This was a really excellent read I came across while researching my recent Obama article.  This definitely challenged my assumptions and I’m still thinking this material over....enjoy:

http://www.techpresident.com/blog/entry/26566/why_i_help_the_man_and_why_you_should_too

By not engaging our government directly, and instead choosing to merely blog about it from afar, we are surrendering the most important, most influential roles to the very people we want to get rid of.

Our community of would-be reformers consists of bloggers, Web developers, engineers, activists, philanthropists and writers. We believe in things like government transparency, election reform, and weakening the influence of lobbyists and campaign donors. And we are using technology to help make these things happen. The Internet has given humans an unprecedented potential to influence our government. Partly because of the independent, libertarian spirit of the Web, and partly because this community is by and large ashamed of the last eight years, we see our work as challenging the establishment.

Perhaps that is why so much of our work is about influencing that establishment in a bottom-up, grassroots fashion. We are preoccupied with outside action—blogging, fundraising, flash protesting, and building Web sites that get the public to collaboratively fight government opacity—as a means of changing what we don’t like about DC. There are some notable exceptions: John Wonderlich’s Open House Project is connecting House members with information architects to create a more transparent, coder-friendly Congress. But for the most part, we are doing little to change the government from the inside out.

.....

Elected officials don’t run our government. Government employees do. Every citizen interested in changing our country must understand this.

Even if we elect good people to write good laws, those laws still need to be executed. That responsibility falls to the three million people who make up the federal workforce. They are the ones responsible for the day-to-day operation of our government. If we want to change the government, we can’t ignore the bureaucrats who make it run. There are problems to be solved at their level as well. All our talk about Congressional transparency and election reform hasn’t made the government more efficient or less wasteful. Such problems will not be solved by a Web site that lets the public track Congress.

Even if Web activism reaches remarkable heights and forces every member of Congress to be a slave to the citizenry, those 3 million employees won’t notice a thing. No matter how much we influence DC from the outside, the government will always be run by those on the inside.

thirtyseven - 14 November 2008 02:43 PM

Elected officials don’t run our government. Government employees do.

Actually, nobody “runs” it, because it doesn’t actually exist.  It’s a social fiction, like money, policemen, and Lindsey Lohan.

A good point and a valuable pattern break....but someone still has to run the social fiction, right?

thirtyseven - 05 December 2008 07:27 PM

A good point and a valuable pattern break....but someone still has to run the social fiction, right?

So we’re told.  But they always lie, so I doubt it.

Consider:  What would the country do without a president?  Obviously, the same things it does WITH a president.

Nobody actually has to be in charge.  Hell, the only reason we have a president is so that the domesticated primates would think we have a king/alpha male.

I don’t advocate anarchy, of course, which is what makes all the anarchy so distressing.  They just spray painted it and called it Vegas/Disneyland/etc.

I turned off my television years ago, but at the strong recommendation of my well read sibling, I began renting episodes of ‘The Wire’ (HBO).

While the story involves city-level politics, the theme seems relevant to this discussion.

As I work my way thru the final episodes, I am begining to see the power of the underlying meme in the story:  People always seem to get corrupted by the institution they commit themselves to.
Cops bend the rules to put the criminals behind bars, drug dealers battle each other slowing losing their ‘code’ as they jocky for space in their world, politicians try to make a difference and get derailed by external forces, screwing their allies, and journalists lie to survive, all the while each institution gradually gets more and more hungry, squeezing its members tighter and tighter until it gradually grinds to a slow, bloddy crawl.

Here’s what’s interesting:  the story is a fictional exageration meant to make a point, institutions corrupt.  This seems to be the core belief that gives strength to most who support anarchist ideologies.  If organizations always end up screwing things and people up, get rid of them. 
What it leaves out, however, is intentionality.  What makes ‘The Wire’ good writing, is that there are so many characters with good intentionality, and while they might become corrupted in ways by the system, they rarely game the institution with the same strength as someone with poor intentionality.  Eventually they either bow out, or blaze out speaking truth to power.

Having the expectation that you can’t participate in an institution unless you are pure as the driven snow is missing the value of intentionality driving behavior.  Sure, sometimes its misguided, but at its core, it is always what drives people speaking truth to power from positions that know what they are talking about.  These are the people who seem to be the best at getting change to begin.

Has anyone read David Icke’s Obama article? Any thoughts?
http://www.davidicke.com/content/view/18281

david icke is a misinformation agent of the lizardmen conspiracy he claims to expose.  I like obama more knowing that ickes doesn’t like him. 

obama was better then republicans at manipulating the sheep.  i think he might realize that’s how the game works and mean to do some good. people are sheep it’s never going to change better shepherds manipulating them than butchers I think.  my perception is that michelle obama and david axelrod are Gryffindors working for gandolf and not slytherins talking to the lizardpeople. (my other eye thinks they are just smart hardworking people who have good sex and love and a sense of empowerment from seeing a way to make change and so can genuinely try to help other people.)

let’s wait until obama is a disaster for ickes level conspiracies this time. it could be just about dawn.  I think that his conspiracy shit is another way to keep people who realize some of the bullshit powerless and infantile.  say to yourself “i am a secret head of the new illuminati, not lizard people.” until you believe it.  take whatever type of, um, booze helps you see that most clearly.  it might not be true but it’s more useful then ickes.

The Good Reverend Roger - 05 December 2008 07:57 PM

So we’re told.  But they always lie, so I doubt it.

Consider:  What would the country do without a president?  Obviously, the same things it does WITH a president.

http://thomaspmbarnett.com/weblog/2008/12/wrote_it_many_times_now_confir.html

There is the assumption that it’s the political appointees who run things or change things or are the real power players in DC. My experience has always been that the real power in DC is the persistent class of senior bureaucrats just below the political level. The appointees typically last about 12-to-18 months, getting up to speed for most of that period and--maybe--having some actual impact if they’re quite focused in their goals. Otherwise they come and go, leaving nary a trace.

fortytwo - 06 January 2009 06:38 PM

Having the expectation that you can’t participate in an institution unless you are pure as the driven snow is missing the value of intentionality driving behavior.  Sure, sometimes its misguided, but at its core, it is always what drives people speaking truth to power from positions that know what they are talking about.  These are the people who seem to be the best at getting change to begin.

But some institutions are more likely to encourage abuse than others, IE the Stanford Prison Experiment. Hierarchy was designed to filter information so that people at the very top don’t have a clue at what’s going on except for a few levels down, it keeps mistakes that could embarrass people from being brought into the open. Compartmentalization breeds secrecy. The downside is that it can’t adapt as quickly as more horizontal organizations. I know it’s all tripe we’ve read through before, but it’s worth repeating.

Having alternatives, extra sources of income and activities outside of work helps to keep you from getting too absorbed into it.

Edit: Would you take a position in the military if you’re against the war, or the way it is being conducted?

^^I really like the point about multiple income streams—since I turned copywriting into an income stream, suddenly my label/music work isn’t nearly as frustrating and good ideas come faster when I’m brainstorming there.

david icke is a misinformation agent of the lizardmen conspiracy he claims to expose.

At some level i can agree with you. With Icke and Strieber too my question is that if in fact they’re bringing the lizard people. Let’s assume for the sake of the argument that lizzies are some kind of transdimensional pyschic entities, as the research seems to point. My idea is that in psychic realms intention creates consciousness, or maybe vehicles of consciousness--take all that research of tulpas in tibet and all that. So maybe this people are bringing lizzies here making people aware of it. Maybe a double-edged sword, or maybe just BS.

think that his conspiracy shit is another way to keep people who realize some of the bullshit powerless and infantile.  say to yourself “i am a secret head of the new illuminati, not lizard people.” until you believe it.  take whatever type of, um, booze helps you see that most clearly.  it might not be true but it’s more useful then ickes.

At some level i can agree with you. My idea on conspiracy research is that at some level the people who take this (in my view noble) endeavour need to put name embracing all the whole trends discovered. This could be too related to psychological processes having place in the researcher’s head. My idea is that many times conspiracy research runs along with what is called in junguian terminology an individuation process--an important part of which it is a confrontation and integrations of the shadow (again in junguian terms).

So yes, maybe icke tends to put this whole label to the bunch of conspiracies he has unveiled, but to me that doesn’t invalidate the facts exposed. Facts like:

Brzezinski [Obama’s mentor] has admitted publicly that he began to fund and train what he would call today ‘terrorists’ in Afghanistan to oppose the Soviet-controlled government in the capital, Kabul, in the late 1970s. The idea, he said, was to entice the Soviet Union to invade Afghanistan to protect the Kabul regime and thus give the rival superpower ‘their Vietnam’. The plan worked at the cost of a million Afghan lives during the Soviet occupation from 1979 to 1989, a consequence that troubles Brzezinski not at all.
(...)
It is one of many great ironies of the Obama presidency that he is demanding massive troop reinforcements to be sent to Afghanistan to fight the Taliban terrorists who were initially armed, trained and organised by Brzezinski, the man behind Obama.

Or anything. Maybe all just BS, i know.

Actually the best conspiracy researcher Kenn Thomas of http://steamshovelpress.com reported over at http://ufomystic.com that David Icke’s tax records were just published documenting he really raked it in for all his lizard books.  Icke published my masters thesis on his online website, along with my “actual Matrix plan” and I’ve corresponded a bit with one of his publicists about his distribution in the chain stores and his libel suits, etc.

That Obama story is interesting until it gets to the Weather Underground/ACORN smear which just shows that Icke is pandering to the same right wing corporate-state elite Icke supposedly challenges.  Clearly Icke needs to read or listen to http://democracynow.org where Amy Goodman went into great detail about the lies behind the ACORN and Weather Underground smear.

This isn’t to state that Icke is wrong about the essential fascist role of Obama in terms of U.S. empire—comparing the Peace Corps and Americorps with the Hitler Youth may seem hyperbole to the extreme but that’s the great disconnect in the U.S., as Chomsky emphasizes—the Democrats as the “good cops” will have nice domestic programs while passing extreme imperial agendas or vice versa—the Democrats will dismantle welfare and pass NAFTA even though the republicans could not.  All because of the Fascist propaganda tool:

THE BIG LIE. 

I was just talking to a coworker of mine about the Obama Cult.  Our office was one of the “get out the vote” places for Obama and I kept to myself but if someone asked I told them why I was against Obama.  My coworker actually went to a Obama victory drinking party and stated he was against Obama.  The best way to describe the work environment of the Democratic Machine is to watch:  AN UNREASONABLE MAN—the recent documentary about Ralph Nader supposedly causing Al Gore to lose.  That documentary lets all of Naders critics say all they want and then the Nader team tears it all apart while showing in detail just how cruel the Democrats truly are.  I went to the DNC in Chicago back in 1996—and it was the first time I saw the fascist Imperial machine in full-force up close.