When a political excess crests, when a political crisis approaches, everything is always political.
The lovely lady on the left in this picture was just one of the first casualties in our current era. Do you recognize her? (You shouldn’t.)
- In the mid-to-late 1960s everything was political.
- In the early 1930s everything was political.
- At the turn of the last century everything was political.
- In the 1850s everything was political.
When a political thesis is no longer working, its followers do not go meekly into that good night. Power is not given. Power must be taken.
So everything becomes political.
This is not true most of the time. Most of the time, transactional politics works. Agreements can be reached based on common understandings, because underneath, there is always a Political Thesis, or AntiThesis, on which to base those understandings.
But when a crisis comes, this no longer works. That’s why everything is political.
This is unfortunate in many ways, because there are so many issues that should not be political.
- Business issues should not be political.
- Technology issues should not be political.
- Education issues should not be political.
There are professionals in all these areas who should be happy to work together, and come to agreements absent even knowledge of political affiliations among those concerned.
It’s not going to happen for a while.
I think this time can be shortened if a new Political Thesis is placed against the existing one, the Nixon Thesis of Conflict.
That’s why I have proposed the Open Source Thesis, the values of the
Internet made common policy, the myths of connectivity made real. (Sir Tim Berners-Lee is the man at left.)
I do this because we need to cut through the bullshit. A lot of our
current political issues are made hairier by the fact that opponents to
the present Thesis don’t have any unifying belief structure, or they
think they don’t.
But they do. They’re using it and living it. The
Internet provides a means with which we can deal with all our existing
problems, if we liberate it, if we liberate ourselves, if we accept it
and deal with it rather than trying to bottle it up and control it.
That’s the Open Source Thesis in a nutshell. The rest is detail.
And if you’re on the Internet, I think that, deep in your heart, you believe it.
P.S. — You recognized the lady, didn’t you? You weren’t supposed to because it’s Valerie Plame-Wilson, with her husband. And she was, in normal times, under deep cover, working on fighting the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. But then everything became political.
