Politics is about kissing babies and winning votes. So, it comes as no surprise when I come across a pie-in-the-sky, idealistic set of prescriptions from any political candidate. That’s what politicians do! They come up with plans that won’t be followed up on.

I kid. But, I am also somewhat serious. So it’s not unexpected that Mitt Romney’s “Believe in America” plan seems to be somewhat lacking.

Make no mistake, I’m not qualified to judge his proposals. They might even be what the country needs. But, they aren’t presented in a form that reflects what they are; politically motivated sketches that have been crafted, no pushed, during a Republican Party primary.

Case in point: the file is available online in .pdf format and through Amazon as an e-book. It looks slick. It contains lots of charts. It even references 127 endnotes. On the verso it provides copyright information and notes that this is its “first edition.” Romney’s plan is, in every sense of the form, a traditional publication.

Except it isn’t.

Though the plan reads like a book and looks like a book, it’s not one. It’s a slick, self-published document. And, that is something very different from what politicians have produced in the past. To my knowledge anyway.

No doubt, similar material has been produced by other presidential candidates. But, Romney has done something different… and potentially misleading. His campaign has produced an plan that takes full advantage of digital publication tools. It presents the facade of procedural rigor without the underlying requirement of it.

That is to say, his plan has not been scored by the Congressional Budget Office. It has not been peer-reviewed. It has not jumped through numerous procedural hoops. And, it did not get approved by an editor who had to take into account if it’s conclusions would reflect poorly on the publishing organization. In a sense, Romey’s plan has gone directly to “go.” It has collected $200 without rolling the dice.

Thanks to Adobe Acrobat, Microsoft Word, and other tools the Romney campaign has created something that, once upon a time, would have required a formal process. Self-publishing is so pervasive, so cheap, so convincing, today that it doesn’t require a critique of content anymore. Now anybody can make their document look like a formal publication.

Therein lies the problem.

Because Romney’s plan is stamped with the “Paid for by Mitt Romney for President” identifier, we can tell it’s not an objective set of prescriptions. We can tell it was put together using campaign dollars; likely in-house.

Objectivity may only be something to aim for, but it a world where anybody can make a plan look well-reasoned the processes used to create it matters most of all.

Everyone is something, and that something is a product of circumstances. Who your parents are, where you live, and the choices that you make. It all shapes you. Then, you shape your circumstances and move your environment in the direction you want.

It’s a sort of paradox. Which comes first?

Missouri, my home, has been moving to the right over the past ten years. It’s a mix of Midwestern, Southern, and traditional Americana. So, it comes as no surprise then that given the stagnation of the middle-class and rapid changes brought by globalism there’s a tenancy here to hold on. For dear life. Our nickname is the “Show-Me” state. We don’t trust idealistic prescriptions.

Off-shoring jobs will help everyone? Really? Global warming? Where’s the bulletproof proof? Government can solve our problems? Show me how.

This isn’t to say we’re dyed in the wool conservatives. We’re not. We just just have a tenancy to be skeptical of fantastic claims. You say taxing less won’t hurt the deficit? I call bullshit. There’s a reason Harry Truman was a Democrat.

But, if who we are is a product of our circumstances and personal choices, then I can’t but help wonder what the consequences of globalism will be for us. Missouri’s two biggest cities, St. Louis and Kansas City are fighting suburbanization. Cheap transportation has relegated us to “flyover country” status. Cheap labor and free trade has extended the “rust belt” west.

It’s difficult for us to compete for “creative” knowledge-based jobs too.

Certainly, there are areas in-state that can compete, but they tend to be removed from today’s issues. Springfield, my hometown, can fight back with a low cost of living and lax regulations. Jackson County can’t. And, this environment is pitting urban against rural, members of the working class against business owners. Evangelical Christians against non-believers.

In short, we’re a microcosm of America… as it was.

You see, Missouri is too white to reflect America today because it’s not changing with the country. We’re staying Christian. We’re staying isolated from trendy cultural centers, and we’re staying rooted in the past. That’s why we’re “moving” right. That’s why our  bellwether trend ended in 2008. Our healthy skepticism targets what is actively hurting us and ignores what isn’t. When you are a WASP you don’t tend to have the problems that people on Welfare do.

Then again, if who we are is a product of where we live and the choices we make… all of that could change. There could be a realization that what happens abroad impacts us in St. Charles County. Or a limited government model could fail to provide on it’s promise.

If that does happen, just as quickly our skepticism will turn on other things.

What scares me the most, however, is that if we keep moving from being a political bellwether what  happens? I don’t know. But, I am afraid that it would cause us to lose our “Show Me” mentality. It’s been created by a longstanding of balance powers. One forged in the depths of guerrilla warfare during the Civil War, solidified after World War II, and maintained through today.

It’s loss would be a shame.

For a free country, the United States is a bigger fan of censorship than it likes to admit. Sure, the Constitution protects free speech. We have an independent judiciary, and we govern ourselves through elected representatives. But, Americans censor themselves everyday without realizing it. Most importantly, our ultimate fear of a strong and centralized power may not be worth the attention that we lavish on it.

There’s another threat out there, and we ignore it all of the time.

Big Brother, in our current situation, isn’t who we think he is. He can be an overly powerful person or group, but in America I’d argue that he doesn’t just take this form. He’s us. And we love him.

Take the Tea Party. Championing small government and free markets, this group of conservatives have hyperventilated over the past two years about an alleged infringement of our liberties by the bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. Conversely, liberals routinely are up in arms about powerful monied interests like the Koch brothers… who, they argue, wield a disproportionate amount of power.

In each case, there is a fear that “other” groups are trying to control what we see, know, and hear. Be it Rupert Murdoch or NPR, Americans distrust other people’s interpretation of fact. We’re vigilant for external censorship, but never seem to be when looking in the mirror.

Over the past few years, I’ve railed against what I see as technology-enhanced information biases. Among their problems and causes:

• The Internet makes it easy to produce, proliferate, and share information. So [...]
• [...] traditional news sources have segmented allowing people to pick among them. Moreover, [...]
• [...] our biases provide an incentive for us to read, watch, or listen to things that fit our world-view. Worse yet [...]
• [...] this is made worse by a saturated media market full of producers competing for our attention. Of these, those those who reinforce our world-view usually win out. [Also,]
• [...] many cost barriers to media production have disappeared, so professionalization has decreased. So, [...]
• [...] anyone can pretend to be an “expert” while [...]
• [...] it’s difficult to tell who creates what.

Yes. I know that this is an argument that I’ve repeated ad-naseum, but reading Wired today I came across another example that changed my perception of the problem.

In a TED presentation, Eli Pariser argued that the Internet has allowed us to encase ourselves in “information bubbles.” Taking my assessment of bias, he attacks it from another direction by highlighting  ”junk food algorithms.”  You see many web tools are behaviorally driven. Using Facebook as an example, if I click on links from liberal friends then it will eventually learn to show only links from my liberal friends.

Pariser argued, essentially, that we as a society have moved from an age were people acted as the gatekeepers of information to one where programs do. Next, he pointed out his desire for developers to make sure that their programs ensure diverse and representative information continues to be shared. A diversity of viewpoints is, after all, necessary to arrive at an informed conclusion.

While his point is interesting, I’d argue that he still opens himself to a dangerous counter-argument.

Algorithm driven or not, web search results are queried by people. Not programmers. Ultimately, people are responsible for the material they search for; both past and present. Since this is the case, doesn’t tinkering disregard their ability to choose? Doesn’t it amount to censorship? Here is where my perception shifted.

The answer, I would argue, depends on how “freely” you believe that people can choose to search for information, and how biased they can be.

On one hand, if people can independently and freely choose what they search for, then creating an algorithm which “learns” preferences isn’t a bad thing. Adjusting to ignore past choices must then amount to censorship. But, on the other hand if they are like I argued – they have biases and habits (exacerbated by new media) which create a self-reinforcing cycle – then the answer is no.

The answer is no because algorithm programmers aren’t choosing winners and losers. Instead, they are directly combating censorship. They’re targeting self-censoring behavior.

Sometimes, people get so caught up in the pursuit of personal liberty that they fail to realize it’s possible to censor oneself without consciously choosing to do so. In a way, then, we arrive at an instance of Big Brother not being an external person. It’s one where Big Brother is us.

It’s ironic then that the mirrors and televisions from 1984 were windows into people’s lives; a tool for direct censorship. In America today, the same is true but it just as quickly reveals a rarely noticed source. Oneself.

You can’t search for what you don’t know about or want to see. And if you can’t search for anything, then you aren’t truly free.

I’ve been a faithful Daily Show watcher since high school. So, when Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert – two comedians from Comedy Central – announced their “Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear” the announcement didn’t strike me as odd. These two men were going to host a rally in Washington, D.C.? So what?

It was obvious that the rally was going to be an extension of their shows. The two have made a career of openly spoofing the media for it’s worst failures. Sure, Stewart and Colbert are liberals, but at the core their criticism has never been one of ideology. It’s been of messaging.

A lot of people don’t realize that.

Keith Olberman, for example, disliked the rally’s message to “take it down a notch.” Apparently, that would risk conceding to Fox News and the right.

Others have argued that the rally accomplished nothing. Or, that it simply mocked legitimate activism by Glenn Beck and the Tea Party.

David Carr’s piece in the New York Times was one of the few that caught the rally’s point while countering that Stewart is wrong in his analysis. TV pundits only reach a small audience. We really are in serious times.

Browsing though the blogs out there, everyone appears to have their own interpretation. That makes sense. Satire is complex. It thrives on individuals drawing their own conclusions. To crystallize things though, I’d like to highlight a few key passages from the rally’s closing.

Reflecting on these passages, Stewart’s point should be clear. The press and the media are guardians of our national discourse. And, for whatever reason they don’t always communicate properly. They mess up. This mislead us. They blow things out of proportion. They sometimes cater to the lowest common denominator, and if you need evidence?

Well, just watch the Daily Show.

Stewart is thriving because the media is seen as failing. And, if anything Saturday’s rally showed that he doesn’t necessarily want them to. Neither does this librarian.

I said it once. I said it twice. I even said it a third time. Now, the internet utopians have shame on their hands. The message, as they say, might be the medium but what happens when a medium encourages people to stop double-checking their facts?

I’m talking here, of course, about the failure of the media, the government and the “blogosphere” to handle the Shirley Shirod case.

In case you aren’t familiar, three weeks ago a conservative pundit posted an online video of Mrs. Shirod, a Department of Agriculture official, speaking on race and racism. A previous victim, Shirley spoke candidly about her experiences but several statements were used to claim reverse discrimination. To make a long story short, the media picked up on the clip, she was fired, and nobody verified anything. Then the truth came out – her story was a tale of redemption. The clips where out of context.

Over the past year or two, Nicholas Carr has been arguing with journalists and new media advocates about the merits of the Internet. His argument isn’t so much that the Internet is bad as that it encourages short-sighted behavior.

This is the basic idea:

The net allows for quick, easy access to information. Moreover, it’s easy to produce, publish and edit electronic material. Part of new media’s success is due to it’s ease of use and web accessibility. But, in making things easier and more accessible an over-reliance on the internet encourages users to think superficially. Sources, facts and opinions are questioned less.

In short, Carr’s thesis is that the internet works well because it feeds into human nature. Interactivity is an impulsive behavior. But, our innate proclivities often result in negative consequences. Like people getting  fired. The fact that a book titled “Don’t Make Me Think“  epitomizes a mainstream approach to web development speaks volumes about it’s merits and demerits.

At it’s best the web is intuitive to users and creates a democratizing effect. We can all act on instinct, skim a page, or post to Facebook. It is also true, however, that an over-reliance on intuition does not lend well to careful observation.

Don’t get me wrong. I think the Internet is a great thing. It’s perfectly feasible for people to learn to use it in a responsible way. To do that, though, I think requires the careful cultivation of our habits. Once upon a time focused thought was encouraged. Now, we rush to use computers as a “time saver.”

Being able to read does not make one fully literate. Neither does being able to use the internet. Yet, we continue to be obsessed with accessibility and being able to find information as quick as possible.

Bad idea. Here’s why.

Once upon a time publishing was a controlled, one-shot process. A lot of time and effort went into printing material. Now, anyone can publish to the web and it’s easy to have trouble distinguishing between “good” and “bad” information. There’s so much! Format, or creator, doesn’t necessarily determine quality but we aren’t taught how to identify quality information. I never took a class to tell the truth from lies. Most people don’t underlying mechanisms that make new media function either.

Unfamiliarity limits perspective.

Moreover, as companies like Google emphasize ease of use… finding quality information takes a back seat. The nature of the web is open and free, but that can be a bad thing. Especially, when you don’t realize what you’re dealing with.