Plato: Biggest Scammer in History

Neil Postman rightly refers to Plato as the world's first systematic fascist. Making mention of that usually raises the ire of those who don't have any idea of Plato's philosophies. Most people seem to highly regard the name "Plato," though they can't really say why. They defend him with no knowledge of what Plato was about. Some, such as that utter fool, I.F. Stone, confuse Plato with Socrates, and not only don't know there is the one and there is the other, but argue that Socrates is Plato. Stupidity knows no bounds, especially among our intelligentsia. Some thinkers, real thinkers, as opposed to the Conformity Hippies who rule the Academy these days as well, real thinkers such as Ernest Gellner, know Plato very well. Gellner, writing after Karl Popper, who wrote on Plato, The Open Society and its Enemies, puts Plato on the table for a nifty dissection, briefly thus:

"The profound paradox of Platonism proper is that it preached a return to, or a fortification of, the closed communally organized society: but it did so by means which themselves illustrated, highlighted, and sprang from that liberation from traditional ritualism and communalism. Plato represented dogmatism pursued by liberal means, an authoritarianism with a rational face." Ernest Gellner, Plough, Sword and Book. London: Collins Harvill: 1998; pp. 84-85.

Taken in, that's what too many of our intellectuals have been are to this day and beyond. We'll see one of them below. And a shameful example of a typical intellectual conformist he is. There is no excuse for an expert in the field to be so wrong on the facts as is the writer below. But if he were merely a fool, and a sloppy one at that, who would care? No, dear reader, it's far worse than that. The writer below is a danger to human freedom and to free people everywhere. We must confront him and those like him, stop them by making known the realities of history and literature from the texts as they are, not as one thinks they must be or should be, or should be thought so by the "average" man.

Kimon Valaskakis, "Media-enhanced 'dumb democracy' is the fastest road to totalitarianism." Globe and Mail; October 13, 2008.

Winston Churchill once argued that democracy is the worst political system except for all the others. While there is no viable alternative to democracy, contemporary flaws in the system - what I call "dumb democracy" - threaten to weaken it and produce counterproductive results. These flaws have become, alas, increasingly prevalent in both the Canadian and U.S. elections. Voters are making momentous decisions on the basis of the most trivial criteria.

The rise of Sarah Palin has been fuelled by her engaging smile and her appeal as a "hockey mom." Despite the constant mocking by the U.S. media deploring her lack of preparedness for high office, she appeals to the average voter, or "Joe Six-Pack American," as she calls him. In the U.S., average voters seem to want an average vice-president or even president to represent them. University professors are looked down on when aspiring for high political office, while celebrities, actors, sports stars and even former professional wrestlers get the nod.

Although this anti-intellectual bias is less predominant in Canada, both American and Canadian voters are very vulnerable to mediatic factors such as body language, winking at the audience, ability to tell jokes and being folksy and cute. This media-enhanced trivialization started in the first television debate between John Kennedy and Richard Nixon, and it's been said that JFK won the televised debate because of Mr. Nixon's sweaty face while Mr. Nixon won the radio debate because of his arguments. Today, the spin doctors and image makers try to appeal to the lowest common denominator. We are very far from Plato's philosopher king.

Some may argue that voting on trivial grounds is the prerogative of "the people," but this argument does not withstand analysis.

"The people" are made up of human beings. To err is human and, if one person can make a mistake, so can millions. There is no safety in numbers. The assumption that a majority of 50 plus 1 is always right and 50 minus 1 is always wrong is quite obviously absurd. The ancient Athenians and the fathers of modern democracy warned against populism's dangers.

"The people" change their minds all the time, as polls demonstrate. The Americans who elected and re-elected George W. Bush obviously regret their choice, since he is at 25 per cent in the approval ratings. Even John McCain, the Republican presidential nominee, has distanced himself from Mr. Bush as much as possible. If a voter's opinion is exclusively decided on the basis of spin doctors' sound bites, huge blunders may be committed by the electorate - which will have to live with its mistake for four long years.

The outcome of the U.S. election affects the whole world, not just in economic terms but in issues of life and death. How many people have died around the world because of Mr. Bush's decisions? The privilege of empire must carry with it a greater sense of responsibility. The U.S. voter from the Midwest or Deep South must realize his or her decision has global implications and act accordingly.

So what can we conclude? Governance is much too serious a challenge in an interdependent world to be left to superficial criteria. Would you entrust your future to a person who doesn't answer your questions but just winks at you? Would you fly with an untrained pilot just because he reminds you of yourself ? Would you undergo an operation by an unqualified surgeon because he is charismatic?

A condition of intelligent democracy is intelligent and well-informed voters. It is the task of the media to inform the voters, but it also the task of the voters to take elections more seriously. Voting is a right, but it is also a privilege that must be used wisely because, when all is said and done, "dumb democracy" is the fastest road to totalitarianism.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20081013.CODEMOS13//TPStory/Comment

This man lies to you, dear reader. What he would have you believe is his smiling and concerned pose of Velvet Fascism. If you haven't read Plato, if you've missed Popper, if you aren't aware of the story the writer above doesn't tell you, let's take another brief look at Ernest Gellner for the time being.

Platonism is the supreme expression of agro-literate man, of a society endowed with a large and steady food-supply, capable of sustaining a minority elite endowed with the capacity to codify, formalize, and preserve its ethos and cognitive capital. It is stable and aspires to stability; and it is liable to consider radical change pathological. It recognizes and endorses the joint roles of the transcendent and of coercion in securing stability for society. The community is divided into the wise, the aggressive, and the hard-working. (Gellner: p. 118.) And that is it. The Philosopher Kings, the Thugs, and the slaves. Plato offers nothing else-- forever. Any change would be pathological. Platonists, as above, are not our friends: they are the enemies of the people.

The writer above is a fascist, pure and simple. He expresses the latest Platonist variant of Ur-fascism. "Voters are making momentous decisions on the basis of the most trivial criteria." Voters.

For example, and an anti-American one at that: "The rise of Sarah Palin has been fueled by her engaging smile and her appeal as a 'hockey mom'." If you don't get it thus far, how's this? "[S]he appeals to the average voter, or 'Joe Six-Pack American'."

But no; you, dear reader, are not supposed to be insulted by the writer's reference to you as "average" or "Joe Six-Pack." As this pimp tries to stoke your vanities, you are meant to see yourself as one just like the philosopher king above. You are superiour to the fools who like Sarah Palin. The fact that such is a pimp's bit of chicanery is seemingly lost on the good writer above. So, like a pimp, on he goes: "In the U.S., average voters seem to want an average vice-president or even president to represent them."

Average people? According to Plato there are no average people, so the good writer is using a euphemism, one meaning "slaves". The slaves want a slave as political representative. How shocking!

"University professors are looked down on when aspiring for high political office, while celebrities, actors, sports stars and even former professional wrestlers get the nod."

No, not Ion! Not an actor! Let us only allow ourselves to be ruled by university professors like the doctor above, Philosopher Kings, those who are smarter and better than the "average" man.

"Although this anti-intellectual bias is less predominant in Canada, both American and Canadian voters are very vulnerable to mediatic factors such as body language, winking at the audience, ability to tell jokes and being folksy and cute."

Canadians aren't generally as stupid as Americans. Thank you, dear writer. Aren't we clever after all? We might even be able to understand conversation, if not a coherent argument; but the rest, the slave masses, they have to rely on the non-verbal, the mediatic. This man is so far removed from common people that he assumes we'll be taken in by pimp talk.

Here he rues away his day: "We are very far from Plato's philosopher king."

No, sir. If only it were so. We are, in fact, in the presence of the typical Left dhimmi fascist would-be Phiospher King. There's no further need to critique this man's pseudo-argument.

"So what can we conclude? Governance is much too serious a challenge in an interdependent world to be left to superficial criteria."

No, I would conclude that governance is much too serious a challenge to leve to Gnostic fools like the one above, and that we must confront fascists like the fool above and defeat him in every venue, in every arena, in every agora. Monstrous evil such as that written by the fool above has no place in a democracy other than in the spittoon of common bar-room. Garbage sophistry posing as intellectual superiority. Don't stand for this. It's filthy and disgusting. To the trash-can of history with foolishness like Platonism. Down with the Philosopher Kings! Off with their shit-filled heads. Long live the Demos! Long live Sarah Palins! Long live Democracy. Long live the Average Person!

Dear Limey Assholes,

The Guardian Newspaper is running a cartoon today of American voters. Damned good of the Guardian to put us all in our rightful places and show us what we're really like so we and the world can see it so clearly. Below a bit of background on this Friend of the People.

The Grauniad (until 1959 The Manchester Guardian) is a British newspaper owned by the Guardian Media Group. It is published Monday to Saturday in the Berliner format from its London and Manchester headquarters.

In August 2004, for the US presidential election, the daily G2 supplement launched an experimental letter-writing campaign in Clark County, Ohio, a small county in a swing state. G2 editor Ian Katz bought a voter list from the county for $25 and asked readers to write to people listed as undecided in the election, giving them an impression of the international view and the importance of making the correct decision. There was something of a backlash to this campaign. The paper scrapped Operation Clark County on 21 October 2004 after first publishing a column of vituperation under the headline 'Dear Limey assholes'.

The Guardian Weekly, which circulates worldwide, provides a compact digest of four newspapers. It contains articles from The Guardian and its Sunday paper, sister paper The Observer, as well as reports, features and book reviews from The Washington Post and articles translated from France's Le Monde.

The Guardian Media Group also runs a multi-award winning website, guardian.co.uk.

Editorial articles in The Guardian are generally in sympathy with the middle-ground liberal to left-wing end of the political spectrum. This is reflected in the paper's readership: a MORI Poll taken between April and June 2000 showed that 80% of Guardian readers were Labour Party voters (cited in International Socialism Spring 2003, ISBN 1-898876-97-5); according to another MORI poll taken in 2004, 44% of Guardian readers vote Labour and 37% vote Liberal Democrat.

The Guardian is considered British centre-left, however, it is frequently described by American conservatives as "left-wing" as US politics are generally to the right of the UK.

In October 2004 The Guardian published a humour column by Charlie Brooker in its entertainment guide, which appeared to call for the assassination of US President George W. Bush. This caused some controversy and the paper was forced to issue an apology and remove the article from its website.

Founded by textile traders and merchants, the Guardian had a reputation as 'an organ of the middle class', or in the words of C.P. Scott's son Ted 'a paper that will remain bourgeois to the last'. "I write for the Guardian," said Sir Max Hastings in 2005, "because it is read by the new establishment", reflecting the paper's growing influence. Three of the Guardian's four leader writers joined the Social Democratic Party on its foundation in 1981, but the paper was enthusiastic in its support for Tony Blair in his bid to lead the Labour Party, and to become Prime Minister.

Following the 7 July 2005 London bombings, The Guardian published an article on its comment pages by Dilpazier Aslam, a 27 year old British Muslim journalism trainee from Yorkshire. Aslam was a member of Hizb ut-Tahrir, an Islamist group, and had published a number of articles on their website. According to the paper, it did not know that Aslam was a member of Hizb ut-Tahrir when he applied to become a trainee, though several staff members were informed of this once he started at the paper.

The Guardian is part of the GMG Guardian Media Group .... All the aforementioned are owned by The Scott Trust, a charitable foundation which aims to ensure the newspaper's editorial independence in perpetuity, maintaining its financial health to ensure it does not become vulnerable to take over by for-profit media groups, and the serious compromise of editorial independence that this often brings.

The Guardian has been consistently loss-making. The National Newspaper division of GMG, which also includes The Observer, reported operating losses of £49.9m in 2006, up from £18.6m in 2005. The paper is therefore heavily dependent on cross-subsidisation from profitable companies within the group, including Auto Trader and the Manchester Evening News....

According to a December, 2004 survey, 44% of Guardian readers voted in favour of Labour, 37% for the Liberal Democrats and only 5% for the Conservatives, the lowest percentage of any large British newspaper....

Despite its early support for the Zionist movement, in recent decades The Guardian has often been perceived as critical of Israeli government policy. In December 2003 journalist Julie Burchill left the paper for The Times, citing this as one of the reasons for her move. She later accused The Guardian of being anti-semitic. In a recent controversy, the paper has been accused by Harvard lawyer Alan Dershowitz of bias and an unwillingness to correct what he deemed a mis-statement of fact. This allegation was denied by the Guardian's foreign editor, Harriet Sherwood, who says the paper aims to cover all viewpoints in the Israel-Palestine conflict. On 6 June 2007 the paper commemorated the 40th anniversary of the Six Day War by giving equal space to the Israeli and Palestinian prime ministers to explain their views on the conflict and its legacy.

[....]

There are many stereotypes, but perhaps the most prominent is that of the Labour-voting middle-class Guardian reader with centre-left/left-wing politics rooted in the 1960s, working in the public sector or academia, sometimes eating lentils and muesli, living in north London (especially Camden and Islington), wearing sandals, sometimes believing in alternative medicine and natural medicine though more often atheistic or non-religious and rational. It has been shown that the majority of university students in the UK read the Guardian.

This might be illustrated by Labour MP Kevin Hughes's largely rhetorical question in the House of Commons on November 19, 2001: "Does my Right Hon. Friend find it bizarre — as I do — that the yoghurt- and muesli-eating, Guardian-reading fraternity are only too happy to protect the human rights of people engaged in terrorist acts, but never once do they talk about the human rights of those who are affected by them?"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Guardian

Guardian.... Doesn't that strike a bell? Hmmm.

A snippet:

Why We Form a Society

Imagining their likely origins in the prehistorical past, Plato argued that societies are invariably formed for a particular purpose. Individual human beings are not self-sufficient; no one working alone can acquire all of the genuine necessities of life. In order to resolve this difficulty, we gather together into communities for the mutual achievement of our common goals. This succeeds because we can work more efficiently if each of us specializes in the practice of a specific craft: I make all of the shoes; you grow all of the vegetables; she does all of the carpentry; etc. Thus, Plato held that separation of functions and specialization of labor are the keys to the establishment of a worthwhile society.

The result of this original impulse is a society composed of many individuals, organized into distinct classes (clothiers, farmers, builders, etc.) according to the value of their role in providing some component part of the common good. But the smooth operation of the whole society will require some additional services that become necessary only because of the creation of the social organization itself—the adjudication of disputes among members and the defense of the city against external attacks, for example. Therefore, carrying the principle of specialization one step further, Plato proposed the establishment of an additional class of citizens, the guardians who are responsible for management of the society itself. In fact, Plato held that effective social life requires guardians of two distinct sorts: there must be both soldiers whose function is to defend the state against external enemies and to enforce its laws, and rulers who resolve disagreements among citizens and make decisions about public policy. The guardians collectively, then, are those individuals whose special craft is just the task of governance itself.
http://www.philosophypages.com/hy/2g.htm