Not only are citizens excluded from political power, they are also kept in a state of ignorance as to the true state of public opinion.Perhaps out of boredom I've suddenly developed a keen interest in the Political Compass, the popular internet tool that purports to test a collection of your political opinions, then plots you on a two-dimensional graph alongside various historical figures. According to the site's FAQ, the test is, by design, quite trickier than it first appears.
Some propositions are extreme, and some are more moderate. That's how we can show you whether you lean towards extremism or moderation on the Compass.At some point, I'd like to go through the test question by question, if for no other reason than to prove to myself I'm not crazy. I've taken the test a couple of times, each time going more slowly than the last, but I consistently flop out between -5 and -6 on both axes (the economic axis being the more fungible of the two for me).Some of the propositions are intentionally vague. Their purpose is to trigger buzzwords in the mind of the user, measuring feelings and prejudices rather than detailed opinions on policy.
But I'm not going to do that now. Instead, I wanted to take a look at the site's attempted pegging of the 2008 US presidential primary candidates.
Here is the graph:
Please keep in mind that The Political Compass is a universal tool, reflecting the full spectrum of political thought, and applicable to all democracies. US politics are generally fought within a more confined space. While in mainstream America, Clinton, for example, may be seen as left leaning, in the overall political landscape, she is a moderate conservative. Someone like Kucinich, while seen by his severest opponents as an extreme left winger, would qualify as a typical social democrat in a European context.
Obviously, I assume there's a decent amount of guesswork involved here, but this seems basically fair, to my modestly observant eye. Certainly, in the era of neoliberal orthodoxy, no one is going to be taken seriously by either party who posts a negative number on the x-axis. It is a bit more surprising that no one save Kucinich/Gravel score negative on the y-axis. (I'd like to do a more thorough analysis to see how one can get there, since it's the axis I'm far more familiar with.) Not even super-"libertarian" Ron Paul can get there, but perhaps he doesn't hate America enough *wicked grin*.A great cause of chatter among media watchdogs is why the mainstream press spends so much time focusing on horse-race politics and quarterly fundraising reports in lieu of serious, nuanced policy considerations, and why, for example, it's considered a matter of conventional wisdom that Kucinich is too extreme to get enough popular support to win (which turns nicely into a self-fulfilling feedback loop). The answer is, at least in part, that the public is tilted much further to the lower left than the mainstream press, the Beltway establishment and Wall Street would care to admit, and it's quite important for their self-interest to make sure very few ordinary voting stiffs realize this.
Unfortunately, Political Compass doesn't compile demographic data (and it would be very skewed if they did, I suspect) but I'm quite confident in this proposition. It's rare for me to meet anyone while browsing fairly diverse places with both feet in the upper-right quadrant. I know someone with scores around the (0,0) mark (I've forgotten what to call that, too long since geometry) who presumably sees himself as a mainstream Democrat, if not a moderate, who is, in fact. left of everyone save the nutters who can't possibly get elected. The Kucinich campaign has been touting this poll which, even considering a possibly substantial selection bias, has Dennis the Menace winning in a landslide in a blind test of political opinion.
In our democracy, however, those people don't have enough money to elect their candidate, and, capital being correlated with intellect (I mean, it is, isn't it?), they just can't be trusted to make rash decisions. Napoleon is always right.
