Comment on The Belmont Club"In the interests of honest debate"

I spent an hour writing a post and the machine crashed and ate it. So much for communication.

The suggestions that people attempt to flood the White House portal strike me as ill advised. If the concern is that the administration is asking people to send them information that can be used to identify possible enemies then how does it help for those enemies to themselves send the White House their email addresses and IP numbers? It will be a simple matter to harvest those numbers and build a data base for future reference. Those numbers can then be screened out to prevent the inbox from being jammed in the future and effectively eliminating the opposition voices from any policy debate.

Effective communications require at least some minimum level of shared values. You can negotiate with an enemy who sees some value in your continued existence. You cannot negotiate with a wild animal that is seeking to kill you. Billions of dollars have been spent and whole careers have been built on a Middle -East Peace Process that is almost completely devoid of content. On the other hand the successful return of the two journalists from North Korea indicates that their can be some benefit in keeping a communications line open to even the most irrational corespondent.

The problem with communicating with the current White House can be summed up in two words, Rahm Emmanuel. He seeks power for its own sake. He is like O'Brien in Nineteen Eighty-Four.

If you fail to cooperate with his sincere efforts to manage the message then you may suffer for your Failure to Communicate.