Booman writes in his complaint piece about the primary results Loonies Win the Night:
The Republicans continue to nominate lunatics and scoundrels, many of whom will probably become members of Congress next year because people just don’t care enough to prevent it.
The important question to ask here is this: Why does the majority of the American populace quite demonstrably “not care?”
Why?
Because they have been hypnomediaed into varying forms of trance state, Booman.
That’s why.
CNN/NBC/CBS/ABC/NY Times/Washington Post/Time Magazine/Newsweek/USA Today trance state:
Everything is going to hell in a handbasket. You are helpless to stop it. Buy more stuff instead. Watch mindless reality shows and big-time, drug-fueled sports in your spare time. “Wouldya look at the size of that home run!!!??? Wow! He’s strong!!!”
Cable entertainment trance state:
Yes, everything is going to hell in a handbasket. Relax and pitch right in. Enjoy. Nothing is real…why fret? Vampires and gangsters and transvestites and amateur rock musicians and untalented rappers and soft core sex movies and bad comics and fake spies and the Military Channel and steroid freaks bashing each others’ brains out. and..aw hell, take yer pick, folks. Enjoy. Jerk yourselves off into any number of sweet dreams. Have fun. It’s all over but the moral decay. Buh-bye!!!
And then there’s the Fox News trance state:
Knee-jerk hatred of “the other.” Kill `em all and let God (Our God, goddammit!!!) sort them out.
Read on.
Booman’s (plus the leftiness blogs’ in general) continuing complaint about the state of American politics…and make no mistake about it, the Tea Party is rising from the subconscious of the media-addled white lower and working classes like a demon from some B-movie hell…is way off the mark.
It isn’t simply that people “just don’t care enough” to prevent this rise.
They do care, the ones who are fueling this right wing movement. The ones on the ground. The “little” people. You know. The ones who’re voting in these primaries? In fact, they may be the only identifiable political group in the US that does “care.” The only people with any emotional commitment to politics of any kind. Sure…it’s negative emotions that fuel the movement. But that’s better than no emotions, at least it is in the political game.
Obama is often compared to FDR by the lukewarm leftish media. But FDR conveyed emotion when he communicated to the American people. Obama? Flat as a soymilk pancake. He’s so cool that he is almost inert in an emotional sense. Palin? Hot as a two dollar pistol. Bet on it. And thousands of times more dangerous.
The only way to turn this rightward movement around is to provide some positive emotion from the top. I predict that one of three things will happen to the Democratic Party over the next year and a half.
1-Obama will enlist the Clintons ever more heavily…both of them practiced and successful emotional communicators, bet on that as well…in his reelection campaign. Hillary Clinton will be his vice-presidential running mate, tasked with taking Palin down in a series of emotional firefights played out in the media while Obama stays coolly…presidentially…above the fray.
That vast right-wing conspiracy that I mentioned some years ago? You know, the one that conspired against my (now-beloved elder statesman) husband from the moment that he entered national politics? Yup. Here it is, in the flesh. And I do mean “flesh.” Sarah Palin. Frontwoman. Empty as a used milk container. Dumber than Bush II.
Watch.
Bill Clinton? Less important on the stump, maybe a little more important in the back rooms.
Or…
2-Obama will pack it up (one way or another…on orders from his owners and/or with a primary loss) and Hillary Clinton will be the Democratic presidential candidate.
Either way she will kick some ass, too.
Hot style.
Watch.
Or…
3-Obama will continue to do what he does and Palin will take him down.
Take him down hot.
Watch.
Long-term?
The only way to reform his country is to totally reform the corporate-owned media.
From the inside out.
But that cannot be done as things are now set up because the media control the minds of about 98% the population.
Catch 22, over and out.
UH oh!!!
NEWSTRIKE!!!
MEDIASTRIKE!!!
CULTURESTRIKE!!!
VAYA!!!
Sorry.
Short of violent action…something to which I am unalterably opposed although I predict that it will eventually come to that here if things do not get better…I see no other way to change the culture of this country. Revolutions invariably “revolve” right back into even deeper shit. That’s why they are called revolutions. Duh.
Short of violent action the “NEWSTRIKE” idea is all I have to offer.
A way to reform the political culture, the business culture and the societal culture, all three.
Will it happen?
I doubt it.
The trance state is in too deep.
So it goes.
And thus we must make do with what we can get.
Heat up, folks.
The fun’s just beginning.
Watch.
Later…
AG
Some good ol’ kneejerk leftiness Hillary bashing, maybe?
As you must.
As you were.
And…if you do not turn the fucking TV off…as you will be.
Forever and ever. Amen.
Or at least until the rapidly increasing feedback system breaks the speakers.
Later…
AG
It’s not that I disagree with the media/teabag part of this piece, it’s just that the people who care are still a tiny minority. I agree that people are asleep, including all those still primarily focused on squeezing out the most progressive change rather than on sticking up to the bigots and fascists and making them back down.
There it is again, Booman.
If you meant “…the leftiness people who care” are still a tiny minority, I would agree with you.
But I do not think that you did mean that. This is a sort of leftiness/educated middle class/superiority complex-generated blind spot, one that is amplified every day in every way by the media that the educated middle class watches, fat and happy in their belief that “They cain’t hypnomedia me!!! I done been edumacated!!!”
Riiiiight…
These Tea Party folks?
They just don’t carry any real weight in the picture of America as it is generated by almost all of the media. They’re kinda like…not there. And thus they are equally “not there” to leftiness people who still inhabit Mediamerica every night and twice on weekends.
They’re not there in the subliminal parts of the media that do the real trance work.
In the ads.
Joe Bageant’s redneck Virginia people?
Not there.
Jersey Shore’s lower middle class ethnic whities?
Not there, except as a sort of comic relief.
But they are there, Booman.
And in their own angry way, they do care. Their anger has real roots. Their sons and daughters have gone off to die or be driven crazy in our foreign wars, yet these people and their remaining sons and daughters are not only less well off than they were before the whole Vietnam/Blood For Oil half century, they have almost completely disappeared from the national (media-generated) consciousness. These are the people that put Bush II close enough to winning so that a little old fashioned (in new-fashioned ways) vote-jiggering would install him in the catbird seat over the most powerful military force that the world has ever seen.
They care…and they vote, Booman.
Do not look past them just because they are not showing up in the Cymbalta ads that you think you are ignoring while waiting for the talking newsheads to ruin your day once again.
You also say:
Well…if there were any politicians of real national consequence who were demonstrably ready to “stick up to the bigots and fascists and make them back down” I would suggest that you immediately start supporting them. With your life, if necessary. But there are not any.
Who? Alan Grayson? Howard Dean? (I will love his act forever.) Dennis Kucinich?
I said “of national consequence.”
As in “able to marshal enough support inside the PermaGov/CorpWorld power center to actually run for the presidency.”
Actually, come to think of it…there is one pol (and only one) who has over and over again demonstrated a combination of the will to stand up to the vast right wing co-dependency, the guile to survive while doing so and the positionable ability to wield PermaGov power in order to do so.
That Machiavella of the center-left, Ms. H. R. Clinton.
But NOOOOOOooooooo….
She is…and has been all of her life…”primarily focused on squeezing out the most progressive change” rather than going down in Kucinich-like flames while taking unwinnable positions that play well back in some Ohio county.
How un-leftiness of her.
And she is once again an inch away from becoming president, just as she was in 2009.
Maybe a number inches. No dick, don’tcha know.
Why is she still in that position?
Because Obama has failed. Simple as that.
He has not faled at being an executive. He’s actually done very well, considering the problems that he has had to face.
But he has failed to grasp the imagination of the population.
And why?
Because he is too “cool” by a long shot.
Too cool in the McLuhanian sense. (The following is about “media” from a McLuhanian perspective. But “media” has hotted up enormously since the black and white TV days when ol’ Mac was formulating his ideas. It has hotted up so much that our pols are now wdely seen as denizens of the media. Media constructs with no real life on the ground. Color TV is hot. HiDef TV is even hotter. Bet on it.)
Can you find a better description of Obama’s effect on workaday folks?
“Cool media…[are]those that provide little involvement with substantial stimulus. They require more active participation on the part of the user, including the perception of abstract patterning and simultaneous comprehension of all parts. “
I can’t.
Clinton, however, never makes this mistake.
Never.
She cries on national TV.
She gets a little loopy in a Pennsylvania bar.
Face it, Booman.
She hot!!!
Not in the current sex objectified usage of the term.
McLuhan hot.
And this country desperately needs some “hot” from the left.
Or else…back in the right-wing fridge we go for another 4 or 8 years.
Watch.
Later…
S.
Unfortunately, oligarch Michael Bloomberg is the man sticking up to fascists right now. I’m glad he’s doing it, but he ain’t getting my political support.
He is the Corporate PermaGov. I have seen what he has done to NYC. Firsthand, up close and oh so personal.
His is the force that through the green fuse drives the flower. Only the green fuse that he uses is real estate, the force is dollars and the flower is the salt of the earth, which he drives ever further from the Sex In The CityLand Amusement Park that he has set up.
This is not a binary equation, Booman.
Fascist bad, not fascist (even anti-fascist) good. Bloomberg is not a racist. He is a moneyist. If it makes more money than something/someone else, it is better as far as he is concerned. In the short run this works quite well. Witness the prosperity of many NYC neighborhoods that were down and out only 10 or 12 years ago.
But long term?
Been to Newburgh recently? (Gotta love the trial of Newburgh’s own foolish intel dupes who were hustled into trying to blow up a couple of synagogues in NYC with useless weapons foisted upon them by a gov’t plant. A clearer case of entrapment will never, ever exist. Where’d they live? In the 1960s Detroit-like black ghetto that blights Newburgh’s center is where. How’d it grow? Giuliani/Bloomberg-run gentrification. Like sewage and garbage. Outta sight, outta mind. Until it begins to stink up the whole neighborhood of course. But by then…hey, the PermaGov hustlers in higher positions, making the same mistake all over again. Only bigger.)
Camden NJ?
Selected towns more than an hour’s commute from NYC in central (not gifted with waterfront) Long Island?
Any number of other “hour plus commute” small cities/towns that have recently fallen on hard times mainly because the many less than middle class people (usually of color) who have been real estate-monied out of NYC have moved there?
Oligarchs are just another breed of predator.
Bet on it.
Gentrify America?
That’s what Bloomberg wants.
But…where’ll the victims go?
Central America?
Hmmmmm….
Talk about your time bombs.
AG
the folks I know (primarily left-ish) that are angry enough to do something are unfortunately adept at breaking rapport and frothing up their own anger without inspiring others to act.
It takes a huge degree of strength/composure/training(?)/talent to feed the internal anger fires while utilizing exterior coolness-on-command to smooth the interpersonal frictions that break up passionate but shortsighted movements.
Sadly, that effective coolness runs the risk of being labeled “manipulative” by the powers that don’t want the boat rock’n.
have you not heard the quote?
“never doubt that a small group of thoughtful people could change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”
that works for thoughtless people too.
yeah, like the 19 hijackers, for example.
yup, them too.
and the bush/cheney/rummy cabal.
What’s notable here and on the orange site, is progressives are in severe denial about the fact fifty percent of the eligible voters have long ago opted out of the system. also many (I assume younger progressives) are heavily emotionally invested in Obama and the democratic party– and as some articles have pointed out, these younger progressives are already disillusioned by what is happening.
I see nothing from the diarist regarding our pathetic level of voter participation and the implications of that for any sort of “democratic” republic.
I agree the media does it’s part to reinforce apathy (after all, the less people voting means less obligation by the system to meet the needs of the people or even take them seriously)–
but what the media does which I’m guessing is totally absurd and hilarious to the non voters– is the constant attempt to reinforce the notion there is a huge difference between the “two” political parties.
as I’ve pointed out elsewhere, Obama was the last hope of actually proving there’s a significant difference between the two political parties– and thus far he is totally failing at that.
Obama won swing state Ohio by a mere 104,000 votes. I hope he doesn’t assume he’s going to win Ohio the next time around.
You don’t?
Read it again.
If you still don’t…stop reading entirely.
It ain’t workin’.
AG
WHERE in your tirade do you mention these exact words: “fifty percent of eligible voters do not vote”.???
re-read your piece yourself.
BTW, I agree Biden will be dumped, Hillary will be O’s running mate the next time around, IF there is a next time.
Don’t forget that Koch Industries has as a side show their love of weird politics and they are funding tea parties, glen beck, outrage from all over and I would be willing to bet underwriting Rush Limbo and Gingrich.
Too bad the “little guy” can’t see that he is shooting himself in the future when he takes Koch up on their astro turfing.
In any conventional two party pluralistic democracy most people see an incumbent and a challenger come election time and depending on how the incumbent has done or the incumbents party has performed they will decide to either back that perosn or make a change.
Most people are not ideological and short of total econimic collapse and loss of most of the middle class comfort zone, this wont change. The republicans may be facistys but they remain the only choice ot Democrats for voters and the Dems are not exactly covering themsleves with glory.
It isnt an easy arguement to say hey the other lot are facists when you arent doing anything to impress yourself as it just looks like gaming it.
Of course the cossetted unthinking modern almost lobotomised existance these days doesnt help too nor does the soundbite ideas that it is easy to graft on as your own rather than really think. However, telling people they are too stupid to see the truth is not exaclty a winner either.
I don’t usually read your pompous stuff anymore Gilroy, but if you really think that Palin has more over Obama than a great ass, you’re probably living in NYC where most people can’t see beyond the next building. It is called environmental myopia, something I just invented for your sake. Get out to the country once in a while and breath the fresh air.
I don’t usually read your pompous stuff anymore Shergald, but if a great ass wins an election, that’s what won it.
Heat.
NYC?
Environmental myopia?
What on earth does that have to do with the price of gasbags?
AG