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Some Ideologies just won't work

By WK Wolfrum
Columnist

Ideologies

Of late, I’ve been thinking quite a bit about politics. Usually, these thoughts lead me to uncontrollable violence, flatulence, teeth-grinding, pants-wetting, agoraphobia, arachnophobia, fits of laughter followed by crying jags, moroseness, aloofness, gun play, smoking, drinking, overeating and spontaneous gymnastics.

Basically, if I walk by a TV showing a story on politics, I’m good for a two- to three-week stay in a mental institution. But it’s nice there. Quiet.

Recently, however, I’ve been spending time examining different political ideologies. There are a lot out there. If you love koala bears and think they should run the government, I’d be willing to bet there’s a Marsupial Party out there somewhere. And then, when the world is thrust into Marsupialism, you’ll have the last laugh.

Anyway, because I believe in informing the public (replete with wild overgeneralizations and slipshod research), I’ve decided to break down three ideologies that seem hopeless, but perhaps just need the right nudge to gain the prominence they deserve:

Anarchy

The Britannica-Webster dictionary defines the word anarchism as, "a political theory that holds all government authority to be unnecessary and undesirable and advocates a society based on voluntary cooperation of individuals and groups."

The theory in anarchism is that, in lieu of a central government, the citizens of a state will get together, dole out responsibilities and get things done, with everyone sharing equally in the widgets produced.

Anarchism is a fantastic analogy, provided the nation using it would need to have a minimal amount has a minimal amount of citizens. Say, eight, max. After that, it seems like it would get all tangled up in itself. A basic problem I have with it is the age-old political theory of “Who The Hell is Going to Take Out the Trash?”

I’m not sure Anarchists completely understand the concept of "trash." Picking up litter and removing the trash from your own environment is great. But then there's the landfills, and good luck with that. Talk about the proletariat all you want, but the proles in the U.S. who work in landfills get paid quite well to work in those huge piles of rotting filth.

Just the amount of "administration" you'd need for figuring out what to do with the garbage would seem to defy an anarchist society. Eventually the garbage people would see their power and demand extra food and widgets. Then you'd have anarchy. So to speak.

On that note, I think the anarchist movement needs a major shake-up. Nobody will ever go for something called "anarchy." You may as well name it "botulism."

My advice, free-of-charge: Call it "The Heroism Movement." Or just "Heroism." If you introduced the Heroism party to the U.S., people wouldn't even ask questions, they'd just join up. Then they'd live and work as anarchists, just so nobody would find out they didn't know what they were getting into.

Fascism

According to Wikipedia, the word fascism has come to mean any system of government that:

exalts nation and sometimes race above the individual,
uses violence and modern techniques of propaganda and censorship to forcibly suppress political opposition,
engages in severe economic and social regimentation.
engages in corporatism
implements or is a totalitarian regime.

Well, thank God the current U.S. government doesn’t resemble fascism at all.

Perhaps its unfair, but being an unfair person, I’d say that fascism is basically nazism without the racism, while combining elements of corporatism, totalitarianism, nationalism and anti-communism.

Which is really why thinking about political ideologies can just be a bitch: You find yourself completely bogged down in –isms, which, according to some doctors, will eventually lead to alcohol-ism.

The big problem for Fascists is that Mussolini completely screwed fascism’s image. Notice how nobody wears that goofy, mini-moustache that Hitler used to have? Well, Mussolini did the same thing to fascism, just in a non-mustache way.

Technocracy

According to www.technocracy.ca, some of the attributes of Technocracy are:

A thoroughly scientific method of control of the technology of our continent.
Democratic controls for all non-technical issues and decisions.
Removal of methods of scarcity such as money, debt, value, and interest.
Replacement of these methods with an empirical accounting of all physical resources, products, and services (called Energy Accounting).
Productive capacity many orders of magnitude higher than currently possible, without requiring any new equipment.
Decrease in human labor required to produce these amounts through proper use of automation.
Higher standard of living for ALL citizens in terms of income, housing, health care, education, and leisure.
Elimination or vast reduction of various social ills, such as poverty, crime, pollution, insecurity, and disease.

OK, I really have no idea how technocrats plan to accomplish these things, but, hey, notice the last bullet: you have to appreciate their goals. I know I have longed for the day when insecurity was just a dismal blip on the world radar. Unfortunately, I am not sure if they plan on knocking out teen-age insecurities. That would take some serious memory on the super-computers.

The biggest problem with technocracy, as I see it, is the inevitability of it creating Matrix and Terminator-type man vs. machine, apocalyptic scenarios. Sure, maybe everything will be great for a while, with the lack of disease and insecurity, but you just know that eventually you’ll be immersed in a pod or chased down by futuristic cyborgs bent on killing Sarah Conner. And that would just suck.

So in the end, am I saying its better to become a Fascist-Anarchist-Technocrat? Well, yes, that is exactly what I’m saying. I believe Fascist-Anarchist-Technocrats (FATs) could eventually become a major player in the world political scene.

Face it, anything is better than some sort of bogus, two-party system, where the parties are so similar it doesn’t matter anyway. I mean, who do they think they’re fooling, those corrupt bast …

Sigh. I think I need another “rest.”

Posted March 19th 2005

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