Preface to essay
It is quite fitting that the publication of this essay is happening in a time when social media corporations are under increasing scrutiny about the way they operate and present themselves to the public as responsible and healthy structures for human interaction. Without a strong voice demanding the restructuring of all or most social media platforms, however, the likelihood of a fundamental change in how we communicate to each other online and how we use online sources will not occur any time soon.
The democratic power that functions very well in Congress unfortunately does not come from the general public but rather from large corporate interests, and our entire existing social and political structure is totally aligned in the support and protection of this corporate power and with their values of consumption and economic growth that they have installed in our way of life; therefore, concerned citizens like us have no social or political structure at all that would facilitate the inputting of our own voice – our views, our ideas, our proposals – into the political process and thus society at large, and this is our main problem.
Until we end this farce of a world with corporate profit outweighing the will of the people, we’re always going to have economic instability, a huge and growing disparity between the poor and wealthy, and we will always have continual wars that the defense industry and their nation states profit from.
Societies in developed countries, beginning with the U.S., should be restructured so that its main core values are the promotion of human growth and the advancement in human development for all citizens. This major change in our values will require restructuring in the political and economic systems and throughout our society. The public can no longer afford having our world view implanted on us by the corporate elite through corporate owned media networks and non-democratic social platforms.
If there is anyone out there who agrees with me about the need for implementing an online democratic structure for ordinary citizens so that they can have an everyday opportunity to wield real democratic power upon our government and society and change the direction of our society by changing public policy — both domestic and foreign — in a way that would essentially value human beings, their development and their growth, above corporate profits and global expansion, then you have my permission to use the following essay as an outline to promote the basic concept of an online, public, democratic platform/political forum for the general public.
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For those of us who would like to know how people can come together and change society for the common good, it is crucial to be aware that we now have the means of doing that quite effectively. It’s called the internet. Nothing holds us back from acting on our own and pooling our resources to build a democratic political structure that would give the general public a powerful voice throughout society.
We need to establish an online democratic political platform in which any concerned citizen can securely log in and participate in the political system in a highly constructive and meaningful way — which would help to ensure that whatever Congress does that it will always be in the public’s best interest — and this would translate into the ability of the general public to exert and wield real democratic power upon the government, and thus society itself. Such a democratic structure, which would essentially be a public web portal, would serve multiple functions — including basic things like voting in an election, which has already been done successfully in a number of countries, or allowing people to express their opinions on any issue and have those opinions recorded and tabulated for government offices to see the results of and to analyze.
The political platform could also be a place where people educate themselves about our true history of imperialism, how society actually operates, about the nature of neoliberalism, how it began, and the devastating effect that it has on the poor and the working-class, or the history of class struggle in American history, or how American anarchists were the ones who were behind most if not all of the major social progress that was ever achieved throughout our history. All of this kind of historical information, which has not been part of traditional teachings, would do a tremendous service to the public by enlightening their minds and to give them a whole understanding and approach to what is possible.
The central function of this semi- direct democracy platform, however, would be the encouragement, promotion, and facilitation of the two most important activities that a free and democratic people could ever do — critical thinking about the society in which they live and engaging in rational, political discourse. People would gather around a common cause — like a social injustice or some other systemic flaw in society — that they are passionate about, form into a group, or several groups, which would basically take the form of an online chat room but that would be set up in a highly constructive and intelligent way, and simply begin sharing their concerns and expressing their thoughts and ideas on achieving a logical, reasonable, and practical solution to the problem. The rational discourse would undoubtedly lead to some form of brainstorming sessions where a common sense solution could be produced.
Once finalized, the people’s official proposal (perhaps known as a pop) would then be voted on by the participating public, and if passed with a majority vote, then it would be sent to Congress for special consideration. This is how American people can harness real democratic power, and if it can be done here in this country, with all of our diversity, distractions, and political divisiveness, it could be done just about anywhere. This is not a fairy tale. This is quite real, and we can do this.
Each member of Congress would receive some kind of rating based on how responsive the representative is to the general public — who would be regarded as the main constituents of Congress — and every time that an individual logs into the platform, one of the first things seen would be the rating of their Representative and Senators. The rating system would be an additional tactic to pressure politicians with so that members of Congress always act in the best interest of the people. This is what a public, online, democratic political platform could do.
Such a democratic mechanism would be a political game-changer because then there would basically be no limit to what a concerned and engaged citizenry could achieve. I am talking about an online platform, that’s it, that records, tabulates, and graphs the voice of the public so that any representative in government can simply log in and see how their constituents feel about the issue and learn about any specific ideas or proposals that they may have in resolving a particular issue. If the majority of people are dissatisfied with the representative’s response, then the people would have the ability to make that known and to be put on the democratic record of that Congress member.
Students, individuals, corporations, and organizations are continually establishing some kind of online platform or web-site in order to perform a particular function or set of functions for society, and the building of a direct-democracy platform would be no different except that it would be a platform that every citizen can benefit from. Participation in this platform would undoubtedly require a certain amount of time and energy from the individual, and this would be understood. Most people make time for doing all kinds of things in their lives that are not totally necessary, and so, I would think that making time to voice their concerns and ideas about how to advance human growth and human development in the most effective way possible would be something that people would definitely want to do.
We don’t need the government’s permission to begin working on such a grand, social project; we just need to start doing it. It would be helpful if celebrities in the mainstream media or perhaps certain organizations who specialize in producing public-interest campaigns could create a presentation to promote the establishment of an online democratic structure. Anyone involved in such efforts should expect some sort of backlash from the existing power structure, but if the public campaign is done in a very intelligent and strategic way, and if different prototypes are made for the public to try out and to get comfortable with, which would help to promote the overall concept of the project, then the powers that be will bend.
A possible slogan for the activists of such a movement could be: Keep Calm, and Make the Logical Argument. When you hear voices from the media start downplaying and ridiculing the importance of critical and logical thinking, or accuse us of being reckless and irresponsible, that would be a good sign of the cracking of the existing power structure. Last thought, for those broadminded computer programmers who will be taking on this challenge, let me suggest that when it comes time to giving this public platform a catchy name that you will consider naming it simply “NOAM” after Noam Chomsky – one of the most profound political thinkers and scholars of our time whose work has provided me with the chief source of inspiration in the writing of this essay.
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