Rhetoric and reality -- a systems example

It is surprising – at least I find it surprising – that the idea there is an underlying complex structure underlying social systems is not more widely acknowledged and accepted. This is especially true as this complex social system goes by another name, “reality.” I claim that this reality is composed of a number of systemic tensions that give rise to our ongoing political debates, so it would be reasonable to ask that at least one tension be articulated. While there are many from which to choose – positive and normative, innocence and experience, affect and cognition, elitism and democracy – I’m going to start with rhetoric and reality because it reveals the others. In political science school, the role communication is ignored, or at least was ignored while I was there, but increasingly it seems to play a determinative role in politics. Marshall McLuhan said, “the medium is the message,” and while true, the dictum is too abstract and compressed. The Rhetorical President by Jeffrey K. Tulis helps to explain and make clear the changes in the American polity that have led to our present state. That is, in the 20^th century there has been an increased reliance on information gained over an increasingly potent media rather than actual experience, and this has numerous political consequences.

I first thought about this while reading On Democracy: Toward a transformation of American society by Joshua Cohen and Joel Rogers (1983), which is part of the “third-way” saving socialism literature. Cohen and Rogers argue that instead of all economic decisions being made by a central government committee, which didn’t work, then all decisions should be made by voting. Interestingly, this book was reviewed favorably by Frances Fox Piven of Cloward-Piven Strategy fame. The obvious problem with Cohen and Rogers’ argument is that if central-committee socialism failed because of distorted information channels, wouldn’t democracy-based decisions be subject to similar problematic information distortion? Part of this insight came from my experience in California elections in which tens of different ballot initiatives were put forth on a range of important topics. I know I didn’t know enough to make an informed decision, and I was probably more informed than most of my fellow voters, which made California’s extreme democracy inherently problematic. As a side not, Joshua Cohen’s response to this argument was to become incandescently angry, which was first experience “arguing” with progressives.

The point though is that communicating with a mass audience through a technical information channel – whether it be radio, TV, movies, or written media – rewards clarity and simplicity. The problem is that reality is complex, which argues against clarity. This makes the ascendency of the rhetorical presidency especially problematic because as we increasingly select our leaders based on their speaking capability, this will come at the expense of the experience that underlies an appreciation of our American complex social system that is necessary for effective policy. We need only look to the Affordable Care Act (i.e., “Obamacare”) to see the problems associated with selecting leaders based on their ability to communicate clearly and convincingly rather than, say, having a deep and accurate understanding of the subjects about which they’re talking. This is an enduring political system tension with a history going back to Plato’s Gorgias. Today’s media gives weight to rhetorical rather than technical expertise, hence the ongoing litany of policy failures and search for scapegoats.

Just to give a center to the argument, I find it curious that MIT, supposedly a hotbed of logical thought – and it certainly is with regards to engineering, physics, and computer science – continue to spew forth extreme leftists like Noam Chomsky, Paul Krugman, and Joshua Cohen. In the context of this argument, these thinkers are problematic because they dispense policy advice based on their own perspective rather than what’s actually workable or at least likely to work. Obamacare is only the most recent example of policies that are sold rhetorically only to fail in the real world. And these problems are entirely predictable and due to an overreliance on rhetoric. Richard Feynman (MIT 1939) got at the crux of this issue when he said,

The game I play is a very interesting one. It’s imagination in a tight straightjacket, which is this: that it has to agree with the known laws of physics. I’m not going to assume that maybe the laws of physics have changed, then I can design something. But I try --  supposing it’s everything that we know is true – as we think it is. If we do…. if we’re wrong, of course then we can design something with the new laws later. But the game is to try and figure out, with what we know what’s possible. So it requires imagination to think of what’s possible.  Then it requires an analysis back, a checking, to see whether it fits – it’s allowed with what is known.

So with regard to Cohen and Rogers’ On Democracy, it seems that they used imagination to articulate a new and camouflaged type of socialism but failed to perform the “analysis back” or the “checking” to see if it squares with what we know is possible. If centrally planned socialism fails do to information distortion, then it seems reasonable that democratically driven socialism by which decisions are made by voting rather than local expertise, is also problematic. This is the root cause of today’s political problems, and the evidence for media-based information distortion is accumulating steadily. Cohen’s response to this argument was basically the same as Herman Finer’s reaction to Friedrich von Hayek in Road to Reaction, which Hayek said was, "a specimen of abuse and invective which is probably unique in contemporary academic discussion." Of course, that was an earlier and gentler time, and such abuse and invective is becoming more frequent and regular from an increasingly beleaguered progressive movement.