This article appears in Vol III Issue I: Republics

There is one illusion that blankets itself over our political system and it’s that of democracy. We are not talking about pure democracy which technological influence would still penetrate, or representative democracy which is closer to our political system today, not merely for the fact that it is the system of America, but that even if it were pure the delegation of power would still fall almost certainly to the unelected technocrats that dictate their will upon us, and those technocrats upon whom this essay is chiefly written. 

The illusion of democracy as “choice,” be it representative or pure, is that in either case technocrats ultimately determine what your choice will be. 

While the more intelligent one is, the less susceptible he will argue he is to petty “ephemeral experiences,” ask yourself how the world’s most intricate thinking people, the analytical philosophers, were duped nonetheless to advocate totalitarianism and defend it when it proved deadly. Perhaps reason has gone on holiday and never came back. 

As it turns out, whether one is Sundar Pichai or some philosophy professor, there is always the overlord, and the peasant to do his bidding: your 130 IQ has never stopped Stalin before, why would it now? 

So when we take the masses of Americans and democratically-minded citizens of Western countries who may at least, with some luck, bottom out at 90 IQ, it is not difficult to imagine their vulnerability to external influence and even its advocacy. But what does this influence look like and what does it advocate? 

Technocrats 

Who are they? The right-wingers refer to them as the globalists who seek universalization of their consolidated power; hence, the ism in globalism. Technocracy is an easy concept to understand. It’s allegedly the antithesis to democracy, pure or representative, because the decision makers are not the citizens who are casting a vote to secure a majority, but experts with specialized knowledge in whatever they are in charge of deciding. 

Think Anthony Fauci. The NIH, NIAID, and CDC, are all influential governmental agencies within the U.S. Department of Health, composed of a vast sea of experts that choose whether or not you will wear a mask or become vaccinated tomorrow—and you will comply because the federal and state governments that delegate their power to these individuals defer to their expertise as beneficial to the public good; therefore, disobedience is seen as a threat to that public good and consequentially, the public health. If one is a threat to public health, then congrats, he has become public enemy number one—Think Peter McCullough and Robert Malone.

This kind of delegation, or deference of power, is seen not only when it comes to health, but other social matters like, “What is a woman?” When the standard response to that question has become, “I don’t know I’m not a biologist,” one might as well refuse to answer, “what is a cat?” because he is not a zoologist. On the other hand, left-wingers will often contradict their deference to a body of experts with their deference to the individual as an expert. “What is a woman?” might also be answered with, “whatever one says it is” because apparently everyone is equally an expert on whatever they want to be true; except, of course, where this line of logic is disadvantageous. 

The logic of democratizing expertise in the previous example is disadvantageous when for [X] moment it does not support the party line decided by the decision makers from up on high. Firstly, one really does not understand the way technocracy works when they believe that individuals like themselves determine what is and is not a woman. And yet those who are inclined to believe that also believe that there are social constructions designed by others up on high to subject those below them to their truth, so that this all becomes a game of who can achieve dominant discursive power without being too overtly ironic and hypocritical. 

Secondly, democratizing expertise is not the experts’ goal, but they can make 90 IQ masses think that it is. But before we get into that sheepskin, we must consider how such a technocracy influences its people. 

Propaganda is the chief means that any elected and unelected body of government disseminates to its people. If a technocracy is working within the parameters of a democracy, i.e., elected either purely or representatively—which in America’s case amounts to the same—then it can only pursue its chief interests when the people believe it is theirs too. 

Propaganda is not merely the creation of content in the way Democrats or Republicans might edit a campaign video, or in the way Mexico might portray the streets of Philadelphia in its anti-drug ads. Propaganda is the dissemination of any such content to one’s target audience—and there are many target audiences. 

Target audiences are developed and studied through a variety of parameters. Firstly, there are types of audiences based on demographics of geographic areas, gender, age, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, occupation, religion, and political affiliation (which in our case is the encompassing purpose of categorization, i.e., to create generalizations for political expediency). 

Secondly, technocrats measure effectiveness. That is to say they measure how well their target audience will accomplish the desired behavior. This must be done without coercion, otherwise the veil of democracy is snatched away from our eyes. One such way effectiveness is measured is by asking, “Can the number of times the behavior occurs be counted?” 

As it turns out, the answer is yes. A recent study from the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology found that of the 1.9 million “ephemeral experiences” that Google and other firms have been using to “shift opinions and voting preferences” ahead of the midterm elections, they were able to manipulate a 50/50 split amongst undecided voters to a 90/10 split without having users know they’ve been manipulated. 

This is hardly surprising given the tendency of social media companies to collect personal data from users. Aligned with this practice is the tendency to deliberate internal and external conditions that might affect the target audience from performing the desired behavior, such as one’s beliefs, values and attitudes and the world’s situations placed upon us. 

How the technocrats perform this psychological operation is a further depth we can go over another time. 

Democracy in sheepskin 

When the technocrat achieves his desired behavior and the unwitting American voter votes his way, what was really achieved? Well, it depends on what the vote is casted for. 

Oftentimes, votes are casted either for democracy or for fascism, never is there an in-between because even an appeal to “common sense neutrality” is considered a form of complicity in a corrupt system on the precipice of collapse if either the democratists or the fascists obtain power. 

The technocrats are on the side of democracy, or so they say. They believe in free and fair elections, never minding the fact that they will manipulate and deceive to promote the “public good,” and never minding that the so-called “public servants,” who are also technocratic insofar as society defers to their expertise, seek to sanction those disobedient to public decrees through the enforcement of the state to promote, not only the “public good” but the reinforcement of good behavior. In other words, “doing the right thing” means consistent vaccination in the name of “Mr. Science,” not the science. 

The dominant discursive formation for the technocrats is achieved when “democracy” becomes synonymous with its existence. This warrants the question about democracy’s viability as a political system. Does democracy ever incline itself toward anything else but forms of authoritarianism?