The Feedback Loop

In my pondering about the current state of affairs in the USA and the apparent doldrums of the Obama Administration, I have been searching for unifying themes. We need a way to try to make sense of what is happening; we need a way to direct and operationalize the frustration and anger that is felt when so many things seem broken and with leaders unwilling or unable to fix these problems.

That search has led me to two tentative conclusions. The first has been articulated by research linguistic expert George Lakoff in a way that exceeds any attempt I might make to articulate the idea.

http://www.truthout.org/obamas-missing-moral-narrative59968

Lakoff eloquently speaks to the failure of Obama to refocus on his core message and values that derive from empathy as a driving and unifying theme for his Administration and for his dialogue with the public.

The second point relates to the concept of a feedback loop. Static is generated by sound that is generated and amplified and then rebounds to the source to be re-amplified and rebroadcast in a continuous loop. Only when the sound is redirected to an audience that is not stuck in that loop does the broadcast of sound become rational instead of redundant. The Obama Administration seems caught in a trap that seems inherent inside the Washington Beltway, listening to the same group of pollsters who are talking to the same “experts” and commentators who listen to the administration and themselves almost exclusively. The result is static and noise instead of message and intelligible content.

When Administration insiders consult these pollsters as a way of informing decision making, they hear the feedback from the right wing that virtually any initiative will be opposed and doomed to probable failure. The result of taking this advice is for the Administration to balk on progressive initiatives that would better serve the public who elected him and who exist outside this Beltway feedback loop.

Add to the loop the fact that much of the “media” supplying the “advice” to the Obama Administration is captive of the right wing GOP and corporate driven interests. As such, they are predisposed to react negatively to any proposal that would favor the welfare of the general public over the profits of the corporate interests. To the extent that the President gives access to and listens to this so-called “feedback” from advisers, instead of listening to his own heart and values, he will be paralyzed and unable to act upon the promised initiatives that got him elected. We have all been to concerts in which feedback has gotten out of control and is painful or deafening.

To solve the problem, any good sound engineer knows that you must reduce the volume of the broadcast sound, figure out where the message is being generated and where it is targeted and then redirect both the amplified sound and the source of generated sound in a way that broadcasts an outgoing signal instead of a feedback loop. Sadly, it seems that the Administration sound engineers have gotten lazy and been unwilling to get off their collective backsides to redirect the President’s message and to assess the locus of reception and source of feedback. Until that is done, the right wing and corporate message machine will continue to generate static and prevent any intelligible message from getting through. To the extent that the corresponding actions of the President are like those of a bat that needs the responding signal to determine the lay of the land through which it navigates, he will need to break out of the feedback loop in order to fly.

The US electorate has grown extremely tired and frustrated by the continuous static and incoherent feedback. When those citizens live outside the Washington Beltway and are directly impacted by the failures of policies and failure to take decisive action to fix them, they will ultimately respond. That response may be to attempt to shut down the noise by ousting current officials and starting over. That strategy may not ultimately work, but the current course of events seems to provide no other alternative. The lesser alternative would be for the electorate to go deaf from the useless noise, a deafness that would signal the death of democracy.