[Oe List ...] Demagoguery

[Rod Rippel]

Blank    I'm intrigued by recent exchanges re JWM's impact, zombies and facilitation.  And, by a book by Michael Signer, "Demagogue, the fight to save democracy from its worst enemies."
    Perhaps Joe could be seen as one attempt toward a new model for avoiding the dilemma of the demagogue.
    In his book Signer describes the inherent weakness of democracy as the political system which breeds demagogues who become tryants planting  seeds of their own self-destruction and violence, creating Facism, oligarchy, or dictatorship in the process.  
    Demagogue (from the Greek, demos, the people and agogos, leader, teacher, etc..  Examples: A. Hitler, Huey Long, Joe McCarthy, Geo Wallace, etc.
A charimatic leader of people -- usually by strong emotion and oratory -- who garners power.
    JWM, whatever his gifts and shortcomings, saw the need for engineering some kind of new polity which would not concentrate power in one individual.  His stance was embedded in the image of the RS-1 pedagogue/LENS facilitator; an image of raising life-questions not giving answers but options.
    The tendency of RS-1 participants to see the pedagoge as an authority figure was effectively avoided when the pedagogue disappeared
    The people, some would say the rabble, want a Tyrant (someone or something to give their lives a purpose).
    Was the collapse of Order Polity after JWM because we couldn't live without a demagogue? Couldn't find one? or didn't want one?  Or just fatigue?

Rod Rippel



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