The End of Mass Democracy

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In modern America, it is impossible to know if what appears in the press is real news or some made-up nonsense intended to trick the public. The increasingly important site Conservative Tree House posted up a sampling of entire fake media people and operations the other day. When you are paid to write on behalf of a party, you’re not a journalist. You are an advocate. When you are an advocate posing as an independent media, you are a fraud.

Even though much of what is in the press is agit-prop, there’s information to be gleaned from it. This story in Bloomberg the other day about how the GOP is preparing to end popular selection of their nominees is a good example. Ostensibly, the “report” is about how they will navigate a brokered convention. What they really want to do is introduce the idea of ending the primary system or at least severely curtailing it.

The Democrats have largely made their primary system a beauty contest. The super delegate system lets party officials put their thumb on the scale to the point where Clinton could lose the rest of the primaries and still win the nomination. Of the 2382 delegates at the Democrat convention, 712 will be controlled by the party. In other words, Sanders will have to have own 71% of the delegates in the primaries to win the nomination.

An important thing to remember about America politics in the technocratic era is that there is only one party. The Bipartisan Fusion Party comprises the elites from technology, politics, culture and finance.  Republican and Democrat are just the two faces of the party so that we can keep up the appearance of being a popular republic. It’s not a lot different than what Augustus did in Rome when pretending to include the Senate in decisions.

Unlike Rome, this system evolved organically. The parties have become play things for the mega-donors, like sponsoring champions in tournaments. Team Red is paid to beat Team Blue. It’s their reason to exist. It’s why public policy never changes, regardless of which team wins. They are no longer competing for the right to set policy. They are competing for the right to hire their friends and relatives. Washington DC is a global Tammanay Hall.

The lesson Team Red drew from the 2008 and 2012 election is that white people are their biggest liability. They have to shed the image of being the party of white people. That’s why they tried every trick in the book to get Marco Rubio the nomination. He was going to be their Obama. It’s also why they appear poised to blow up their own party to stop Trump. In their view, destroying the “white party” may be the only way to save their party.

This bit from the story is a good indication of what’s coming:

“Donald Trump may well end up having the most votes anyone has ever gotten in a Republican primary this time. That was true for Mrs. Clinton and she didn’t get the nomination,” in 2008, said Ron Kaufman, a member of the RNC’s rules committee. “The thing that the party has to do is to make sure the voters believe their votes matter to keep them in the party for November.”

That’s a a classic bit of double-speak. On the one hand, the guy who gets the most votes is not going to be the nominee. On the other hand, they are trying to figure out how to convince the rubes that their votes matter. They don’t have to con all the rubes, just enough to keep up appearances, which is what we are seeing in the Democratic primaries. Low turnout, but enough to keep up appearances.

My bet all along has been that the GOP will eventually allow Trump to have the nomination, but only when they know they can undermine his campaign enough to keep him from winning the general. If they believe they can hold the House and Senate, but starve Trump out in the general, they will let him win the nomination at a contested convention. It’s the intermediate game.

If they cannot be sure of that, and Trump’s political savvy so far makes this a tough sell, then they have to go all in on the long game. That means dumping Trump and Cruz and going with a party man. Karl Rove is out trying to work this angle now by claiming that Trump and Cruz have no chance to beat Clinton in the fall, as if she is this wildly popular rock star in the view of the public.

The short term is getting a nominee, but the long game here is to avoid this ever happening again. Both parties face the same dilemma. They represent the interests of about 20% of the public. They augment this with lip-service to various ideological groups, but that’s wearing thin. If you are a pro-life Christian, for example, you have to know the GOP thinks you’re an idiot. If you are a union guy, you know the Democrats don’t care about you in the least.

The way around it is what we see with the Democrats. They have conditioned their suckers to accept the primary as a beauty contest. The GOP will follow the same path. There will be new ballot rules to keep trouble makers out of early primaries and a super delegate system to let the party pick the nominee from a slate of pre-approved options. The primaries will just be proof of concept exercises. Your vote will no longer count much at all.

To keep Z Man's voice alive for future generations, we’ve archived his writings from the original site at thezman.com. We’ve edited out ancillary links, advertisements, and donation requests to focus on his written content.

Comments (Historical)

The comments below were originally posted to thezman.com.

39 Comments

Notsothoreau #10761 April 2, 2016 10
I’ve been impressed with The Conservative Treehouse. They have attempted to do real journalism. These stories have been published but the media buries them. People in Wisconsin don’t seem to know about Cruz and Beck handing out toys to the illegals. CT has been on top of the GOPe’s attempt to run yet another loser this election. None of this should be a surprise. They never fight this hard to beat the Dems. I don’t see a way out of this that doesn’t turn violent.
Buckaroo Banzai #10764 April 2, 2016 6
Agree about The Conservative Treehouse– it is extremely reliable. Breitbart used to be solid, but the Shapiro/Fields mess exposed it a little. To Breitbart’s credit, they purged those foul miscreants, but who knows what other rot may lurk within.
Kathleen #10756 April 2, 2016 9
That’s exactly what they want, for everyone to finally know and understand that your vote does not count, that this is just a junk-show of illusory democratic process. That way they can select their pre approved Deep State candidate without any pushback from the people. In the end, this is why The Donald is such a threat to them. They don’t care about the reasons why people are voting for him, they care that he’s upset their apple cart. All the hand-wringing over his not being a conservative or he’s not “presidential”, or absurd focus on every last word coming out of his mouth, is all a big show. They want their oligarchy to continue as always, and by God, a brash and blustery real estate tycoon who is not in their club is not going to get in their way. Except that he is.
el_baboso #10757 April 2, 2016 4
I dunno Z-man. By the late 80’s, I had some premonitions we were heading this way. By the mid-90’s I understood the fundamentals well enough to know where we were heading. Then like so many, I got sucked up in the dot com boom and just stopped thinking about all this altogether.Now I don’t know how we can get out of this without a fight… a struggle that could destroy the nation as easily as it could redeem it. Even without a struggle, the ruling class is going to auger this so far into the ground, that Enoch Powell’s prophecies are going to seem like fairy tales. Either way, we reap the whirlwind.
thezman #10760 April 2, 2016 9
Back in the 80’s when I was a bottom rank employee of a congressman, it was glaringly obvious that both parties were essentially one party. Reagan was essentially a reform movement from the Right side. Then the DLC came along as a counter reformation. Even so, both sides of the political class sought to appeal to the majority of the people. Majoritarianism was still the dominant mode of thought. In the 90’s this started to shift. The tech boom gave us tech billionaires, but also gave us global financial billionaires. Majoritarianism when 1% controls 99%.The emerging minoritism is the only way for a tiny minority to control a large country. This is a very Eastern idea, by the way. By atomizing the people, one small group can come to dominate all. Saddam Hussein practiced this. Assad’s Syria was based on it. Democracy cannot exist under these arrangements, but you can’t get away from democracy in the West so the way around it is to stack the deck.I don’t think this will end well, by the way.
el_baboso #10763 April 2, 2016 1
The Roman epigram “The Orontes flows into the Tiber” pops up in my head frequently. Meaning that Eastern despotism will pollute Occidental political, business, social life…, everything. Wasn’t it inevitable once Petro-dollars provided Gulf sheikhs with enormous political leverage within our system? Now there are Russo-dollars and Sino-dollars, too. The cloud people have found their mentors and partners, and they don’t believe in representative government and equality before the law. I vote for autarky.
Buckaroo Banzai #10766 April 2, 2016 4
“By atomizing the people, one small group can come to dominate all.” Network television was used as a wedge to separate people from each other and break up traditional associations, and cable television built on this by splitting the disjointed mass audience into a variety of small audiences, creating an illusion of association where none really existed. They have used the media exquisitely against us. The internet has now displaced television and is more of a two-edged sword. It is very efficient at splitting people up, but it is also very efficient at allowing people to form virtual interactive associations, so people are finally interacting with each other again in groups based on common interests. In this way I am actually hopeful. Making the transition from virtual interaction to meaningful real-life interaction will be a big hurdle, and is our only hope of reclaiming lost ground.
Frogdaddy #10788 April 3, 2016 3
I feel like I did when my high school girlfriend dumped me. I’ve spent money “conservative” books and publications. You can only get a abused/used for so long before the pissed on get pissed off.
Christopher S. Johns #10768 April 2, 2016 3
Vanderluen has an excerpt up from a Bloomberg article up over at American Digest describing how a tech-savy fixer used social media to rig elections across Latin America:“As for Sepúlveda, his insight was to understand that voters trusted what they thought were spontaneous expressions of real people on social media more than they did experts on television and in newspapers.He knew that accounts could be faked and social media trends fabricated, all relatively cheaply. He wrote a software program, now called Social Media Predator, to manage and direct a virtual army of fake Twitter accounts. The software let him quickly change names, profile pictures, and biographies to fit any need. Eventually, he discovered, he could manipulate the public debate as easily as moving pieces on a chessboard—or, as he puts it, “When I realized that people believe what the Internet says more than reality, I discovered that I had the power to make people believe almost anything.”http://americandigest.org/sidelines/2016/04/#a033018What the Bloomberg article does not come out openly and state is that the 0bama campaign used all these techniques and more in 2012. The Red Party, always a little slow on the uptake, will have learned the lessons by now.
Kathleen #10773 April 2, 2016 1
I read this same article. Pretty scary. And really, who knows how long this type of thing had been going on? My only question is why this guy would be revealing this now? How does he or the system benefit from the Big Reveal?
Christopher S. Johns #10811 April 4, 2016 0
Good question. I think the answer may be that with so many people now in on the game that this Sepulveda wants to get his share of the credit, such as it is, for pioneering this stuff.
Andy Texan #10762 April 2, 2016 3
I first heard about the uniparty from Michael Savage about 8 years ago but did not believe it. None of the other talkers or bloggers were as perceptive (at least none that I had encountered). I was a Cruz supporter up to the summer. In my opinion Cruz is a card carrying member of the uniparty hierarchy and is their stealth candidate to overcome this year’s anti-establishment sentiment. Vociferous Cruz supporters are still blind to the collapse of the democratic republic as prefigured in the rise of uniparty globalism under Bush the first. They still believe in Reagan conservatism. The “conservative principles” espoused by the talkers, bloggers and Republican pols today are progressive globalism not Reaganism. They changed the political definition while we weren’t paying attention. Lastly an apocryphal story: a young cousin of mine is a congressional staffer on Capitol Hill. He is a rabid leftist and writes legislation. He is a very popular figure in Congress with Republicans as Democrats. I hear about the commendations he gets from helping Republican members. i didn’t understand it then but do today.
Buckaroo Banzai #10765 April 2, 2016 5
Cruz was a Bush administration functionary who saw the Tea Party movement as a very convenient parade to get in front of. He’s the worst kind of careerist– an ideological poser.Oh, BTW Andy– I think you meant to say “anecdotal” where you said “apocryphal”.
Andy Texan #10795 April 3, 2016 0
Yes. Anecdotal. Oops. Thanks.
james wilson #10767 April 2, 2016 2
Mass democracy is a repulsive system all on it’s own.
JustAroundTheCorner #10796 April 3, 2016 1
Vetting sources is the most problematic practical issue for me. I do not hear responsible criticism of Mark Levin anywhere. As a layman I can be seduced by the words of the ideology as it sounds so logical and well researched. Would appreciate links to bone fide criticism. tks..
fifth_disciple #10787 April 3, 2016 1
They are all responsive to the hand that writes the checks, we need to cut that hand off. If we want the elected responsible to the electorate we need campaign finance reform. If you want to kill a snake you have to cut off it’s head and money is the manna that feeds the beast. I’m sure the RNC is going to use every tool in their bag to swing the convention back to their man.You have to be prepared to do the same. If they nominate someone who hasn’t won a majority of the delegates then write in Trump. Change won’t come easily, I can assure you this is just one of many battles to come. The real key is Congress, they want to be re-elected and many (McCain) are lifelong members. Sadly they need to be taught to fear the electorate.
Notsothoreau #10790 April 3, 2016 1
They are already going to primary Paul Ryan. Guy is a businessman and should have his website up soon.
James LePore #10779 April 3, 2016 1
Right now Supreme Court appointments are the only real difference between the two parties. If Hilary wins, thirty years of a liberal SCOTUS will follow. We will then be living in the era of the true Uniparty, similar in many respects to the Communist Party in Russia in its heyday. No one advances in their field, gets a nice apartment, gets to eat good food, goes to college, etc., unless they are a member of the party in good, ass-kissing standing. Everyone else keeps their head deadand lives a life of drudgery. Or fear, don’t forget then fear factor.
thezman #10780 April 3, 2016 3
I’m not sure there is a huge difference on the court either. Both sides play this game where make sure the court is always slowly moving in the direction they prefer. The John Roberts example made the court issue a non-starter now. They used to be able to scare people with the bogeyman of the liberal judge, but that has backfired with Roberts. A big part of why people are revolting is another Bush family appointee has screwed the voters. That said, if Trump wins the nomination somehow, he can use the court issue against Cankles.
James LePore #10782 April 3, 2016 0
I agree about the Bush appointees; and Eisenhower appointed Earl Warren. How insane was that? And let’s not forget Kennedy losing his marbles. Still, I see the Court as the last stand for the constitutional right and am hoping for a few wins before I shuffle off.
Luddite #10794 April 3, 2016 1
And when asked later if he had made any mistakes during his time in office, Eisenhower replied “Yes, two. One named Warren and one named Brennan.” So obviously the wolf in sheep’s clothing ploy of liberals foisting themselves as conservatives has worked. Once judges are secure in the lifetime appointment of the High Court, they begin to see their job a little differently and engage in more social engineering.
Nedd Ludd #10784 April 3, 2016 1
Allowing“nine black robed mystics”with lifetime appointments, to legislate permanentrules for the entire country is not a system that makes for civil relations among the citizens.Trump, among all the candidates, might go all Andrew Jackson on the Court:President Andrew Jackson reportedly responded:“John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it!”Or Trump might choose the FDR approach and appoint a few extra judges more to his liking.Judge Kosinski explains how judges judge in this famous 9th Circuit dissent:Silveira v. Lockyer, No. 01-15098 Filed May 6, 2003Judge Alex Kozinski’s Dissenting Opinion(Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit)“Judges know very well how to read the Constitution broadly when they are sympathetic to the right being asserted. We have held, without much ado, that “speech, or . . . the press” also means the Internet, see Reno v. ACLU, 521 U.S. 844 (1997), and that “persons, houses, papers, and effects” also means public telephone booths, see Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347 (1967). When a particular right comports especially well with our notions of good social policy, we build magnificent legal edifices on elliptical constitutional phrases —or even the white spaces between lines of constitutional text. See, e.g., Compassion in Dying v. Washington, 79 F.3d 790 (9th Cir. 1996) (en banc), rev’d sub nom. Washington v. Glucksberg, 521 U.S. 702 (1997). But, as the panel amply demonstrates, when we’re none too keen on a particular constitutional guarantee, we can be equally ingenious in burying language that is incontrovertibly there.It is wrong to use some constitutional provisions as springboards for major social change while treating others like senile relatives to be cooped up in a nursing home until they quit annoying us. As guardians of the Constitution, we must be consistent in interpreting its provisions.If we adopt a jurisprudence sympathetic to individual rights, we must give broad compass to all constitutional provisions that protect individuals from tyranny. If we take a more statist approach, we must give all such provisions narrow scope. Expanding some to gargantuan proportions while discarding others like a crumpled gum wrapper is not faithfully applying the Constitution; it’s using our power as federal judges to constitutionalize our personal preferences.The able judges of the panel majority are usually very sympathetic to individual rights, but they have succumbed to the temptation to pick and choose. Had they brought the same generous approach to the Second Amendment that they routinely bring to the First, Fourth and selected portions of the Fifth, they would have had no trouble finding an individual right to bear arms. Indeed, to conclude otherwise, they had to ignore binding precedent. …..The majority falls prey to the delusion—popular in some circles—that ordinary people are too careless and stupid to own guns, and we would be far better off leaving all weapons in the hands of professionals on the government payroll. But the simple truth—born of experience—is that tyranny thrives best where government need not fear the wrath of an armed people…”http://cjhsla.org/2013/02/14/silveira-v-lockyer-judge-alex-kozinski%E2%80%99s-dissenting-opinion/…
James LePore #10785 April 3, 2016 0
Nedd, I agree with Kosinski. However, it’s the system we have. If it gets really oppressive, the “wrath of an armed people” might come into play to try to effect change. I doubt this will happen in our lifetime. In the mean time, as I said, I’d like to see a few W’s for the good guys.
George #10810 April 4, 2016 0
” Republican and Democrat are just the two faces of the party so that we can keep up the appearance of being a popular republic. ” – The mystery here is why is it that most people do not understand this?
Z-Man The End Of Mass Democracy Western Rifle Shooters Association #10783 April 3, 2016 0
[…] The End Of Mass DemocracyMeaningful Participatory Government […]
Notsothoreau #10775 April 2, 2016 0
There has been some chatter about a Trump third party run, should the GOPe screw him over. The interesting idea was to run him on the Libertarian party. They done a lot of work to be on the ballot in all states (as far as I know). They tend to run dreadful candidates.
Karl Horst Germany #10771 April 2, 2016 0
I find it interesting that in American politics, it has not been possible to fully develop a viable third or fourth party. Can you explain why Americans have stuck with a basically two party system for so long? I know you have an independent party, but from the outside, it would seem it’s only function it to split votes from the other two fully aware it will never carry enough voting power to win anything.
The Sheep Nazi #10772 April 2, 2016 0
Karl: the short answer is that the U.S. is not a parliamentary (Westminster style) democracy, and so there’s no way for a third party to be part of a ruling coalition at the national level. For more on the mechanics of that, try this article from Bruce Bartlett:Why Third Parties Can’t Compete.
fodderwing #10774 April 2, 2016 0
Historically in the U.S. third parties die quickly. The Whigs split in 1854 and gave us the Republicans, who eventually gave us Abe Lincoln in 1860, but the Whigs went away, never to be heard from again. We may see history repeat itself in this decade as the Republicans split, the conservatives going their own way and eventually putting one of their own in office. The U.S. is still a somewhat conservative country, and a conservative alternative to the two present parties would stand a good chance.Until the rise of the Goldwater Republicans and the subsequent New Left Democrats, American politics was always interesting, as both parties had conservatives and liberals and one never knew where things would land legislatively until the votes were counted. (The Democrats wanted to run Eisenhower in ’52 but the Republicans got him first.) After the blatant Leftist takeover of the Democratic Party in 1970, many conservatives ran to the Republican Party, and are still under the delusion that Republicans are “the conservatives.” With this election cycle, the delusion may dissolve. Look for a conservative American party to form rather sooner than later.
Karl Horst Germany #10778 April 3, 2016 0
@ fodderwing – Perhaps the time for a third party has now arrived since so many Americans seem to voice the same concern that there really is only one party. It may be that multiple parties simply can’t work given the size and diversity of your country. Having said that, if multiple parties did form, I wonder if they would do so on the premise of racial lines. @ The Sheep Nazi – Unfortunately I couldn’t access your link, but thank you. However I did find this…does this address the issue correctly? http://theodysseyonline.com/appalachian-state/why-third-parties-cant-win/185330
The Sheep Nazi #10786 April 3, 2016 0
Karl: yes that is the gist of it. A first past the post system tends to converge on two (relatively) centrist parties, however the center is defined at the moment. There are a lot of procedural barriers to entry for third parties at the state level, as this article points out, but those came later.
SgtBob #10776 April 2, 2016 -2
“When you are paid to write on behalf of a party, your (sic) not a journalist. You are an advocate. When you are an advocate posing as a (sic) independent media, your (sic) are a fraud.” For your own sake, man, read your stuff before posting it!
thezman #10777 April 2, 2016 1
Read this
Terry Baker #10781 April 3, 2016 0
I’m very sorry, (soft chuckle), but the true a–hole here is of course the indolent trash that refuses to correct his own mistakes, much like failing to wipe after a BM.
SgtBob #10792 April 3, 2016 0
From my blog: I posted almost all of this at Zman comments. The site author replied with: “Read this,” which was a link tohttp://gizmodo.com/study-people-who-point-out-typos-are-jerks-1767969516The site does not say “jerks,” but “Type A a$$holes.”So the Zman believes I am a Type A a$$hole because I recommend he pay closer attention to editing his copy. At times, I am an a$$hole. I’ve known that for a long time. I became an at-times a$$hole when I got my third stripe and continued with the first and second rockers. As an at-times a$$hole sergeant, I insisted people do the right things the right way. I was even a sometimes a$$hole as a newspaper editor and as a reporter when elected and appointed politicians exceeded their statutory authority.I will continue to read Zman, and I will become infuriated if easily fixable grammatical mistakes appear in his writings. Zman thinks, which is not in plentiful supply these days.
thezman #10793 April 3, 2016 4
Look. This is a blog, not a legal brief. I churned out about six novels worth of content last year. That means a few typos are going to slip past the goalie. Given that you pay nothing to read this blog, the least you can do is leave your OCD at home. I don’t need this hassle so I’ll just be deleting this type of comment going forward.
James LePore #10806 April 4, 2016 1
Good idea. The dogs bark but caravan moves on.
5MilesOut #10798 April 3, 2016 1
So, am I to believe that you were a SFC in the Army, what with your two rockers? I was in the Army, and I can picture just what type of asshole you were. To come on to a blog and make a stink about grammar and allow it to actually impede your ability to fully enjoy what you’re reading means that you have emotional problems, like, a real problem. I don’t know if I should feel sorry for you or despise you. You’ve interrupted my flow of reading and partially spoiled my fun with your self-esteem issues and inferiority complex, so kindly f$^k off. The next time you become overwhelmed with the urge to go into a grammar Nazi screed over Zman’s mistakes, don’t; just punch yourself in the face. As you were, soldier.


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