How the Super Rich Benefit from ‘Genetic Drift’ and Alt-News

LOS ANGELES

CORRUPTION WATCH-Lies, similitudes and myths ruled the ancient world. Plato and Aristotle spoke of Socratic lies, while the Arab political philosopher al-Farabi referred to similitudes, and Maimonides in “The Guide to the Perplexed” warned that Biblical myths were not necessarily true.

All three traditions were addressing the same belief – the average person lacked the intelligence and moral character to apprehend the Truth. Thus, men needed to be given beneficial stories which would cause them to behave properly. This attitude is exemplified today when someone says that a wayward child “needs the fear of God put into him.”  

When society functions by virtue of lies, similitudes and myths, someone fashions those falsehoods into laws and imposes them upon others. James I of England (1603–1625) believed in the Divine Right of Kings which was as a top-down ruling philosophy as one can imagine. Yet, within 150 years of his reign, his world view was turned upside down. 

The Declaration of Independence’s inalienable rights of each individual whose consent was required to have a legitimate government smashed the notion that people should be fed lies, similitudes and myths. The throwing down of this philosophical gauntlet in favor of rational thought and science required the separation of church and state whether everyone realized it or not at the time.  

Did the enshrinement of inalienable rights set a standard of intellect too high for society to master?  There is some worrisome research about Genetic Drift, which suggests that the very size of our nation coupled with our social and geographic mobility, may have resulted in a population that lacks the ability to rationally pursue Life, Liberty and Happiness. 

From an empirical standpoint, there is the passion for Alt-News where people prefer emotionally exciting “news” with no requirement that it have any factual accuracy. The left wing has its favorite Alt-belief that only the right wing indulges in myth making. In reality, the myths of the left wing are like soft porn with its omissions of material facts rather than promoting the brazen absurdities as Breitbart and Trump are wont to do. Nonetheless, leftist sophisticated distortion is a lie as much as a crass lie.  Currently, the media shows peaceful Gazans but ignores the armed crowds of Palestinians storming the border and the flaming kites being flown into Israel. 

In a nation where our founding document sought to liberate us from the intellectual tyrannies of the past, why have we jettisoned rational thought in favor of Alt-News? Why have we retreated into propaganda rather than embracing the freedom found in facts, science and mathematics? 

The Phenomenon Benefits the Super Rich

Our love of lies, similitudes, and myths benefits the Davos Set as it rules over us lesser beings. In fact, our society has tipped to Corruptionism – where the institutions themselves are corrupt. In the pre-Corruptionism days, society had its swindlers who cheated individuals and conned the public.  Now, the media, the courts, the city councils, and various extra-judicial administrative bodies are running amuck. Not only has the Los Angeles City Council become a criminal enterprise which operates according to a Vote Trading System outlawed by Penal Code § 86, but Judge Richard Fruin has ruled that the City Council exists above the law and its conduct is non-justiciable. Judge Fruin has more in common with James I than he does with Thomas Jefferson. 

What good are inalienable rights when the government is above the law? 

As described in previous articles, the Feds have identified the state judiciary as suffering from an “epidemic of misconduct.” The Commission on Judicial Performance (CJP) which is supposed to hold miscreant judges accountable demands total confidentiality from even the state auditor. One would think our society had passed this autocratic stage with the signing of the Magna Carta in 1215. How long would a police chief last if he insisted that the operations of police review commissions remain confidential so that no one else could see any LAPD records? 

Although Judge Goodman ruled over four years ago that the City of Los Angeles uses fatally flawed data to the extent it subverts the law, the city continues with its non-stop Lies and Myths as Los Angeles slips into ruin. Where is the fabled Mickey Kantor who was so vocal with his 2020 Commission and its December 2013 “A Time for Truth”? 

Ah ha, that was the 2020 Commission’s mistake – Truth. The Land of Corruptionism has no room for Truth, and apparently, potential soothsayers are too fearful to venture forth. Would the Davos Set dare incarcerate Mickey Kantor the way they did Richard I. Fine who exposed the massive corruption with the illicit county pay-offs to judges? 

Are We Genetically Doomed? 

Leading up to the Revolution, the British colonies were mostly an isolated subset of Scots and Englishmen. The Law of Genetic Drift operates in small populations. The likelihood of a society of 10,000 producing a crop of geniuses is statistically greater than a population of a hundred times the size producing the same number. According to Freeman Dyson in “The Key to Everything,” “This means that genetic drift is ten times faster for a population of ten thousand than for a population of a million.”  

In 1770, the population of the colonies was 2.14 million and the intellectual fervor predominated among Virginia’s and New England’s upper class. How few people was that! Today’s society of 326 million is 152 times larger, while Facebook claims a daily worldwide participation of over one billion people. Is the Davos Set intentionally limiting itself to 1% while resurrecting the old system of lies, similitudes and myths to keep the ramble in line?  

If the Kardashian-obsessed masses are turning the movie Idiocracy into a documentary, can we expect anything better than to be governed by the socio-economic system known as Corruptionism?  As power further corrupts the 1% by rewarding it with unlimited wealth, what recourse do the rest of us have? 

(Richard Lee Abrams is a Los Angeles attorney and a CityWatch contributor. He can be reached at: [email protected]. Abrams views are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of CityWatch.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.