Political Architecture

---Update: Pedro "If Hitler Was Austrian Then I'm a Crook" Rosselló" is already firing broadsides against the jellyfish governor Aníbal Acevedo for "implanting" a 7% or higher sales tax on the Puerto Rican voter. Do tell, Peter-Peter Pickpocket Peter. The Jenius had you pegged all the slimy way. And Peter the Plunderer's "surprise" announcement that he's gearing up for the gubernatorial race in 2008 (yes, We are late for everything but the elections) by choosing a political fetus as his Head Beggar candidate is simply fulfilling The Jenius' prediction. With the jellyfish saying "Yeah, I'll wriggle in 2008" and "Willie" Miranda, Mayor of Caguas implying "I'll jump in when I get my cash flow set up," We're waiting for current Head Beggar and junior jellyfish Luis Fortuño to make the Four Fools scenario a nightmarish reality.

Switching gears...

When it comes to building a new movement, the converse proposition, “politics is architecture” holds true as well. The architecture (structure and design) of political processes, not their content, is determinative of what can be accomplished.

Just as you can’t build a skyscraper out of bamboo, you can’t have a participatory democracy if power is centralized, processes are opaque, and accountability is limited. Politics needs a new architecture, not just a new coat of paint. We need to renovate the house (and Senate).

The architecture team, that is, those who collectively will determine the structure of political processes cannot be composed of an elite, whether technical or political. Who is sitting at the table as the new politics is designed and implemented and the experiences and perspectives they represent matter enormously.

The Internet, if kept open and accessible to all, is a tool we can use to reform our politics and create new democratic processes and institutions. By using the Internet and building upon its open decentralized architecture, we can help give every person a voice and offer them a forum to participate in creating a healthy politics. The Internet provides the tools to build bottom-up systems that are both globally interconnected and locally controlled. As the printing press was the technology that helped birth modern self-government, so the Internet can be the tool to build a new democratically controlled participatory politics. (Emphasis added.)


This quote is from Mitch Kapor's poli-tech blog. Mitch is the President and Chair of the Open Source Applications Foundation and has long been an advocate of greater integration of the Internet in political processes. One of the launch points for The Jenius was exactly this issue and given the torrential flow of idiocy The Fools are creating and the gaping void of leadership We continue to tolerate, it's high time to bring the matter up again.

Unlike the U.S., where voter turnout is low because of abject indifference, Puerto Ricans go out to to vote in 85+% numbers...but do so blindfolded and deaf. They refuse to see what's going on, or watch the madness with slack-jawed numbness, occasionally stirring to protest and refuse to listen to anyone who espouses a view that isn't strictly in accordance with their party's spastic positions. (That almost no one is worth listening to is also part of the problem.)

Our current political processes would love to be bamboo, but barely rise above slime mold. Cleaning up the current cesspool requires recreating the way government is supposed to work and using the Internet to achieve that recreation is necessary. The Fools, of course, don't want this. First, because they can't understand it. Second, because they sense, like flies savor the air for the stench of dung, that the Internet is dangerous to their status. And just like flies know crap when they smell it, The Fools know danger to them when they sense it.

All the more reason to make the push, to create an architecture that strangles the shenanigans and damage and allows for Puerto Rico's best future to emerge. Over at The Information Soldier, Aníbal Freytes is creating a website to track "political memory," so that The Fools' stupidity of today is recorded and archived for review, comparison and attack when the time comes to punt their butts out.

Aníbal never said attack. But attack is what is needed to clean this modern-day, Puerto Rican version of the Augean Stables. (Dung, flies, horses' asses...yeah, the analogy is perfect.) The Internet will be Our cleansing river, if We choose to be Hercules.

Politics as architecture is what Mitch was talking about. Instead of a monument of political effectiveness, We have a filthy stable. No wonder We're stuck where We are.

The Jenius Has Spoken.