On Extremism in U.S. Politics

The concept of avoiding extremism is useful enough. For those with any kind of an agricultural background though it may be somewhat urbanish.

Extremism in planting season, or in crop rotation--what are such things? The Congress is composed of clever and wealthy people, yet they are not terribly thoughtful intellectually on what social or political philosophy is/are I think.

There are those that have pride in America being a Republic instead of a democracy according to the Founders concepts, for whatever reason. Yet there are two ways to regard a republic such as America has, and several more in other historical contexts.

When representatives of government are regarded as contractors hired by the public through elections to serve their interests, then one doesn't regard them as royals free to dump whatever perfidy they deem appropriate on the hapless minions. If one hires a painting contractor one wants the guy to put quality paint on the building, though the particular method is discretionary for the painters’ expert knowledge. That knowledge might be compared to listening to the many public opinions of a constituency and selecting the most efficacious course in promulgating legislation.

Instead, the representatives and Senators of today have become the minions of concentrated wealth and globalism. Extremism might be construed as following the will of a powerful minority. Just 19% of the income of those earning more than 10 million dollars a year is earned through wages and salaries. The rich own the media and the political philosophy the public is programmed with--that is extremism.

The reality TV quality Presidential races may be produced by and for the powers of concentrated wealth and anti- Adam Smithian capitalism with a focus on serving the interests of a democracy and all citizens best instead of those of a concentrating class of wealth.

Extremism in the lexicon of American politics has often been a pejorative term applied to those dissatisfied with the status quo, concentration of wealth and power and so forth. Today we view extremism as Muslim political philosophy and method like as not, though we wonder if today’s mosque demolition in Pakistan that killed fifty worshippers was a Shi'a or a Sunni facility-C.N.N. did not say...

If the mosque was Shi'a then perhaps the usual Sunni suspects were just using the ongoing terrorist extremist agitation in that nation in some ways directed toward Kashmiri independence and against the west, Indian Hindu foe religionists and the Shia as an opportunity to purge a little domestically. Mohammad was involved in something like 14 battles as his proselytizing outward. We note the same determination to rule the world in many of the Muslims that are extremists for detonating themselves and others.

Perhaps extremism is basic change, or an increase of information in a holographic universal state, that alters the social pattern of being economically and environmentally. Planners should work for the good of all possible people in the quest for a prosperous and intelligent ecotopia. Climbing to the top, with faith and submission to the will of God on the ascent, may be a challenging task to try, for mere human beings alive for just a time.

All extremists are not created intellectually equal. Some move with a definite wrong self- accepted programmatic content. Some people may live in a foe social environment through design or circumstance. Foes are not necessarily reasonable, unbiased or fair in subverting the vital interests of their 'be yas'. Dumb and dumber extremism will not create that perfect renewable social and ecological environment acceptable to God.

There are essential lines of opposition in determining right and acceptable social boundaries. There are collectives in government and corporations including not only access to material wealth but also in compelling select conformity of thought. While God is no respecter of persons, humanity must be or the right of self-defense response is to aim for the belly and pull the trigger on the 12 gauge if necessary.

The broadcast media today is a pervasive violator of the boundaries and freedom to go about one's social life without an unfair and unbalanced Orwellian super-commentator programming the masses. Individual boundary security interests would reallocate the broadcast wavelengths to individual citizen use via the Internet. I personally have enough audio material to recycle my own freq a few days. Concentrated broadcast power is technologically anachronistic and politically corrupting.

Creating defensible boundaries in a complex and crowded social environment is difficult. Some fail to comprehend that the basic human conflict is organismic--to keep that amoeba out there from eating one against one's will. In modern terms and in more complex organisms the amoeba desire to consume is a political will to power and to subjugate others not of kith and kin.

Perhaps that’s enough for this essay. I will need to write another time on what a terrible general Robert E. Lee was for a civil war, and why the south needed someone more dynamic like Julius Caesar to win a civil war against Pompey. Lee was too taciturn and subordinated to President Davis. Lee did not want to leave Virginia except go to Gettysburg to lose a battle to General Meade. Lee did not have the charisma or personality to command the volatile southern generals. Lee was a good engineer and a respectable man who had been commandant at West Point, but if the south had a unified commander-president, perhaps Longstreet, they might have had a better chance of winning the war early before U.S. Grant got up to speed and took over in 1864.

The confederate generals were extremists and emotional, brave and prone to dueling and fighting. The southerners sought to establish a kind of shadow reflection of the northern government with slaves when they needed a dictator for a year as ancient Romans had during war. Unfortunately for the confederacy, General Thomas chose to fight on the Northern side though he was originally from North Carolina. Probably George H. Thomas was the best military mind on the planet; his work for the Army of the Cumberland at Chickamauga and in wrapping up General Hood was methodical and inevitable.

Those that view extremism as a departure from the ideal, more ecotopian course of human development have little patience for those that believe that mass consumerism and high-entropy economics is not extreme itself. It is the mass, essential extremism pushing humanity toward existential extremes.