Because it serves the media’s purposes, of course.
Booman just posted a short screed titled Why Our Politics Are So Stressful
In it he states:
You want to know why American politics are so exhausting? Because everything is always a goddamn crisis with the Republicans.
Oh man…when is he going to learn?
It’s not “the Republicans,” Booman.
It’s the media.
Haven’t you figured that out yet?
Without the support of the media, “the Republicans” and their serial fiasco politics would fade from view like last year’s sad situation comedy. They serve a dual purpose. They sell airtime and they muddy the waters so that the real business…continued short term quarterly corporate profit….can continue unnoticed and thus unabated.
Your brother Andrew has it at least partially right.
Come back to politics whenever you want. As you so clearly pointed out, the shit will not ever change. You won’t miss much.
Indeed.
Right on the money…a dollar three eighty’s worth, at the very least.
If you absolutely, positively cannot kick the media junk habit, take some methadone. Of course, methadone makes you all sleepy and stoopid, but at least you’re not out there on the corner busting drunks upside the head for chump change to get your next fix.
Need I say it again?
Probably useless, but what the hell. I do keep trying.
NEWSTRIKE!!!
MEDIASTRIKE!!!
CULTURESTRIKE!!!
VAYA!!!
Read on for more.
There are maybe three things on TV that have any semblance of “reality” left in them:
Sports: As “real” as they can be given the massive amounts of money spent on them to further anesthetize the Ameican public. They are “real” to most of the players and coaches, for sure. These people are almost all kids who grew up with one goal…to maximize their human potential on the level to which they were born. Can’t ask for much more “real” than that. That’s what I am doing as a musician/artist. I can relate.
Poker: Ditto the above, except that it has not been as massively commercialized as has the sports world. Once again…kids who pursued a course of action that helped them to perfect their natural talents.
The occasional documentary or art film: Gotta pick wisely, but they are out there.
W/all of these, you absolutely, positively must turn of the sound or switch away during the commercials if you want to regain some amount of the sanity that has been taken away from you by decades of continuous, almost totally unconscious exposure to the mainstream hypnomedia. My junk analogy holds true here as well, Booman. Any recovering or recovered junky knows damned well that one hit of his or her chosen substance(s) will result in another bout of addiction. You just can’t allow it.
Oh…and the wonderful cable station Link TV. (Look for it. It’s on Direct TV, Dish TV and any number of cable stations. Easily 80% of its programming is the real deal. Bet on it. It’s also the only station in the U.S. to carry Al Jazeera, as far as I know. Al Jazeera comes pre-loaded with political leanings just as do all other news stations, but at least its “leanings” are in a different direction from those of the mainstream U.S. + B.B.C. clones. )
There y’are, Mr. Longman. The long man and short man of it all.
Your choice…
Choose wisely.
You want to really understand “politics?” Look away until you see what a dumbshow for the marks it really is.
Bet on that as well.
Later…
AG
P.S. I reiterate…this whole current debt cap/government closing routine? Episode LLXXXVII in the federal soap opera. Soon to be “resolved” and then followed almost immediately by yet another chapter.
Probably “The 20012 Election. Who Will Win!!!???”
Wanna get a glimpse at the end of that one?
Whoever most effectively convinces the corporate world that he (or she, although not currently likely unless Hlllary Clinton is forced in through some massive failure of Obama’s) will most effectively follow only one golden rule. The Cooldige Rule.
“The business of America is business.”
Yup.
Watch.
But not on TV.
Please.
P.P. S. Here is Coolidge’s full statement on the matter.
…it is probable that a press which maintains an intimate touch with the business currents of the nation is likely to be more reliable than it would be if it were a stranger to these influences. After all, the chief business of the American people is business. They are profoundly concerned with buying, selling, investing and prospering in the world.
President Calvin Coolidge’s address to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Washington D.C., January 25, 1925
Mmm hmmm…!!!
“…a press [the dominant media of the time] which maintains an intimate touch with the business currents of the nation is likely to be more reliable than it would be if it were a stranger to these influences.”
What better way to be ensure a certain “reliablility” (Reliable according to whom, of course.) than to be owned lock, stock and barrel full of rotting apples and easily shot fish by those who produce “the business currents of the nation.” The PermaGov/CorpWorld, of course.
I cannot say this enough, Booman.
Wake the fuck up!!!
“Only you can prevent forest fires,” says good ol’ Smokey the Bear.
Well, only you an prevent societal fires, too.
Bet on it.
All politics is local.
And you…your house, your family, and you…are as local as it gets.
What to do?
Mr. Thoreau had it right 150+ years ago.
Some are petitioning the State to dissolve the Union. Why do they not dissolve it themselves–the union between themselves and the State?”-Henry David Thoreau
The mainsream media are “the state”, damn it!
Sever your connections to them and watch your world open up.
Please.
