Gaianne posted a series of comments on my recent article here about being banned from The Wild, Wild Left blog.
…as the left refuses to look beyond an obsolete analysis, and ask what is actually happening in the world, it becomes as irrelevant as the right.
I answered:
Precisely.
Thank you.
She also wrote:
There are no reality-based ideas remaining anywhere on the political spectrum.
(Actually, her several comments there are more than worthy of being an entire article by themselves. Go read them on the link that I posted above.)
I swear, if I could find a way to propagate my NEWSTRIKE!!!, MEDIASTRIKE!!! and CULTURESTRIKE!!! ideas that did not itself require the media for its propagation, its “reality-based” roots would make a huge dent in the system as it stands now.
(Read on for more)
The reality of the situation is that the only possible positive action left to people who are enmeshed in this system…the only thing that they can do regarding the rot that has set in here that will not result in massive, life-threatening, personal repercussions…is to drop out from said system as far and as fast as they can manage to do so and still remain alive.
The first…and by far the most effective…step?
Stop unquestioningly consuming the media’s storyline.
Simply dropping away from the constant hypnomedia barrage that keeps even most of the best and brightest of us in thrall to its ever-unfolding, totally fictional storyline is an eye-opening experience. I have done so… quite successfully…for well over 7 years now. I began my withdrawal from that particular drug as the media storylined the so-called Republican electoral victory in 2000, went further with the fictionalized coverage of 9/11, even further during the runup to the invasion of Iraq and reached a state of final freedom during Howard Dean’s media-engineered “collapse” and John Kerry’s subsequent loss to G. W. Butch. I am media-sober for over 7 years and I will never, ever return to that addiction.
This can only be accomplished by totally stopping the subconscious consumption of media…news, so-called “culture”, advertising…the works. I sit here this post-Thanksgiving morning in the living room of some of my closest and most loved relatives. The TV is on, as is some mediocre commercial music in another part of the house in their exercise room. They “know” better…at least they think that they do. Last night we laughed and mocked our way through a couple of hours of channel-surfed, rural cable TV. BUT THE TV WAS ON, and that is really all that is needed for the poison to sink in. I have given up trying to tell even my closest friends and relatives about this evil…with the exception of the way that I brought up my son. (Which was thankfully a total success in this aspect.), I can only sit and wait for them to ask. And they don’t. I am near to giving up on the web as well, but since these leftiness blogs are at least theoretically about “asking questions”, I will keep trying for a while.
Imagine if…in a “viral video” sort of way (Disregarding the fact that a video really cannot go viral without at least the tacit consent of the corporate media.)…imagine for a moment what would happen if this movement spread through the culture.
The corporate-owned networks and media would freak!!! They would lose a substantial part of their revenue stream and worse, would actually lose their raison d’etre. They are nothing more than a cultural control mechanism, and if they were to lose their power over even 10% or 15% of the population the results would be catastrophic for those now in real power.
I know. The leftiness clones will at his moment chorus in near-unison:
Not us!!! We’re free thinkers!!!
Really?
An illustration of why I think otherwise:
The little Wild, Wild Left dustup I mentioned above.
I was banned from that leftiness blog…radicaliness, actually… recently essentially for making the simple suggestion that Noam Chomsky and his intellectual, academe-based compatriots should be held accountable to some degree for the ongoing failures of the left here in The United States over the past 50+ plus years.
The immediate, kneejerk reaction?
The horror!!! The unmitigated gall of this unknown Gilroy character to suggest such a thing regarding the most revered member of the American intellectual left!!! How dare he!!!
How did this reaction come about? How was it implanted in the minds of those who reacted in that way?
Hypnomedia…the left wing thereof.
The whole NY Times/PBS/NY Review of Books/tweed-suited, pipe-smoking, totally ineffective leftiness media has taken Mr. Chomsky’s oeuvre… almost totally unapproachable by most readers because of its depth and erudition… and institutionalized it as the be-all and end-all of left wing thought. This is not to say that he should be personally blamed in any way for his efforts except insofar as they have borne almost no practically useful fruit. “Blaming” him would be like blaming high-level automotive engineers whose best plans have been either unused or at the very least mis-used by corporate profit machines like General Motors. Nor was my initial approach to the subject in any way disrespectful of him and his work.
I first stated…as lightly as I could, because the proprietor of that blog was already sky high in hog-heaven over having actually been answered by such a star in the leftiness constellation:
Now…what you REALLY need is for Joe Bageant to call in and have a conversation w/ Mr. Chomsky.
Deconstruct that, Noam baby!!!
I look forward to this program. If Joe can’t be there, I’ll happily sub for him.
When asked “Deconstruct what?” I answered:
Well…sometimes the people on the ground have more validity to their observations than do those who have made the compromises necessary to achieve fame, fortune and tenure.
Joe’s one of those on the ground.
Me too.
Professor Chomsky is one of those that the anti-establishment “establishment” has anointed as one of their own. And look how well that group has done.
He is a brilliant and courageous man, no doubt.
But…when was the last time he walked the streets?
And…the last straw in Diane’s case, I am afraid…I cautioned her:
He has been an important and revered part of the totally rotten academic establishment since 1955. Is he really in touch with what is happening in the streets and the countryside of America? I am a musician, and if he were part that particular musical area of academia, my answer would be an automatic, emphatic and absolutely sure “No, he is not.”
On extensive personal experience.
So I would like to speak to him. Short of that, I would like to hear Joe…who has his own fame baggage to carry but is certainly an honest man…speak to him.
Do not be a star-fucker, Diane.
Intelligence has its own shelf life.
Bet on it.
She hit the roof and still hasn’t come down on the evidence of some of her posts both on this site and on her own.
So it goes.
This post is not really about my experience there. It is about the corporate magician’s right and left hands.
Watch not.
Watch neither.
Trust not.
Don’t watch the stuff that comes out of his (centrist) fly as well.
It’s all bullshit.
And always and everywhere beware the orthodoxy as it is presented by interests whose true interests are…on 50+ years of ample evidence…domination of the human herd by media-enforced hypnofascism.
Beware all media-promoted stars. Sarah Palin, Noam Chomsky and everybody in between.
Look at what has happened to our so-called saviour, Barack Obama.
Reduced to just another centrist hack, it appears. Still talking about “cooperation across the aisle” as if he actually believes that it is possible. He certainly believes that it is possible to convince some large portion of the American public of that possibility, and he is right on the money about that.
Rebel.
Against all of this shit.
Please.
Timothy Leary famously suggested “Tune in, turn on and drop out.” He had it about 2/3rds right. It’s the “turn on” that was off base. We are already “turned on,” almost from birth.
To the hypnomedia.
Tune into it consciously.
And then turn off.
Turn it off.
The “drop out” part?
That happens quite naturally once the hypnomedia conduit is interrupted.
Bet on it.
NEWSTRIKE!!!
MEDIASTRIKE!!!
CULTURESTRIKE!!!
VAYA!!!
I mean…this way surely isn’t working very well, now is it?
Wake the fuck up!
Gotta go teach a buncha smart, ghetto-raised black and hispanic NYC high school students about the real history of the great musics that were made by some of their immediate forebears against overwhelming odds. A history that they mostly do not know because the media has made damned sure that it is not available to them through the channels that they have been told are “theirs.”
Station WTFU once again signing off.
Later…
AG
As you will.
As you must.
Later…
AG
AG,
MEDIASTRIKE/CULTURESTRIKE is key, absolutely correct, must be done, one by one.
We already agree.
Ergo, a small point regarding your own history: you seem to say that Dean’s candidacy was destroyed in 2000. Not so, as far as I know.
Thanks. Of course the Dean/Kerry thing was 2003/2004.
Sometimes the whole timeline seems to bunch up in my mind into one compacted set of continuing lies and tactical betrayals.
I’ll change it.
AG
Oh, Jezz. Sour grapes once again at Noam’s expense, from who? A Chomsky wanna be, if only that could ever be possible.
Bet on it.
A Gil Evans/John Coltrane/Sonny Rollins wannabe, maybe.
But Chomsky?
Naaaaahhhh. Then I would have had to be polite to chumsuckers like you for 40 years.
The great tenor player Lester Young was playing a one nighter with a local rhythm section somewhere in the hinterlands. The drummer was awful, but Pres (Short for “The President”, Lester’s nickname.) was surffering manfully through the gig. On a break he went to the bar to fortify himslef for the next set and the drummer came over to make nice.
“Pres, I haven’t seen you for a long while,” he said. “When was the last time we worked together?”
Pres answered, “Tonight.”
Like dat.
Go away.
Y’bother me.
AG
You’ve noted her in what seems like positive (or at least respecting-her-power) terms. Is she part of the centrist “fly”? Somehow outside the hypnomedia? Or other?
How does she “fit in?”
Dunno.
Fit into what? I am not even sure that anyone “fits” anywhere as the Wikileaks pile up. Anyone who has succeeded at a fairly high level in any part of the media, government, academic or corporate worlds is guilty of crimes against humanity, apparently.
“Fit?” If the government…any and all governments in self-interested cooperation with one another, probably… does not stuff a cork in the mouth of that Wikileaks truth bottle the genie of reality is going to pop out into the minds of the sheeple who have so far traipsed along in total ignorance of how little “good faith” is actually rendered by the system as it stands.
As my sig states, “Goodness had nothing to do with it, dearie.”
How does Ms. Clinton fit into the system in which she has worked for several decades?
Her aims seem true enough. But the compromises that she has made to achieve those aims may have themselves negated the possibility of getting much really done. On the evidence of her public positions during the Valerie Plame brouhaha it is quite clear that she is heavily allied with the so-called “liberal” wing of the CIA. But that self-same CIA is the most powerful arm of resistance to any kind of real reform in the system for which it works.
People die bucking the CIA.
Bet on it.
Julian Assange is only alive now because he positioned himself so publicly that they literally cannot kill him. If he goes through with the bank/corporate financial dump he is threatening, nothing will save him, because that is the real root of the systemic corruption hat is occurring here at this time. If large numbers of Americans begin to doubt the entire capitalist structure as it now stands, the next move will be towards true economic chaos.
Bank runs, credit defaults on a huge scale…the works.
Hillary Clinton dove into this sewer to try to get something done. She rejected outside-the-system activity way back in her Wellesley undergraduate thesis, ” ‘There Is Only the Fight…’: An Analysis of the [Saul] Alinsky Model.”
So she dove in.
I am personally beginning to believe that it impossible to “change the system” either from within or from without. Dive in and you get covered with shit; stay outside and you cannot accrue enough power to do a goddamned thing except piss and moan.
So it goes.
It will change when it is either beaten by new ideas from the rest of the world and/or it collapses from its own inner rot.
Where Hillary “fits?”
Right here with the rest of us unfortunates, it looks like.
So that goes as well.
AG
Just in case anyone thinks that I am conflating my musical experiences in American academia with the rest of the educational system, I offer this gem from perhaps the most honest, intelligent, observant and talented “jazz” musician of our era, Branford Marsalis.
Like dat.
As above, so below.
Bet on it.
Watch.
Julian Assange has refused to stop winking, and he is about to get the crap beaten out of him.
Russia…the bad cop…and “good” cop US are going to shut down his unwinking eye.
Watch.
Then we will all be able to go back to our winky winky lives.
Nudge, nudge.
When will we learn?
(Wink wink, nudge nudge.)
Wake the fuck up.
AG