Constitutional Exploitation

 By the way, the redundancy is blatant.

The 1816 letter written by Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval can be claimed to validate to just about any political ideology. From his laments about abuses of power that would be positively received by conservatives and libertarians, to the need to actually change with the times that liberals and progressives can find agreement with, it is nothing short of a remarkable document. However, there's one passage that leaped out at me:

"Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them like the arc of the covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human, and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment. I knew that age well; I belonged to it, and labored with it. It deserved well of its country. It was very like the present, but without the experience of the present; and forty years of experience in government is worth a century of book-reading; and this they would say themselves, were they to rise from the dead. I am certainly not an advocate for frequent and untried changes in laws and constitutions. I think moderate imperfections had better be borne with; because, when once known, we accommodate ourselves to them, and find practical means of correcting their ill effects. But I know also, that laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths disclosed, and manners and opinions change with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also, and keep pace with the times."

His warning was illustrated as later in that paragraph he noted the turmoil going on in Europe at the time, where he described monarchs that were too interested in maintaining the status quo instead of listening to the people. He also warned in the few preceding passages how institutions, such as the United States, can fall victim to the "abuses of man".

In my previous post about shadow government, I alluded to the fact that systems are basically established and then exploited for gain. Basically, for every one system that is established there is going to be one person seeking to do whatever they can to get whatever ends they want to get out of it. The United States Constitution is no different. The Constitution established a system, albeit with unintentionally dubious interpretation, that was designed to give Congress more power and consequently the central government. Anyone that truly believed then, and even now, that the Constitution wouldn't be exploited is extremely shortsighted and filled with too much romantic vision that pushes themselves to delve deeper into the apparent sanctimony of the American civil religion. Robert Bellah was not crazy to coin such a thing -- there is a distinct nearly religious quality to the American historical experience, that (and this is my own conclusion here), leads to unreasonable, yet understandable, expectations. Sanctimonious mountains aren't being climbed; we're only dealing with hills.

The first big government advocate was none other than Alexander Hamilton, who actually came up with the implied powers of the Constitution. In truth, Hamilton, as opposed to Jefferson and James Madison, got it: if one sees the opportunity to take a rule as far as it can go, then they'll take it. Humans are opportunistic creatures, that's just nature. To insure the rest of humanity against our own natural habit has been a riddle since Urukagina, Ur-Nammu, and Hammurabi. The United States Constitution is just another document in the series of legal documents that attempted to address that riddle; however, the United States Constitution is a document for human beings, produced by human beings, to illustrate how human beings are to cooperate and coexist with other human beings.

As the world became smaller, the riddle became a race. As new social issues arose during the Enlightenment and later the Industrial Revolution, this riddle took on a new shape. Concepts of human rights, social liberalism, classical liberalism, and populism emerged. The social order changed as those that were accustomed to control had to answer to those that they believed to be in control of. The aspirations of positive liberty (the egalitarian state as the vindication of cooperation) and the demands of negative liberty (the individualist state as a rejection of forced cooperation) clashed. The evolution of the riddle continues to today: conspiracy theories, populist movements, Tea Party, Occupy Wall Street, the government address of gay rights, governmental intervention in the economy, the Arab Spring, and so on. As the riddle evolved, so did the stakes, the awareness, and the constant willingness to exploit.

Insurance against exploitation is a curious goal, being that it takes further exploitation to counter exploitation. Exploit changing social attitudes to ensure more (or less) rights; exploit sputtering systems to advocate for more personal and economic freedom; exploit tragedies to create more restrictions. A lot of my friends often post things that note how the Constitution is being disregarded, ignored, shit on, and etc., posts stories and memes and whatnot, and in a way its hard to argue against their position for that the Constitution is still a system. A system is a system and a system will be exploited for gain, no matter what it is. The root of it is the aforementioned riddle; the reason its a race now is because, as Jefferson noted, as "new discoveries are made, new truths disclosed, and manners and opinions change with the change of circumstances", the desire for triumph -- any triumph really -- becomes fervent. If the big evil corporation wants to bank roll candidates as a mean to secure the end, its an exploitation of the system; if feverish supporters of a certain candidate will want to challenge and stretch bylaws and conventions in desire for a preferred outcome, then it's an exploitation of the system.

The bottom line really is that it's impossible to insure against exploitation. Altruism is merely a hedge against exploitation, and to bank on it is silly. This post is not necessarily advocating for anything; its just an observation, for that I know pretty damn well that the pursuit for the optimal, functional system will continue, that the game will be continued to be played, and the riddle will modify and evolve exponentially.

The Shadow Government and the Nash Equilibrium

Austin-based radio host Alex Jones is decried as a conspiracy theorist and lauded as an American patriot. His primary website, InfoWars.com, is dedicated to, and I say this out of purely objective observation, reporting to illustrate how things aren't simply what they seem to be, no matter how the mainstream media shapes for it to be.

Increasingly, its been noted that both "Aurora" and "Sandy Hook" has been referenced in the 2012 blockbuster The Dark Knight Rises. Unsurprisingly, InfoWars.com has been all over it, and many corners of the Internet have as well. Even the most skeptical have to wonder about the coincidence between two terrible tragedies coincidentally having their names being referenced in a blockbuster film.

I'm remaining neutral on it, but not for the reason people would think.

I don't dismiss or really bank on conspiracy theories. I don't go on "truth quests". However, considering that there are many out there, including some of my friends, that believe in the existence of a shadow government, might as well write about it in the only way that fits me and my neutrality:

In short, we're going to play a Nash equilibrium game.

So, let's say a shadow government actually does, without any chance for refutation, exist. We'll assign the title of Player A in this sequence. Player B, consequently, would be the governed and the effective rest of the population. The decision payoff in this game? Both Player A and Player B are making the best decisions they can, influenced by the other player's decision -- the decision in this case is the successful manipulation of a given system to achieve a particular objective.

A system is, more or less, any form of a set of components interacting interdependently to form a relationship. In this case, it is the socioecopolitical system of the United States (yes, it's a brand new portmanteau that I will not take credit for).

You can take this Nash equilibrium game in one of two directions: the Braess Paradox or the Prisoner's Dilemma.

The Braess Paradox, which is mainly a focus on road traffic networks but can be put into good use here, is not a paradox per-se, but as the Virtual Cell Program at the Harvard Medical School writes, a "counter-intuitive observation". In short, the Braess Paradox occurs when the payoff of an additional transportation link does not yield any additional benefits and actually creates the opposite outcome. An example of this, in a non transportation sense, is the 2011 Egyptian revolt. For this case, the variables will be on two sides taking their own path, as a natural antithesis to each other. While this is not exactly the purest form of the Braess Paradox (in the purest form, the player has three directions to go in, while in this case, there's two -- but an individual deciding which "side" to be on does have three directions, so in a way it reconciles itself), it will still serve as a useful model.

In this case: Player A and Player B both START at the current state, and will take separate means to reach the END, which will be the preferred state. The desire of the shadow government would be a greater disbursement control, dominated by a privileged few; the desire of the governed will be a greater disbursement of control, dominated by altruism. The separate roads, or paths, really, would be the means in which they plan to achieve their separate objectives. The paradox would arrive in a potential short cut that connects both courses at their midpoint. Of course, this is the grand bargain with the hope of a payoff: the shadow government's grand bargain would be greater popular involvement; the grand bargain for the governed would be creating awareness by any means necessary. As such, it creates a massive complication: the shadow government can either be threatened by increased awareness, voluntarily or involuntarily, or it could choose to take advantage of that increased awareness by framing the awareness into something more palatable to their objective; the governed could be threatened by increased popular involvement, making it harder to reach out to others, or it could choose to take advantage of increased popular involvement by infiltrating or altering that involvement to a more desirable outcome.

The Prisoner's Dilemma occurs when the best decision for each player in the game is to defect so that they individually achieve their most optimal outcome. The example given by the Dilemma is when two criminals are interrogated separately by authorities, and in a divide and conquer strategy, put both of them against each other: give up the other, one sided punishment; don't give up the other, the punishment is further disbursed. An example would be France and Britain's political maneuvering in Europe at the height of their international rivalry.

Defection in this case, on both parts, would be to disrupt and distort a given system. The shadow government would cause disruption through suspect operation and execution of control; the governed would disrupt and distort a given system through rejection by any means necessary. However, what is at stake? The shadow government would use more suspect operation and execution of control to stymie rejection, while on the other hand, the governed could continue to cause further disruption and distortion to even more rejection, fueled by the increase in the actions of the shadow government. As such, there's no real triumph. Given that systems are made in anticipation for future exploitation, its more or less a cycle that keeps repeating itself, especially with the advent of more and more technology. Remember, the most successful in any system are the ones that are best able to take advantage of it. Nearly all of the time, the parameters played by one are the same ones played by the other.

So what's the reason for my neutrality? Because it's a game. And it's more or less a case of who plays it better. And this game will keep being played.

We'll take for example the Constitution of the United States. While Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton bickered and bitched about what should have been the proper interpretation, a debate that still exists to this day, both Jefferson and Hamilton laid foundations for supporters of either side of the argument to be able to take advantage of the system that the Constitution created. Want limited government? Advocate for a by-the-letter interpretation of the Constitution. Want bigger government? Advocate for a loose interpretation of the Constitution. Hell bent on achieving the means? Do what you have to, by any means felt to be necessary -- and nobody is above it considering we're all human.

I'll close this with one of my favorite scenes from the 1978-91 series Dallas. (You can view here as embedding was disabled). In this scene Pamela Barnes (played by Victoria Principal) confronts J.R Ewing (Larry Hagman) and Jock Ewing (Jim Davis) about how the Ewings went to the papers and basically ruined her brother Cliff's (Ken Kercheval, not in this scene) candidacy for the House of Representatives seat. Pay attention to the last two things that Pamela and J.R. said to each other.

The Impermeable Solution

Throughout the rumblings on the internet, there have been some to make comparisons of two violent, tragic events that have taken place in opposite sides of the world, both involving children at school.

Here in the West, we are all well aware of the Sandy Hook Massacre, which will probably forever stand as a litmus test for many in the United States as 20 children and 6 women lost their lives at the hands (and guns) of a man with a mental disorder that simply snapped. A few hours earlier, in Chengping, a village in central China west of Shanghai and north of Wuhan, a knife wielding, mentally ill man who snapped attacked a primary school, injuring 22 children and one elderly adult. The incident in China is just the latest in a disturbing, periodic occurrence over the past couple of years of mentally unstable men using knives to attack children in schools, including two incidents in 2010 that resulted in the deaths of nearly 30 kids.

The one thing that many focus on in regards to the Sandy Brook and Chengping incidents is the methods used by the attacker and the result: gunfire resulted in death, the knives did not. However, not all gun related incidents in public places result in death nor do knife attacks just only result in injury.

So media chatter has ranged from a focus on the issues of gun control and on the issues about mental health, specifically Asperger's, which is a widely misunderstood autism spectrum disorder. In a culture that depends on framing anything and everything to their own personal worldview, the commentary has ranged from somewhat insightful to absolutely inane. We began to discuss what if guns weren't so widely available and what if they were, popular perception of violence, and how it is possible that mental treatment can go into the direction of being able to accurately forecast a catastrophic sociopathic event before it can even take place.

At 4.7 homicides per 100,000 people in 2011, the United States homicide rate has dropped in half compared to what it was in the early 1990s. While the Christian Science Monitor writes that criminologists have credited more effective law enforcement, longer and stiffer prison sentences, the aging of the baby boomer population, and the waning of the crack cocaine epidemic of the 1980s, little has been credited to the increase in gun control that took place during the 1990s under the Clinton administration. And in a way, it is not surprising -- guns don't kill people, people kill people.

The conservative and libertarian rallying cry over the past couple of days has included bringing up stories of how guns have aborted attacks (granted it is a small sample) and how mass murders more often occur in gun-free zones. The baseline of the argument relates in the following spectrum: if guns were allowed in places, such as campuses, then tragedies such as Sandy Hook, Virginia Tech, Columbine, Arizona, and Aurora may have been prevented or if in progress, aborted before becoming worse, due to the presence of guns being an effective deterrent and defense. The argument is shortsighted, considering effective training is necessary, for one, and for two, it is still unfortunately a crapshoot as anything can happen over the course of an attack, especially if the "armed, law abiding citizen", is out of position or  becomes a casualty him or herself before a defensive act can take place. In other words, a presence of guns does not really guarantee anything.

The converse liberal and progressive battle cry has been using examples of how gun control in other countries has reduced homicide rates and made mass murders far more infrequent in those respective countries than in the United States. There are holes in this argument as well: demographics makes a huge difference and can easily distort an argument unless a conclusive, wide-ranging study is conducted, which reconciles mass murder events to varied demographics in regards to population size, gun ownership to population ratio, homicide rates, and the location of the event, and the perpetrators themselves are all weighted and considered. Not to mention, fatalities still occur in weapons of melee, as evidenced with the Chinese attacks in 2010 mentioned earlier that resulted in the deaths of nearly 30 children.

The reality? There's no such thing as an impermeable solution. The issue with mass murders lies with perpetrators working by exploiting and taking advantage of holes in a given system. Any system in place is bound to be exploited by someone for their own personal gain, no matter how benevolent, or in the case of this post, malevolent. Gun laws can continue to be loosened or tightened, and either way, there will be someone ready to attempt to, and unfortunately be successful, at exploiting those rules to achieve an objective, whatever it may be.  The real enablers of such violence is not in the availability of guns or the prevalence of gun free zones; the real enablers of such acts lies in a series of psychological and personal responses to perceptions and subsequent conclusions reached by mass killers about their environment that develops into a violent, sociopathic outburst.

As tragic as these events are, how we are culturally in the United States, where we thrive on gratification, a true, unbiased, non-political approach as to how to evaluate what leads to sociopathic catastrophes, such as what happened in Newtown, Connecticut, remains elusive. People refuse to let go to of the politics. The media keeps playing on politics on the desire to spur reaction and debate. We'll seek answers that justify our own personal stances, but we will not seek answers that may challenge our own stance.

Throughout the years, scores and scores of families around the world have been shattered and ruined because of the acts of one man or one woman that decided to resolve whatever was wrong they saw in their life by resorting to murder, and many times, taking their own life in the final act when they go past that line of no return. We need to start asking the right questions; the hard questions that force us to take a look at ourselves, from what we believe in regards to human rights and gun rights to how we actually approach psychological and mental treatment and analysis.