Chapter 4
Basic Agenda

It is very common that people who seek to form functional groups do so by establishing a set of Basic Principles that define the group’s Basic Agenda, hoping that this will attract people of like mind to join the group in order to work toward these concrete goals defined by the group’s conveners.

As we have already explained in the preceding chapters, we believe that this is a flawed and limiting approach that will stifle the proper growth and functional development of the organization we seek to build. We believe that the powers and benefits inherent in True Democracy far exceed the limited and confining concept that only closely like-minded people, pre-filtered by their allegiance to a complex and predetermined ‘platform’, can find the means to work together effectively. We believe that True Democracy provides the means for people of diverse interests and viewpoints to find their common ground, and to unite to work together toward their Common Good.


Chapter 4a
A Shared Agenda is Easily Divided

In an earlier chapter we cited the glaring reality that four out of five American citizens are of like mind in our lament for the loss of Democracy in our nation. 80% of American citizens strongly resent the seizure of control over our affairs by powerful special interests. We believe that we must recognize that this 80% majority represents very fertile ground for the development of a broad based organization that can amass the sheer power to take our nation back under its citizen’s own democratic control.

We must also recognize, however, that the ‘powers-that-be’ have been successful in seizing power and holding power through a deliberate, highly organized, and keenly targeted effort to exploit every difference of opinion that exists among the population, and to magnify those differences to the greatest extent of raw animosity possible.

With their control of mass media, which has given them the power to exert tremendous influence over different factions, beliefs, and tendencies among the mass consciousness, these ‘powers-that-be’ have been spectacularly successful in dividing people who share overriding common interests into mutually scornful factions, so that they will remain ‘conquered’ simply because they are divided. By this age-old ‘divide and conquer’ strategy, the overriding interests of the ‘power-that-be’, which do not coincide with those of more than a very small percentage of the population, continually prevail.

The 80% of American citizens who share a crucially important common concern over the loss of Democracy in America, inhabit every ‘wavelength’ on the so-called ‘political spectrum.’ What too few of us perceive is that this ‘political spectrum’ is an artifice that has been skillfully designed and constructed by the powers-that-be to serve their own interests.

Different locations on the political spectrum are defined by patterns of thought that often have little logical cohesiveness when rationally examined. Designations such as ‘right wing’ or ‘left wing’ are highly characterized by amorphous clusters of ideas that are often highly self-contradictory.

The very strife brought on by human greed, and the constant mendacity that is used to advance selfish interests, serves itself by creating complexities that are very hard for people to think our way through. If the world were dominated by justice and virtue, any departure from that would be easily recognized. But when the world is dominated by greed, and the constant cruelty it engenders, and when the forces of greed and cruelty masquerade themselves as honorable and just, (as has been the case throughout History), people by and large have a hard time sorting all this out.

People turn to well-defined dogmas, such as religion, to help them make sense of an existence that is overwhelmingly confusing to even the smartest and most experienced among us. People deserve the comfort we find in the surety of our faith and beliefs, but we can surely see that most of us, and perhaps all of us, adhere to at least some beliefs that exist well beyond the bounds of any semblance of rationality or reason.

Faith itself is irrational, we could argue, but who among us does not cling to it in some form? If we do not invest our faith in a God, then we invest it in some ideology, or moral principle, or in the human spirit at large, or in the spirit we feel within ourselves, or in our human connections and obligations to those we love. In every case there is some element of the irrational in the faith we find.

Most of us make only weak attempts to remain aware of the irrationality of our faith, and many of us make no attempt at all. We develop belief systems that either indulge our human Desire, or else deny it, and we leave Reason outside in the cold as we huddle around our beliefs for comfort.

Belief is the progenitor of prejudice, and for those in positions of control over the information that people receive, and the manner and context in which they receive it, it is relatively easy to manipulate people’s opinions, in order to conform reality to their prejudices and beliefs. The so-called ‘wedge issues’, which are very often ‘faith-based’, and just as often completely divorced from all reason or rationality, are skillfully used to drive a wedge between people who have broad and deep shared interests.

Thus, very large percentages of the population hold dogged beliefs that are not only demonstrably false, but are, in their effects, directly and diametrically opposed to the self-interests of those who hold them.

That is why 80% of the population, a hugely overwhelming majority by any standards, cannot exert its collective will over this nation. These 80% who share this same overriding concern, are divided into too many mutually scornful factions, (largely defined by irrational and highly manipulated beliefs and prejudices), to organize themselves for that purpose.

We believe that the organization we build will be wise to strive very hard to develop a collective understanding of this age-old ‘divide and conquer’ strategy. We will experience the greatest success if we consciously avoid behavior and policies that exacerbate it, and instead exert ourselves to project ideas that will resonate with as broad a spectrum as possible among that 80% of the American citizenry that laments the loss of Democracy in our nation.

Democracy itself is the message that will resonate most widely. It is also the simple and basic message from which complex social justice agendas and platforms, made up from complex and detailed policies, flow. We strongly believe that the organization we imagine will be most successful if we emphasize the basic message, and allow the more complex issues, positions, and policies time to evolve in people’s minds.

If we establish open and well-used lines of communications among and between a diverse cross-section of people, (a cross-section that spans the political spectrum as broadly as possible, and communication that is rooted in our broadly-based shared interests), all who have access to these lines of communication can use them to understand the points of view of others, and have others understand theirs in return.

If, on the other hand, we establish a platform of complex and specific policies, most especially concerning highly emotionalized ‘wedge issues' that cause widespread outrage to the highly factionalized sensibilities of a large percentage of the populace, (the vast majority of whom share common ground with us in our concerns for the corruption of our democracy), we will be the weaker for it.

Even though we realize that many human ‘sensibilities’ are no better than the irrational beliefs and prejudices that most of us, as imperfect human beings, harbor, we must realize that politics is a numbers game, that the numbers are VERY large, and that the object of the ‘game’ is to get the most people on our side. Assaulting people’s sensibilities, (irrational or not), is a very poor plan for getting them on our side.

If we concentrate our message on those things on which such an overwhelming majority of American citizen’s agree, on our need to establish True Democracy in this nation, we can expand our circle of shared understanding and influence, (over time), from there.


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