By Dexter Wright
In the wake of the 2016 election, there have been efforts at soul searching by politicians on both left and right. But neither side has been able to focus on the fact that the river of history is at a flood stage and is washing away the banks on both the left and right sides of the river. This has gone unnoticed for the most part, but as with most things in life, it is easy to see if you just change your perspective, and an historical perspective is what is called for here.
In 1440, Johannes Gutenberg invented the movable type printing press by pouring molten lead into molds to form the individual letters which could be moved and reused to print pages and pages of information on a scale never before seen. Prior to this invention, books were hand scribed, illuminated, illustrated and sewn into a binding which, when finished, was more of a work of art than a volume of reference material. The advent of cheaper and more plentiful books resulted in the widespread availability of information and the Age of Enlightenment began.
This new availability of information, in the form of printed books, resulted in a flood of cultural revolutions with high water marks such as the Reformation in religion, the Copernican Revolution in science and ultimately, in the political arena, the American Revolution.........The Democrats, and probably many Republicans too, have failed to see the raging floodwaters of information lapping on the doorstep of every household as any sort of significant force. But the World Wide Web is changing the course of history. Each household can now observe, without filtration, what politicians are “doing on their behalf.” These flood waters of unfiltered information are washing out the stagnated swamp, and as with the Biblical Flood, a new beginning has been ushered in.........Read more
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