It certainly is the case that much that the Bush administration is doing lies outside the Spirit of America, and of the Constitution. People who are mistrusting this administration are correct in their instincts. Something has gone wrong. But knowing something is wrong isn't enough - we also want to know exactly what it is, and more crucially, what we can do about it. That's what this post is about.
There is a lot of opinion floating around about what is going on, what to do, and who is right and who is wrong. Opinion is easy to come by. Knowledge - that is another matter entirely. A lot of people are too lazy to go for real knowledge, especially about politics. For some its just too much work to try to really understand something, and for others - well they prefer their opinions to the truth in any case. Why bother to know the truth when you can be in love with your own bullshit. Take it from one who knows.
So, hacking politics, what does he mean by that?
Any system, an operating system or a way of doing surgery or a process for making fuel cells, can be explained and understood. So it is with politics. Its just a system for getting certain things done. And, yes, it can be hacked. By "hacking" I mean to suggest that with some knowledge and some effort it is possible to be a player. Certainly one could do "cracking", copy some of the disinformation poli-tricks of the Nixon folks (fake letters, break-ins etc), but hacking politics is about creation, about getting inside and making it do something the old time players don't want, and can't stop. Look up hactivism on Google for the basic idea.
hactivism in politics would be different from activism. The activism folks are basically just leftists, that is part of the political spectrum. The players manipulate them easily because their responses are predictable - goose them in the right way they will organize a protest. Not to say there is no point to the left, or that activists and protesters don't play a role, but here we are talking about hacking politics, which is something else than what the left does.
The whole thing turns on psychology. This is where the work - the hard part - comes in. Understanding the psychological element in politics.
We get to this in part two. Originally posted October 16th 2002.
