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
