Possible Approach to "Tune Out" or Neutralize Money in Politics? A Small Experiment.

I'd like to throw this out as a test project, in case there are any takers, or rather for now, mostly throw it out for comment and criticism to see if it can be taken any further.  The general idea is that voters really assume the attitude that we are the hirers of our public servants, and taking the stand that, yes, they are our public servants.

What did Saul Alinsky Really Say?

"I’ve never joined any organization — not even the ones I’ve organized myself. I prize my own independence too much. And philosophically, I could never accept any rigid dogma or ideology, whether it’s Christianity or Marxism. One of the most important things in life is what Judge Learned Hand described as 'that ever-gnawing inner doubt as to whether you're right.' If you don't have that, if you think you've got an inside track to absolute truth, you become doctrinaire, humorless and intellectually constipated. The greatest crimes in history have been perpetrated by such religious and political and racial fanatics, from the persecutions of the Inquisition on down to Communist purges and Nazi genocide."

This is one little quote from the guy who, according to the mythical
"8 Principles of Control" or How to create a social state wanted to make the world a totalitarian zombie factory.

From Natural (or Naturalized) to Social Epistemology

I've been reading an anthology called Naturalizing Epistemology (1986) edited by Hilary Kornblith.

   "Naturalizing" epistemology has been heavily identified with W.V.O. Quine (author of the 2 first articles in Naturalizing Epistemology).

   Others draw parallels between naturalized epistemology and the much earlier philosophy of pragmatism, or John Dewey in particular, as in Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society Vol. 32, No. 4, Fall, 1996, "Dewey, Quine, and Pragmatic Naturalized Epistemology".  Or see Stich 1993 "Naturalizing Epistemology: Quine, Simon and the Prospects for Pragmatism".  The title alludes to Herb Simon, the Nobel Laureate (Economics), Turing Prize winner, cognitive psychologist, AI pioneer, etc.

Naturalized epistemology, like many other intellectual approaches has a strong and a weak program, or position.  The strong might be represented by Quine's "Why not settle for psychology".

A modest search engine proposal

How much AI technique could it possibly take for google (or something better) to do a decent job with

speechby:obama   attitude:positive   "Saul Alinsky".

I.e. "speechby:" and "attitude:" don't exist, but could, I believe be implemented pretty accurately, to see in this case if we can find any instances of Obama praising Saul Alinsky.
An article: "Bill Ayers and Obama Both Quote Alinsky" claims such quotes exist, but their one attempt to demonstrate it is laughable -- something vaguely like a paraphrase of an Alinsky statement, but which has, in fact the reverse sense of what the supposed "original" meant.

"Obama Confession" by Andrew Hodges

I just have to give an example of the strange places some Americans have gone fishing for the truth.  Psycho-history once had its day, but that day is long past, except in right wing daemonizations of Obama which are big sellers. If you're tempted to buy this, let me suggest looking at this review of another book by the author called A Mother Gone Bad: The Hidden Confession of JonBenet's Killer Here is one excerpt from the review "he concludes that the misspelled word "bussiness" all by itself indicates that a woman did it because of several random words that he himself, out of the blue, associates with that word. Yes, it really is that bad!"

Applied Memetics, Godwin's Law, Leo Strauss and Reduction ad Hitlerum

According to Wikipedia, Godwin's law (or Godwin's Rule of Nazi Analogies) is an Internet adage asserting that "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1".

Myths About Saul Alinsky (and Obama)

  [NOTE: Current latest tRTP posting:  http://therealtruthproject.blogspot.com/2016/06/clinton-and-bengazi-vs-reagan-and.html]
Lately, right wing sources have been circulating a fictitious set of 8 "levels of control"  or "How to create a social state" that Saul Alinsky was supposed to have written, which led off with
  1) Healthcare – Control healthcare and you control the people

This myth is so thoroughly digested and accepted that answers.yahoo.com will spit it out as the answer to "What are the 8 levels of control as outlined by Saul Alinsky?" (last time checked: 2014-08-18).
Yet is very easily shown to be a total fiction.

Alinsky has been dead for over 40 years, yet the phoney connection between Alinsky and his supposed "How to create a social state" only appears on web pages from 2013 on, which probably means it is scuttlebutt generated for the post-election renewal of the war on Obama.

If you Google { alinsky "Control healthcare and you control the people" }
with a custom date range 1/1/2000-1/1/2013 you get 9 hits which all seem to not really be that old; but an unrestricted search gives 85,600 results (note that Google gives different results for different people based on their records of what you've shown interest in -- so your mileage may vary)

So, apparently nobody ever heard of Alinsky saying  "Control healthcare and you control the people" before 2013, though he's been dead since 1972.