Communication and Power

Know Your Battlefield

In the midst of proposals, manifestos, policy prescriptions, and social proscriptions, reasonable individuals will spar in debate and discussion about feasibility and impact. Policy wonks, C-SPAN, White Papers, Webinars about New Environmental Regulations… it’s just not sexy, you know? Gives political commentators the “ick,” as some might say. Surely there is reason to avoid its discussion, after all, unless you can boil it down to some effective memetic catchphrase or reduce it to “friend versus enemy”; it takes a degree of work to break down why something so dry actually matters to you. Perhaps this is an indictment of our online interlocutors, myself included, especially as I have for the majority of my working life been in the public sector. I know, I know, I’m what Yarvin would call a “Professional Progressive” and the bane of the conservatarian that I was back in high school and college.

In a political environment where voting is one of the lowest-effort things you can do, one has to assess accurately where he is and his own proximity to power. For many, a warped perception of politics and power leaves one committing to a digital equivalent of yelling at the TV or radio with quote tweets or smarmy replies in the comments — although at least today you have the benefit of being able to ratio your target. Politics is not just the theories we read, or the groups you name; it is the implementation of plans and actions, working realistically within the bounds of what you can do, while working towards a larger goal.

I’m sure this all sounds like corporate platitude BS to you, and I understand if that’s your initial reaction. One of the mistakes I’ve made as a commentator — and as a political actor, of sorts — has been the avoidance of using my real-life subject matter experience and expertise and talking about it online. I’ve worked in economic development, grants management, and political campaigning from phone banking to strategy meetings, and I don’t talk about it enough because it’s just not what gets the clicks. I understand that there is a certain risk that comes with talking about your day job, especially when you try and make sure your tweets don’t end up in the Human Resource Officer’s inbox.

However, power through communication certainly helps reiterate and maintain the messaging of the ideological hegemony that is in power. Progressives and Rightists alike have known this. Over a century ago, Woodrow Wilson, a professor and future President of the United States, delivered a series of lectures on America’s constitutional government. When speaking about the House of Representatives and the power of the President, Wilson remarked:

The true significance of the matter, for any student of government who wishes to understand the life rather than the mere theory of what he studies, is that the greatest power lies with that part of the government which is in most direct communication with the nation itself.

Now many would have considered this statement to be a truism prior to our managerial revolution, but consider the last part of this sentence: “in most direct communication with the nation itself.” While there are numerous models of government or power to express how power operates between media, academia, and government, one can only look at how far and wide the ideology of suicide (leftism) has made its way into our culture. From the rural purge of the early ’70s to this cancerous bullshit that you can see right down below, you can see why Auron MacIntyre calls it The Total State.