The game" must become changed by all of this. The two party system gets by through being a pretend, make-believe, fakey representation of reality. The information age reveals the men behind the curtain. It puts the candidates, their campaigns, the television networks, and other participants under the microscope.

Gradually, the players are processing the changes. In the old days, candidates for Congress might get by with punchy one liners, or cookie cutter answers for a few issues that fit onto one flyer. No more.

(That's worth an aside to consider it. If voters really just want five things - jobs, good schools, safe neighborhoods, low taxes and home ownership - then those are mostly what candidates need to address. The rest of standard candidate platforms are blurbs directed at students, seniors, veterans, and the ethnic groups of the district, together with whatever social issues are important to those groups. Campaigns for Congress became rote, formulaic, and predictable. My point is that the internet now moves us beyond sound bites. Web pages allow expository prose that goes to any length. There, a candidate cannot cut short the questioner, like "Oops - look at the time. Gotta go!" That won't cut it any more, and candidates will need to be more forthcoming, offering fuller treatments of their positions on the issues.)

Another change that is brought by the information age is so obvious that someone deserves a dunce cap. We have experienced the invention of the scroll bar. (It's that slider commonly found at the right side of every web page.) With the existence of the scroll bar, there is no longer ANY EXCUSE for ballot-access restrictions. None - no excuse. It's like this -- if 2,000 people file with the Federal Election Commission to be candidates, the ballot can now list every single one of those 2,000 people.

The two party system has spent centuries erecting "barriers to entry" which means an obstacle course of jumping through hoops and doing the hokey-pokey -- just to get on the ballot. No more! This makes no remaining sense!

My reasoning about the scroll bar actually made me less enthusiastic about Ralph Nader this time around. Why stand for the insult that will come to anyone who enters a game and a system that is clearly rigged and stacked against him? To the extent that America continues ballot-access restrictions, those are now a matter of arbitrary fiat and not necessitated due to "space limitations." We have the Information Technology that enables us to manage information, such as who is on a ballot.

Even if the ballot bloated up to 2,000 candidates, well -- as datasets go, for a programmer, that is a small and easily managed set of variables. (I should know. I've seen databases like the general ledger of Citibank, and the corporate travel data across all of General Electric. Those were large and wooly datasets. As for tracking who's on a ballot? --Please, that is programmer child's play.)

So, the pieces of the puzzle exist to play America's political game in a far different way. I guess it is simply a matter of habit to turn on CNN and to watch Bill Schneider and Candy Crowley talk exclusively about Republican and Democrat candidates. This year, I saw Frank Sesno tell a baldfaced lie to CNN audiences -- he said that "there is no independent this year." I bet the people at the Ralph Nader campaign would take exception to that.

Americans have it as a matter of habit, ingrained like potty training, to think that the two party system is the thing, the whole thing, and nothing but the thing. However, the U.S. Constitution is absolutely silent about it; there is not one word in there about a two-party system. It is a habit of convenience, with benefits accruing to the powerful. But, the future will show us that information can simply "flow around" any bottleneck. I bet that there are many frustrated gatekeepers, due to the technologies that are making them irrelevant.

In the old days, there could be quips or cut downs like "There's freedom of the press -- if you own a printing press." But now, technology allows self publishing. There is more competition for publishers and less need for literary agents. The middlemen (gatekeepers) are being cut out by technology.

Above, I said that "The way the game works" around here is a joke that should make America a laughingstock around the world. And I said that somebody deserves a dunce cap. Now I will add that the two party system deserves that dunce cap. It should be possible to sue the state governments that are maintaining the antiquated ballot access restrictions. And, at some future date, Bill Schneider, Candy Crowley, and Frank Sesno will be retired from CNN. People who grew up in the information age will be less interested to conform themselves into a system that offers a "pretend, make-believe, fakey representation of reality," a system of tomfoolery that hoodwinks their fellow Americans.

Can you imagine -- perhaps a generation from now -- that CNN might be run by real Americans, as opposed to these corrupt people who "beggar thy neighbor" by upholding the two party system, which is raping their neighbors? It will happen, but Barack Obama raised no systemic issues during his campaign. He played the game. Above, I gave him credit for consummate gamesmanship, but I also referred to him as "President Sly."

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