Technocracy vs Democracy; Are Politicians Really in Control?
Uncertainty and discontent in government has led to some unforeseen populist movements lately, often promising to disrupt the status quo or playing to people’s fears and proclivity toward divisive rhetoric. In either case the root of these movements’ popularity is a lack of faith in the political process, mostly in democratic societies. But some believe that this may be a planned tactic, or the natural segue into a technocracy in which the decision makers become those who have excelled outside of politics. Could the future of democracy be a mixed political system incorporating industry giants and politicians, or are we on the brink of a new world order in which a small group of outsiders begin to take control?
Technocracy vs. Democracy
The technocratic definition is somewhat ambiguous, but essentially it is an outsider with no prior political experience, who is technically skilled and usually part of an elite group of society. Technocrats are often leaders in their industry and apply the scientific method to problem solving in order to achieve their goals.
We incorporate technocracy, to a certain extent, in our government with independent and bipartisan panels and committees. These groups are tasked with solving problems and implementing solutions that have been voted on or put together by a branch of government. The current administration in the U.S., for a short period, put together a commission of leading executives in top industries, known as the Manufacturing Jobs Initiative, as part of an ostensible effort to glean insights and develop strategies for economic issues.
However, a true technocracy is almost antithetical to a democratic form of government. Behaving more like a corporation with a board of directors who act as the decision makers, the technocratic definition of government wouldn’t necessarily take into account the will of the populace or consider dissenting popular opinion. While it is assumed that this ruling elite would have the people’s best interests in mind, decisions would essentially be autocratic and the rulers would be elected and replaced by a small vote amongst themselves.
An example of this that is relevant to a hypothetical technocracy in U.S. government, is the Chinese Communist Party. While there are several branches within the Chinese government, the primary decision-making body consists of seven people who come from a slightly larger Politburo of 25 people. While this form of government is incredibly effective at decision making and implementing policy, it is oppressive and intolerant of public dissent. It is also not immune to corruption and poorly managed protocols.
Another example that is often cited as a wildly successful instance of technocracy is Singapore. The country is clean, wealthy, technologically advanced, and provides a high standard of living to the majority of its citizens, but when it comes to social issues there are rarely concessions made or public opinion consulted in its legislative process.
Technocracy Rising
This growing trend of technocratic control started during the Great Depression in the 1930s at Columbia University. Replacing politicians with scientists and engineers was proposed as a solution to fix the dire economic dilemmas of the time, and was likely the inspiration for Aldous Huxley’s dystopian novel, Brave New World. Historically, technocracy has become an attractive concept when politicians have stumbled or there is little faith in the political system, hence it’s Depression-era acclaim. But could this portend a technocratic resurgence today?
While we still maintain the remnants of a democratic form of government in the U.S., there is a rising tide of technocratic influence and control in our society and this can be seen on either end of the political spectrum. The lobbying influence of the Koch brothers has become well documented, while just recently Mark Zuckerberg invested $1 billion of his own to create an LLC with the goal of shaping public policy. Much like the Koch brothers, Zuckerberg’s LLC can influence politics and policy without having to disclose its spending and investments, like most non-profit political interest groups would.
With the increasing polarization of the electorate and a complete lack of legislation being passed in government, we will likely start to look to the private sector more and more, for solutions to our problems, especially as our lives become increasingly intertwined with technology. Decisions will be made by those who offer the best solutions and can influence the government, while limiting the amount of imposed regulation. When this dynamic proves to be more effective than government can be, which doesn’t seem difficult in this day and age, we will slowly start to defer to these industries to solve our problems.
The issue with allowing for technocratic solutions to political problems is that a technocracy is not a political system, but rather an economic one. A business leader, like Elon Musk, might be able to solve a problem that plagues society with a clever and concise solution, but actually implementing that solution to a large population with diverse and varied needs, takes the expertise of a politician who can navigate the convoluted systems of regulation, legislation, and bureaucratic hurdles in order to be effective.
A Trilateral Technocratic Conspiracy
What frightens many is the prospect of a new world order, in which there is a global government imposed by a select few. According to Patrick Wood, one of the means of implementing a world order is through a technocratic system. He says that one of the goals of a technocracy is to control the economic means of society and take away ownership of private property, so that the ruling party can effectively control the populace, much like certain oppressive communist regimes of the past.
Wood warily eyes the Trilateral Commission as the group that has been attempting to surreptitiously supplant our democratic process with a technocratic one world order. Started by David Rockefeller in the 1980s, the Trilateral Commission is an NGO that works in conjunction with the Council on Foreign Relations, with the supposed goal of uniting policy between North America, Europe, and Japan. The group doesn’t allow access to politicians and claims to be a think tank that focuses on democratic government, human rights, and freedom of speech, though many believe it to have an antidemocratic worldview, with a membership base that primarily represents large multinational corporations.
The group’s eerie undemocratic view was laid out in its 1975 report, The Crisis of Democracy: On the Governability of Democracies, in which it states that political problems in the U.S. stem from an excess of democracy and proffers the solution of restoring power in centralized government institutions.
Wood says that we are in the nascent phase of a technocratic takeover that could lead to this new world order. He says he believes we are at about 80 percent technocratic control, but are distracted by a smokescreen of issues that are hyped in the media.
With companies like Google and Tesla developing self-driving vehicles and its leaders heralding the coming day when all transportation will be automated, one might start to question what these advancements will really lead to. Musk’s vision of a fully automated transportation industry sees a large percent of the workforce as unemployable when that day comes. His proposed solution of a universal basic income, in which a no-strings-attached stipend is given to citizens to satisfy their basic needs, sounds frightening to some, especially when trust in government is at an all-time low. And when the government controls the population’s basic needs, there can be fear of an authoritarian takeover.
When one looks at the creeping grip that technology has on us, it becomes immediately apparent that our personal information and identities are being sold on a daily basis by large corporations. This increasingly intrusive collection of data occurs mostly unbeknownst to us and can be used to profit and create individual profiles for an array of reasons. At the same time, the growth of companies like Amazon are creating furtive monopolies on the roots of our economy. Not only does the company have a hand in the transactions of just about anything we could want to purchase, but it is also selling recording devices to consumers, guised as a convenient tool.
Maybe it’s overly paranoid to think that Alexa is recording and transmitting your banal, dinner table conversations, but based off of Edward Snowden’s revelations, it’s not that farfetched to think that the government may have backdoor access into the technology or that it can can remotely access your robotic personal assistant. And these reaches are only likely to continue, as invasive technology is masked with ostensible convenience, allowing for a potentially unseen technocratic control of society, where politicians are merely puppets or, “useful idiots,” as Wood refers to them. Many would even argue that this has already happened.
About the Author
Did Nixon Leave Behind Evidence of Aliens in the White House?
If there’s anyone with insight into the existence of extraterrestrials, it’s the President of the United States. But when the topic of disclosure comes up, Richard Nixon’s name appears infrequently compared to other presidents tied to the government’s ufological secrets. But according to the testimony of one confidential informant, not only has the government made contact, but Nixon left evidence of the existence of aliens in the White House.
And it remains there to this day, he says, hidden in a time capsule – its location known only to a handful of people. Though, Nixon claimed it would surface when the time was right.
That informant is Earl Robert “Butch” Merritt, a man with a storied career as a confidential agent for the Nixon administration. A man who participated in a variety of intelligence operations in the nascent years of what would later become the NSA’s COINTEL program used to surveil, infiltrate, and disrupt various organizations and target groups even before Watergate.
And while Merritt’s credibility might seem questionable when discussing alien disclosure, his career as an informant is well documented, as are his high-level government connections. Which is why his revelation of a clandestine conversation with Nixon regarding the existence of alien technology and a living extraterrestrial entity is hard to immediately dismiss.
Evidence of Aliens in the White House?
President Eisenhower is usually the first name that comes to mind when discussing the White House’s knowledge of an alien presence, particularly in regard to an apocryphal program known as MJ-12, or Majestic 12.
Essentially, MJ-12 was an alleged group of high brass military and government officials organized after the Roswell UFO incident to deal with the implications of an alien presence and its subsequent technology.
And it was that technology recovered from the Roswell crash that is believed to have led to exponential leaps in our technological advancements, many of which have been used to bolster the military industrial complex – an industry Ike so famously warned the world about before leaving office.
Though he didn’t immediately succeed him, Nixon was Eisenhower’s Vice President, making the ufological connection all the more intriguing. It was also relatively well known that Nixon believed in the existence of UFOs and extraterrestrials, despite his release of Project Bluebook’s conclusive analysis; an Air Force study known as the Condon Report, which allegedly put the existence of UFOs to rest.
But according to his testimony, Nixon divulged his knowledge of a “sophisticated intelligent being” to Merritt toward the end of his presidency when he realized the Watergate scandal was becoming an imminent threat. According to Merritt, Nixon claimed the being was alive and in government protection.
He says Nixon entrusted this information to him as he considered Merritt one of his only confidantes, asking him to personally deliver a letter on the subject to Henry Kissinger – a copy of which allegedly remains hidden today somewhere in the White House.
A Dark Journalist’s Disclosure
Merritt’s testimony is corroborated by Douglas Caddy, a man who acted as a defense attorney for the parties convicted in the Watergate scandal and who claims he knows where Nixon’s ET disclosure letter is hidden in the White House. The two published a book titled, Watergate Exposed: How the President of the United States and the Watergate Burglars Were Set Up as told to Douglas Caddy.
Interviews with both men, including Merritt’s accounts of meeting Nixon, and his subsequent mission as letter courier to Kissinger, can be found on the website of Daniel Liszt, an investigative reporter on government and alien conspiracies, who goes by the alias “Dark Journalist.”
Liszt’s interview with Merritt is fascinating in that it delves into his history as one of the most notorious informants for the president and for other city, state, and federal government entities, due to his cutthroat and non-conventional tactics.
In fact, a New York Times profile piece on Merritt confirms this history, focusing specifically on his role helping New York authorities reclaim the Kenmore Hotel – a drug-addled building in Manhattan that was one of the epicenters of the city’s criminal activity in the ’90s.
Merritt was an indispensable tool for Nixon’s Huston Plan – the aforementioned intelligence program to infiltrate and disrupt parties he felt threatened by, particularly political opponents and anti-war groups.
While serving as an informant under the Huston plan, Merritt says he was warned by one of his sources, a switchboard operator next to the Watergate Hotel named Rhita Reid, of the impending investigation into the administration. Merritt said he tried to warn Nixon, but that he wasn’t concerned at the time and didn’t foresee it’s major implications.
Despite this dismissal, Merritt claims he was one of Nixon’s most trusted sources and was even given nicknames including “003” – an obvious James Bond reference. So, when the Watergate scandal played out and the days of the administration waned, Merritt claims he was brought into a secret underground room beneath the White House where Nixon revealed the existence of an alien entity and technology housed at the infamous Nevada military base, Area 51.
“We have possessed knowledge and we have in our protection subjects from a planet X,” Nixon supposedly told Merritt. “Knowledge we obtained so vast and powerful, whoever possesses this knowledge would be the most powerful person in the world,” Merritt recounted.
Merritt claims Nixon then wrote out a lengthy letter that included encrypted formulae to be delivered to Kissinger. He also included two cassette tapes, before sealing the letter and writing something on its outer flap, omitting his normal signature. Nixon then strapped the letter to Merritt’s stomach and sent him to deliver it to its intended recipient for unknown reasons.
Now, he claims that letter remains hidden somewhere in the White House, its location known to he and Caddy who say they will only reveal its location if the National Archives allows one of them to be present to read the letter publicly.
What is there to make of this testimony? While incredibly intriguing at first, there are some pretty farfetched and bizarre aspects to Merritt and Caddy’s story that might be questionable.
It seems if Nixon wanted to clear his name in the annals of history, he would have released this information himself, whether at that moment or before his death. Though in every instance of a president’s alleged attempt at disclosure, the truth always seems to be stranger than fiction.
For more on a U.S. President’s attempt at disclosure check out this episode of Deep Space:
