Hyper-Politicization

[Uboat509]

I am wondering what everyone here thinks about how the hyper-politicization currently prevalent in our society effects our war fighting ability. I see two main problems first of all, these days, John Q Public, by and large has never served nor in many cases does he even know anyone who has served so he is wholly dependent on other sources for knowledge about military issues. The problem being that it is increasingly the furthest from center elements on both sides of the aisle that make the most noise and therefore get heard the most. It is getting harder and harder to get unbiased news these days. Because John has never served he doesn't understand military issues. He has no frame of reference from which to form an opinion. He is therefore left on his own to sort out the facts from the hyperbole and the uniformed speculation and general bull that comes from both directions. I spend a significant time on political websites and I am shocked by some of the things that I have read. One poster on a site I visit actually said that "these counter insurgency fights are nothing more than a scrimmage for the military anyway." (The point being, I guess, that anything short of fifty Russian divisions screaming out of the Fulda Gap is a cake walk.) While that is certainly the most egregious example it is far from the only one. Both sides take facts, add rhetoric and try to pass it off as the truth. The Haditha incident is a prime example. To my knowledge the 15-6 is still in progress and yet they have already been tried and been found guilty or innocent depending on who you talk to and what side of the aisle you stand on. Depending on where you get your news they are clearly innocent or clearly guilty, so clearly in fact that if you can't see it then you are blind or an idiot or both. It has gotten to the point where I am not sure that the verdict is going to make much difference(other than to the accused of course). No matter what one side will be saying "I told you so" and the other will other being screaming "cover-up" or "they were railroaded." Which brings me to my next big problem with hyper-politicization being that anyone who differs from the party line is subject to attack and very often vicious attack at that. On one website I was called a coward and a whiner because I said that I did not think we had 5000 troops to spare for peace keeping duties in Lebanon (apparently we have divisions sitting idly on standby in Europe who are not already committed somewhere. I did not know this, silly me) . The blood fest on Batiste, Eaton and Hammes has already started. Over at Blackfive certain individuals have made support of Rumsfeld somehow synonymous with support for GWOT. Rumsfeld is a "visionary" and the officers who disagree with are malcontents and political hacks. I don't see how all of this could possible NOT have an effect on our military and our warfighting ability. Anyway I hope my rambling made sense.

SFC W

[Tom Odom]

UBoat,

Made sense to me and it something I have pondered for a number of years, without arriving at any real solution. I look at it as a form of what Hoffer attributed to True Believers. That is to say, that folks take on opinions as the center of their core, regardless of political leaning, meaning that compromise in any form is seen (or felt) as being both self-destructive and destructive for the greater society. People--including me--make jokes about "politicians" and "lawyers" because they have no true center. What we often miss is the role that "lack of center" plays in allowing lawyers to defend anyone (something central to our constitution that we often struggle with) or allowing politicians to compromise and reach agreements (another element absolutely critical to our systems of checks and balances).

I gave a one hour class, 20 times in a week in July on COIN. One of the central issues I hammered was the inherent complexity of COIN and the need to formulate strategy and planning to recognize that complexity. I said 20 times that week, "if someone tells you they have the golden BB or the magic solution for COIN, be very suspicious. Kick the tires and check the oil on the used car you are being sold." Too much of what we (and especially John Q Public) hears is selling cars from both sides of the aisle. Ultimately compromise will most likely take place; unfortunately it leaves John Q alienated and confused because he was ready to buy that car as it was first advertised.

Looked at from another perspective, too much appeals to base instinct in attempt (and it succeeds) to lesson John Q's intellectual appraisal of what is being offered. Writers from both sides of the political divide play this game. Michael Moore comes from the left; Ralph Peters comes from the right. Both come across as believing the world is truly painted the color that only they can see and that makes the hair on the back of my neck bristle.

Best
Tom

[SWJED]

..."if someone tells you they have the golden BB or the magic solution for COIN, be very suspicious. Kick the tires and check the oil on the used car you are being sold." Too much of what we (and especially John Q Public) hears is selling cars from both sides of the aisle. Ultimately compromise will most likely take place; unfortunately it leaves John Q alienated and confused because he was ready to buy that car as it was first advertised..

Spot on Tom.

[selil]

If I might weigh in here. The hyper-politicization you’re seeing is part of your increasing maturity as regards media. The fact is that American media has always been a highly tumultuous and terribly biased organ of information dissemination. Unfortunately most people never realize that simple fact. The media by design is supposed to be biased, and a beating heart for the political process. Prior to the escapades of radical journalistic consolidation newspapers would war against each other with political diatribes within small towns. People would define their political views based on the news papers they took or whether they took the morning or afternoon paper.

The horror is now that punditry and massive media consolidation has escaped from the bounds of reality and the mass media outlets expand into the smaller markets it is hard to get good information biased or not. In history you always try to get as close to primary source material, and in information warfare operations you attempt to do the same. There is a concept born of the television age and believed by the first generation of television watchers that anything you see on television is factual and true. Yet the follow on generation was raised in front of the boob tube and tuned out the siren music of Madison Avenue and political hacks to be grabbed by the illogic of the Internet. It must be true I read it on the Internet! The spectacular failures in logic by an entire generation can’t be explained by one simple theory though. The following generation vilified by the previous generations as slacker slobbering idiots are likely the most media aware generation and what do they create with that knowledge? My Space…

As people mature into the realm of media understanding they go through some spectacular changes. When I was getting my first bachelors degree (BA Communications), a professor likened media maturation as the specific stages of grief. Those who realize that all media is biased begin to wonder how this happened. Most people have no clue about media and the power over the political process. Never mind the depression over seeing the manipulation and fabulous logical fallacies of the straw man, inappropriate choices, or ad hominem attacks. Most people feel anger as they watch hacks while away their time at inconsequential points while ignoring real issues. Utilizing points of specificity to make grand generalizations (Hi Rush Limbaugh!) is a common place tool in the efforts to manipulate the population.

Add into this some ideas posited by Fredrick Jackson Turner and manifest destiny and you have a political, media, mess of grand proportions. FJT talked about how the West defined by manifest destiny (my words not his) the way of the United States and how it perceived itself. Few scholars really study FJT because what he suggests is that politics may be determined by where you live and how you live more than ideology. It is interesting to note that urbanization and rural environments of the United States create a distinct political influence that affects this media homogenization effect. The radicalized urban centers denigrate and marginalize the less populated rural environs. The rural areas of the United States are more libertarian or moderate than the polarized urbanized centers. It is mildly interesting to note that rural areas have much less mass media effect in the political process.

The nature of mass media communications and the relevant political upheaval are not used exclusively by any political ideology or party affiliation. The tools of manipulation and subsequent subjugation of an intelligent population are time worn and scathing sharp. Yet they are stumbling.

A media revolution is currently occurring. If we were talking about science Thomas Kuhn would say there is a paradigm shift occurring. A paradigm shift often misused as a buzz word of impending change is more about how things will be seen in the future. The inconsistent ideas coalesce into a simplified understanding of ideas and concepts creating a new paradigm. The hyper politicization some perceive is actually a return the uncontrolled heterogeneous mass participation in media. In this case it is not a shift of ideology but access to content creation creating a shift in the basic ideas of media.

The blog, web forum, social networking tools, and more have existed in many forms for about 40 years. The mass adoption by the population in general of these tools is relatively recent. New tools are being spawned at a fascinating rate. The podcast is 21 months old, and IPTV is only about 48 months old. I can see where SWJ has a podcast as part of its dissemination tools in months if not sooner. Most information warfare types are still peering at natural language text based processing tools for indexing and categorizing adversarial content. While the tools of dissemination have moved from text to vivid sound and video with the associated risks of discovery and increased content communication channels.

So whereas many might see this hyper-politicization process as a negative in many ways it is increasing the access to ideas. The behaviors negative and positive including the near fascist and far leftist opinions of ideology show that homogenized content is a thing of the past. The task is to not fall into that trap and provide for open dialog and use the same tools to communicate as much literal truth (as you see it) possible. Then with credibility your ideas will inoculate the population against malfeasance and manipulation.

[bismark17]

Another element of this is the sheer lack of any historical knowledge of many of our citizens. My dad was amazed to run into someone in his mid 20s who works for a large School District who started asking him about his Vietnam experiences as a ground pounder. After a few questions the guy finally exclaimed, "I just bet your glad you didn't serve in Iraq. That's way worse than Vietnam!" My dad just looked at him in amazement. And this is from someone working in education....

[zenpundit]

Kudos to Selil for the excellent analysis on the media and it's evolution. I largely concur.

A few comments:

Turner is also shied away from not only because of his emphasis on a spatial interpretation of the American experience but the subsequent impact he had ( along with Mahan) on the influential thinkers in Theodore Roosevelt's circle including Henry Cabot Lodge and Brooks Adams.

The blog, web forum, social networking tools, and more have existed in many forms for about 40 years. The mass adoption by the population in general of these tools is relatively recent. New tools are being spawned at a fascinating rate. The podcast is 21 months old, and IPTV is only about 48 months old. I can see where SWJ has a podcast as part of its dissemination tools in months if not sooner. Most information warfare types are still peering at natural language text based processing tools for indexing and categorizing adversarial content. While the tools of dissemination have moved from text to vivid sound and video with the associated risks of discovery and increased content communication channels.

Very true. The developments in platforms right now is revolutionary and it is having a significant social effect in terms of aggregating and connecting the creative, intellectual " cream" outside of the MSM and political elite.

Thoughts Illustrated

Etable

Thoughts Illustrated # 2

Social Media Ecologies

[carl]

RE: comments by U509 and Tom.

I fear the hyper-politicization spoken of is the result of a political leadership class increasing marked by a fundemental lack of character. This lack leads to actions marked by immaturity, intolerance, impatience, arrogance, etc.. It is exacerbated by a lack of experience outside the university or government.

One of the results is that these people, at their core, don't trust the Americans. They don't trust John Q. (civilian me) to understand complex issues and they don't trust us to be willing to make the sacrifices needed to win. Thus we are presented with incomplete, simplistic arguements because we can't understand anything else. They want to fight a major war while conducting all other business as usual because we can't be trusted to do more. We have never really been asked to do more. I for one have never heard of a high govenment official going to a high school or college to help with recruiting; to my knowledge no attempt has been made to enlist the help of the entertainment or sporting community to help with recruiting, as was done in the past.

We are a great people, as our history proves, and we deserve better than to be insulted in deed by our own leaders.

Another result is a mulish refusal to face facts: the Army and USMC have to be bigger, no we will manage smarter...we need more troops in Iraq, no my generals don't tell me that, as they stand up, we will stand down...if we shut down C-17 production (my own pet peeve) we won't be able to meet our airlift needs, it is simple arithmetic...no my spreadsheet doesn't tell me that and besides we have a new program on the line. And on and on and on.

Oddly, this is similar to the conduct of the Nazi gov. in Germany during WW II.
They really didn't trust their people to make the required sacrifices and didn't fully mobilize the economy until it was too late. Hitler was infamous for refusing to acknowledge facts and thinking he could bend the world to his "will".

This leads to Tom's point. How did people who act like this get to the point where they dominate the upper levels of both parties and the MSM. I don't know. I wish I did and knew what to do about it. But as U509 implied, no matter how good the professional military is, we are in trouble with the leadership class we have now.

We need to win this and we deserve leadership that thinks we can.

[marct]

On the whole, I really have to agree with Selil's analysis.

So whereas many might see this hyper-politicization process as a negative in many ways it is increasing the access to ideas. The behaviors negative and positive including the near fascist and far leftist opinions of ideology show that homogenized content is a thing of the past. The task is to not fall into that trap and provide for open dialog and use the same tools to communicate as much literal truth (as you see it) possible. Then with credibility your ideas will inoculate the population against malfeasance and manipulation.

Selil, have you, by chance, looked at Dawkins meme theory? I am asking, because I'm really in doubt that "sanity" (read as communicating a literal "truth") is as contageous as "insanity" (read as a reasuring, ultimately BS, belief).

Zenpundit mentioned Turner's use of geographical determinism, at least as far as general cultural traits are concerned, and I have rapidly been coming to the conclusion that a similar form of determinism operates in cyberspace - "geographical" only in the social networks sense and measured in cross-linking rather than miles or km. I remember analyzing a series of bulletin boards back in the late 1980's, and there was a really heavy correlation between board/thread linkages and memes describing assumptions of opeartional reality that appears to be true even now.

I certainly do agree with you that the increasing popluar availability of content generation is producing many differing viewpoints but, I would also suggest that this content tends to converge into virtual "islands" with heavy interconnectivity. It is pretty rare, in my experience, to find many people who are members of two or more online communities that share mutually opposing basic conceptualizations of reality.

On the hyper-polarization issue in US politics more generally, I really have to wonder if it doesn't stem from two structural factors as well. First, you seem to have settled on a two party system ever since your civil war (Teddy Roosevelt's BullMoose party, along with Ross Perot, excepted). I honestly don't see how any two-party dominated political system can be anything other than "polarized". While I would never argue that our (Canadian) system is actually better or more efficient than yours (I wouldn't even know what criteria to use for the comaprison), I think that our multiparty system has the "benefit" of forcing our politicians into a somewhat less polarizing format, especially in minority government situations such as we currently have.

Second, you actually elect your head of state in a party-based fashion. As far as I can see, this would inevitably lead to polarization either in the process of government (e.g. when the president is from one party and congress and/or the senate is dominated by the other) or in the time mandated election system you use (when all houses are controlled by a single party). To my mind, this inevitably leads to a situation where it is structurally mandated that your head of state must be attacked which would, inevitably, lead to cries of "treason". Personally, I prefer the Canadian/Britsh system where our head of state is the Crown (and pretty powerless on the whole) and our head of government is merely a politician we can laugh at and call an idiot with no taint of treason. It has certainly served us well in the past

Marc