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O BIPARTIDARISMO E AS OPÇÕES (IN)EXISTENTES

 O BIPARTIDARISMO E AS OPÇÕES (IN)EXISTENTES

A POLITICA DA IDIOTICE, DO CORSO OU DA INVEJA/O ÓDIO?

“The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps, of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to doctrinaire and academic thinkers.”
Prof. Carroll Quigley

"O resultado da conhecida encenação politica bipartidária é de que os Europeus, Americanos, assim como a maioria dos cidadãos dos países do Mundo Ocidental, são vítimas duma grande ilusão.

Os eleitores tem sido iludidos ao terem sido levados a pensar que estavam participando no seu próprio destino politico quando, na realidade, estavam a ser arrebanhados num feudalismo de alta tecnologia, sem o seu consentimento e, em grande medida, sem o seu conhecimento.

Isto é conseguido através da miragem de uma escolha útil em época de eleições quando, na realidade, os maiores partidos e seus candidatos são apenas dois ramos da mesma árvore - frequentemente a do "colectivismo" global.

Os eleitores hoje não são atraídos pelos candidatos por causa de seus princípios políticos. Embora havendo excepões, regra geral eles não têm muitos, ou mesmo nenhuns. De qualquer forma os princípios políticos nem são permitidos como tema de debate.

Em vez disso, os eleitores fazem escolhas com base na boa aparência dos candidatos, nos seus sorrisos, na avaliação do quão "espertos" eles são em debates televisivos, na percepção acerca da sua sinceridade e, especialmente, no volume de "benefícios" que eles prometem dar a alguns cidadãos mas que serão pagos com impostos a incidir sobre outros cidadãos. "Pilhagem" legalizada pode ser um poderoso motivador e pode ser usada com precisão pelos dois maiores partidos.

Muitos eleitores têm vindo a considerar as eleições como jogos magníficos em que apenas os concorrentes mais inteligentes merecem ganhar. Ficam fascinados pelas estratégias, recursos e técnicas adoptadas para se esquivarem de questões difíceis; pelo ar inteligente nas apresentações ou “spots” televisivos e pela capacidade para atrair grandes massas de votos. Eles, os eleitores, realmente não se importam com quem ganha, desde que consigam posicionar-se do lado do vencedor. Para eles a eleição é como fazer apostas num jogo de futebol ou num Totobola. Eles podem gostar mais de uma equipa do que doutra mas vão apostar na equipa que julgam ter maiores probabilidades de ganhar, mesmo não sendo a sua favorita. Para eles, os eleitores, ganhar é tudo.

E é assim que votam. Podem até preferir um determinado candidato, mas não votarão nele se acham que outro vai ganhar. Quantas vezes já ouvimos: "Eu gosto do “António Sampaio” mas ele não consegue vencer. Assim sendo, votarei no “José Barroso”."

O que os "media" tem a fazer é convencer os eleitores de que “António Sampaio” não conseguirá ganhar (alegando sondagens ou usando outras técnicas), e isso influenciará gente suficiente a redireccionar o seu voto e tornar uma mera previsão num desfecho eleitoral real e concreto.

O objectivo fundamental do voto não é o de escolher um vencedor mas para sim de expressar uma escolha. Trata-se de estabelecer um registo público do numero de pessoas que apoiam as políticas e princípios de um determinado candidato, de tal forma que, mesmo que ele não saia vencedor, o vencedor e a comunidade fiquem cientes do apoio que o candidato perdedor tem. Esta é a mais importante sondagem de opinião pública.

Nós poderemos não ter interesse num sistema em que o vencedor fique com tudo; onde aqueles que se considera terem as melhores perspectivas de ganhar recebam uma esmagadora, mas enganosa, votação de apoio.

Um tirano que receba 51% dos votos comportar-se-á de forma mais contida do que um que receba 80%.  Um bom cidadão que receba 49% dos votos, apesar de não sair vencedor, torna-se um concorrente de peso para aqueles de mente semelhante. Ele torna-se, nessa circunstância, num concorrente muito mais sério às eleições seguintes do que seria depois duma eleição onde apenas tivesse conseguido 20% dos votos.

Não faz qualquer sentido votar num candidato a menos que isso seja a expressão da nossa escolha. Escolha de Governação Representativa é coisa séria e lidá-la como se de apostas de Totobola se tratasse é sucumbir às políticas da estupidez.

Existe um terceiro cenário que é ainda pior que os anteriores. Os eleitores poderão votar em “António Sampaio”, não porque achem que ele tenha melhores perspectivas que “José Barroso”, mas porque acham que ele é o menor dos males, ou o menos diabólico. Assim votam não a favor dum candidato mas contra o outro. Não é que eles gostem do candidato “A”, mas assim expressam o seu ódio ao candidato “B”. Isto é exactamente aquilo que está prescrito pela Fórmula de Quigley .

Quigley escreveu que num sistema controlado por dois partidos é permitido que os eleitores “expulsem os patifes”  e que estes sejam substituídos por uma nova equipa, com novo vigor, podendo assim o governo continuar num regime bi- partidário, direccionado ao colectivismo global, ou a outro propósito, e com o apoio do eleitorado - até ao ciclo seguinte, altura em que talvez seja vantajoso regressar novamente à governação do partido anterior. Se os eleitores se questionarem porque razão está o mal instalado no Governo, a resposta é porque nele votaram. O menor de dois males é ainda um mal.

 

Esta é a política do ódio e é arma eficaz contra aqueles que não estão cientes desta táctica - ou seja: a maioria dos eleitores.

A votação num candidato porque odiamos o outro, e pensar que não podemos ir para fora do sistema bipartidário porque um terceiro candidato não tem chances de ganhar, é uma armadilha . Para escapar a essa armadilha temos de entender não apenas a Fórmula Quigley, mas também mais qualquer coisa  …"

 

 

Weapons systems and political stability - Carroll Quigley

“Weapons systems and political stability”
Prof. Carroll Quigley’s Last Public Lecture
Last Public Lecture Given (months before his death)
Oscar Iden Lecture – Georgetown University - School of Foreign Service
1978

Introduction by Peter F. Krogh
I: “The State of Communities,” A.D. 976 - 1576

II: “The State of Estates,” A.D. 1576 - 1776

III: “The State of Individuals,” A.D. 1776 - 1976

A summary of Prof. Carroll Quigley’s Last Public Lecture, given 1976. His text is worth a read. With his great vision and sight, he touches the key wounds of the current Western civilization and suggests urgent attention.

Present government policies are unleashing future hard times. The middle class and the less instructed or protected are being marginalized and are being forced to pay for the irresponsible actions of the elite.  The Portuguese state is now under the control of the financial "traps" in Europe and the "National" politicians (sometimes pampered beyond belief) are the mouthpieces and enforcers of “policy” as dictated by these absentee "Investors".

These essays covered the growth of the State in the Western tradition from 976 – 1976. It is said that his approach went against the grain of most academics who only taught history in short sound bites. He believed that people could not understand anything unless they saw the whole picture - and the essence of his philosophy was that history is logical - things happen for a reason. For him the core of all that occurs throughout the ages is the underlying force of fundamental human values.

Carroll Quigley noticed that American society, and Western Civilization, were in serious trouble in the late 70’s. And his final essay “The Sate of Individuals” was particularly prophetic and events during the subsequent decades have “cleaned” his controversial conclusions.

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III: “The State of Individuals,” A.D. 1776 - 1976

“…. Currently our desires are remote from our true  needs. Societies are built on needs and they are ultimately destroyed through desires.

Power between the state and the society rests on the ability of the state to satisfy human needs.

The state is a good state if it is sovereign and responsible.

There are seven level of culture or aspects of society:

military, political, economic, social, emotional religious and intellectual.

Military: men cannot live outside of groups. They can satisfy their needs only by co-operating within community. This group needs to be defended.

Political: If men operate within groups you must have a method to settle disputes. Economic: The group must have organizational patterns for satisfying material needs. Social: Man and women are social beings. They have a need for other people. They have a need to love and be loved.

Emotional: Men and women must have emotional experiences. Moment to moment with other people and moment to moment with nature.

Religious: Human beings have a need for a feeling of certitude in their minds about things they cannot control and do not fully understand.

Intellectual: Men and women have a need to comprehend and discuss.

Power is the ability in society to med these eight fore-mentioned human needs. Community is group of people with close inter-personal relationships. Without community no infant will be sufficiently socialized. Most of our internal controls which make society function have historically been learnt in community.

Prior to 976 most controls in society were internal. In the West after 976 due to specialization and commercial expansion controls began to be externalized.

Sovereignty has eight aspects: defense, judicial, administrative, taxation, legislation, executive, monetary and incorporating power.

Expansion in society brings growing commercialization with the result that all values, in time, become monetized. As expansion continues it slows with the result that society becomes politicized and eventually militarized. This shift from customary conformity to decision making by some other power in its final stages results in the dualism of almost totalitarian imperialism and an amorphous mass culture of atomized individuals.

The main theme in our society today is competition and no truly stable society can possibly be built on such a premise. In the long term society must be based on association and co-operation.

From 1855 Western Civilization has shown signs of becoming increasingly unstable due to: technology and the displacement of labor: increased use of propaganda to brainwash people into thinking society was good and true; an increased emphasis on material desires; the increased emphasis on individualism over conformity; growing focus on quantity rather than quality; increased demand for vicarious satisfactions.

As a result more and more people began to comprehend that the state was not a society with community values. This realization brought increasing instability.

Another element of the trend towards instability in Western Civilization was the growth in weapon systems that if actually used would ensure total destruction of the planet. This in effect meant that they were effectively redundant.

In addition the expansion of the last 150 years has in essence been based on fossil fuels. The energy which gave us the industrial revolution, coal – oil – natural gas – represented the combined savings of four weeks of sunlight that managed to be accumulated on earth out of the previous three billion years of sunshine. This resource instead of being saved has been lost. Gone forever never to return.

The fundamental all pervasive cause of World instability today is the destruction of communities by the commercialization of all human relationships and the resulting neurosis and psychosis. Medical science and all the population explosions have continued to produce more and more people while the food supply and the supply of jobs are becoming increasingly precarious, not only in the United States, but everywhere, because the whole purpose of using fossil fuels in the corporate structure is the elimination of jobs. Another  reason for the instability of the Western system is that two of the main areas of sovereignty are not included in the state structure: control of credit/banking and corporations.

These two elements are therefore free of political controls and responsibility. They have largely monopolized power in Western Civilization and in American society. They are ruthlessly going forward to eliminate land, labor, entrepreneur-management skills and everything else the economists once told us were the chief elements of production. The only element of production they are concerned with is the one they control: capital. Thus capital intensification has destroyed food, manufacturing, farming and communities. All these processes create frustrations on every level of modern human experience and result in the instability and disorder we see around every day. Today in America there is a developing constitutional crisis. The three branches of government set unpin 1789 do not contain the eight aspects of sovereignty. As a result each has tried to go outside the sphere in which it should be restrained. The constitution completely ignores, for example, the administrative power. As a result the courts, in particular the Supreme court, is making decisions it should not be making. In addition the President, who by the constitution should be easily impeached, has become all powerful to such an extent that the office is now as basically Imperial. However, to me the most obvious flaw in our constitutional set-up is the fact that the federal government does not have control over money and credit and does not have control over corporations. It is therefore not really sovereign and is not really responsible. The final result is that the American people will unfortunately prefer communities. They will cop or opt out of the system. Today everything is a bureaucratic structure, and brainwashed people who are not personalities are trained to fit into it and say it is a great life but I think otherwise.

Do not be pessimistic. Life goes on; life is fun. And if a civilization crashed it deserves to. When Rome fell the Christian answer was. “Create your own communities”.

 

Introduction by Peter F. Krogh
I: “The State of Communities,” A.D. 976 - 1576

II: “The State of Estates,” A.D. 1576 - 1776

III: “The State of Individuals,” A.D. 1776 - 1976

 

  Quotes - Carroll Quigley

“...when a society is reaching its end, in the last couple of centuries you have... a misplacement of satisfactions. You find emotional satisfaction in making a lot of money... or in proving to the poor, half-naked people in Southeast Asia, that you can kill them in large numbers.”

“...a state is not the same thing as a society, although the Greeks and Romans thought it was. A state is an organization of power on a territorial basis.”

 “Thus, the use of fiat money is more justifiable in financing a depression than in financing a war.”

“Hitler's economic revolution in Germany had reduced financial considerations to a point where they played no role in economic or political decisions.”

“In addition to their power over government based on government financing and personal influence, bankers could steer governments in ways they wished them to go by other pressures.”

“On this basis, which was originally financial and goes back to George Peabody, there grew up in the twentieth century a power structure between London and New York which penetrated deeply into university life, the press, and the practice of foreign policy.”

“The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies ... is a foolish idea.

Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can throw the rascals out at any election without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy.

Then it should be possible to replace it, every four years if necessary, by the other party which will be none of these things but will still pursue, with new vigor, approximately the same basic policies.”  

 

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